Tag Archives: maps

Useful Sites

March Link Madness

Well, March is almost over, but there is still time to fill in your bracket for March Musical Theatre Madness! You can also enjoy the links I’ve come up with below:

I’ve linked to some repositories of old maps before, which are always good for making paper props. But the Propnomicon website pointed me to Old Maps Online, which gives you an interactive interface to find historical maps within whatever date range you specify. It’s kind of like using Google Maps while traveling through time.

Speaking of vintage ephemera (and musical theatre), Gaytwogether is a blog which occasionally posts vintage photographs of gay couples, which you can browse through all at once at that link.

La Bricoleuse has just posted the final projects from her class on complex masks. Though little is written, the photographs give a lot of information about how the various masks were made, and it is very interesting to see the various methods of construction and the materials used.

Most of us know the Project Triangle: “fast, cheap and good—you can have any two”. For those who don’t, Jesse Gaffney has just posted a good description of it, along with examples.

If you study the technical side of some of the materials used in making props, you may know that “polymerization” is what happens when a resin changes from a liquid to a hard plastic (among other things). If you read MSDS sheets (which you should), you may also have come across the phrase “explosive polymerization”. If, like me, you are wondering what that means, you may be interested in this video; it has a long build-up, but the payoff is worth it.

Resources

Old Maps

World Map by J. Blaeu, 1664
World Map by J. Blaeu, 1664

Who doesn’t love old maps? Maybe you don’t love them so much that you made your wedding invitations in the style of an old map (like my wife and I did). But maps pop up in plays all the time. Whether you need a large wall map for King Lear, or a small battlefield map for Arms and the Man, here are some sites that will help you find what you need.

David Rumsey Map Collection – Over 22,000 maps, focusing on 18th and 19th century North and South America, though other continents and time periods are available.

Perry-Casta̱eda Library Map Collection РLinks to hundreds of maps on other sites, as well as a small collection of its own historical maps.

Wikimedia Commons Old Maps – Dozens of maps categorized by location.

World Digital Library Maps – Over 300 high-quality scans of original historical maps (browse the rest of the site for lots of other historical artifacts).

Genmaps – Old maps of England, Wales and Scotland, navigable by county.

National Maritime Museum– Over 1700 historical sea charts and maps from the medieval period to the present.

Library of Congress – Some of their map collections are available online, though the navigation is horrendous.

National Library of Scotland – Over 20000 historical maps of Scotland available.

The 1895 U.S. Atlas – From Rand McNally.

Holy Land Maps – Maps of Judea, Palestine and Israel at the University of Florida.

Stuckenberg Map Collection – Gettysburg College’s online collection of mostly United States maps.

Antique Atlas – A site which sells old maps, currently offering images of over 900 of them.

Hargrett Library Collection -Over 1000 historical map images in another difficult to navigate format.

Historic Cities – Offers a number of old maps from a number of cities throughout the world (mostly Europe).

Reinhold Berg Antique Map Shop – Sells prints of the numerous historical maps on their site.

Old Map Gallery – Another site selling maps with many images.

If you still haven’t found enough map porn, you can peruse larger lists of sites at Odden’s Bookmarks. The site is a little out of date, so many of the sites are no longer available.

Useful Sites

March Link Madness

Since I’m juggling four shows simultaneously at the moment, I figured I’d let the rest of the internet do the talking.

  • Woodworks Library – Over 175 complete and free books on woodworking, and related topics such as furniture design, blacksmithing, upholstery, and carving. This should keep you busy for awhile.
  • University of Texas Map Collection – A great collection of historic and contemporary maps from around the world.
  • Turn of the Century – A blog that purports to be “everything strange and beautiful from the 1850s to the 1920s.”
  • An absolutely fascinating photo gallery inside the shop of master gunsmith Nijazi Ibragimov.