Sunday 29 April 2012

The Art of Cartocraftery or Mischevious Mappage

Cartography: "The drawing of maps or charts"
Craft: "A skillful contrivance, a device, artifice, or expedient"
-ery, suffix: "classes of goods...used in the coinage of jocular nonce-words"

Full Definition: Cartocraftery is the tongue-in-cheek re-approriation of maps for the purposes of détournement (the recuperation of past forms and ideas). Old items are 'mapped' through the process of paper lacquering, then decorated and given an amusing name based on the map used. For instance, see Least Anglia and an interview about the object on Anything LS:


This, now, storage box is made from an old black 40-year-old suitcase, while the image, below, is an old gift box which has been mapped with Leicestershire and renamed More-or-Less-Tershire. The original box can still be seen through tiny holes which were punched in the small torn-up pieces of the county:


Click here to see the Easter cards which started off the whole project: Why did the psychogeographer cross the road?

Please feel free to contact me for commissions.

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