Gerardus Mercator was a 16th century Flemish cartographer. I would say "The" cartographer, except Flanders seemed to be overrun with first rate cartographers in the 16th century (Gemma Frisius, Abraham Ortelius... stiff competition), perhaps because mapping their territory was extremely challenging, what with the floods and the succeeding armies... I don't even know how they managed to keep track of whether they were (bizarrely) part of Spain, or the Holy Roman Empire or what. Mercator himself had to be on the ball as his tendencies ran to the Protestant end of the spectrum.

What made Mercator a contender for "The" cartographer, was in fact his abilities as a mathematician -and like those of us scientists who feel compelled also to create art he was wasn't hindered by his immense ability as an engraver. He produced beautiful world maps (a version of which is depicted in this print), globes, but his name has gone down in history for the Mercator Projection. The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection which became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines of constant course, known as rhumb lines or loxodromes, as straight segments. While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite.

The Mercator projection will be quite familiar to you. It is generally used as a sort of 'default' projection, even today. If you are Canadian, like me, you might be lead to over-estimate the size of the arctic archipelago and underestimate the immensity of the African continent, due to the ubiquity of this projection. However, his achievement was fundamental to the explosion in exploration that came after his paradigm breaking world maps.

When the Mad Scientists of Etsy chose CARTOGRAPHY as our theme for November, 2008, I knew, as an earth scientist, (especially a marine geophysicist, used to spending quality time with nautical charts), a lover of the history of science and as a printmaker, that Mercator was the apt choice.

This is a two-colour (two block) lino block print. It is one of a first edition of only 6 prints. I carved two blocks in reverse; one representing his world map of 1595 in green and the second based on contemporary portraits in black, printed on Japanese washi paper 10" by 10.8" (25.5 cm by 27.5 cm). The edition is variable and each print is unique in its own way.


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Gerardus Mercator, souvent appelé en français Gérard Mercator, de son vrai nom Gérard de Cremere ou Kremer, né le 5 mars 1512 à Rupelmonde et mort le 2 décembre 1594 à Duisbourg, est un mathématicien et géographe flamand, inventeur de la projection qui porte son nom. Il était aussi artist, car il a due faire des gravure pour imprimé ses cartes.

L'image de Mercator ainsi que l'image de sa propre carte du monde sont imprimé à main sur papier japonais. Ils sont 35,5 cm par 27,5 cm (10 pouces par 10,8 pouces). Le première édition sagit de seulement six linogravures.

Les scientifiques-artists de l'équipe MSOE créons sur la thème de la cartographie!

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