For the primary time, materials from a non-public assortment of often-famous maps derived from fiction will go on public view, in an exhibition at Zurich’s Central Library opening tomorrow (4 September). From the primary printed maps of Dante’s Hell, courting from 1506, to pictures of Treasure Island hand-drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson, 60 examples from Sunderland Cohen’s 168-piece holding have been despatched to Switzerland for inclusion within the present. The exhibition’s curator, Jost Schmid-Lanter, who’s head of the library’s map assortment expects guests’ childhood recollections to be stirred by works tied to Narnia, Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh.
Sunderland Cohen, a lawyer who lives in central London, started to amass the maps that make up the gathering, referred to as Ex Carta, in 2024, spurred on by a love of fantasy fiction. “I learn the Hobbit once I was ten,” she says. Her pursuits transcend historic fiction to gaming and cinema.
A number of the first printed maps of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy are included within the exhibition
Courtesy of Zentralbibliothek Zürich
Different objects in her assortment embody a map that featured within the guide of the unique, 1986 model of the favored online game The Legend of Zelda, and a prop map exhibiting the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Final Campaign that Sunderland Cohen acquired in an public sale of film ephemera. “My solely rule is that it should be printed matter,” she says.
Accumulating is a behavior Sunderland Cohen inherited from her father, Neil Sunderland, whose preliminary enthusiasm for maps was impressed by his love of adventurous journey, although his first acquisition was almost certainly a map of his native Lancashire. Now the Sunderland Assortment comprises greater than 150 uncommon world maps and atlases from 1200 to 1800, and from a variety of cultures; they provide a singular lens on humankind’s makes an attempt to unravel the earth’s terrestrial and celestial geography, from early guess-work to iterations of paths travelled and plotted. Ex Carta, however, focuses on worlds that exist solely within the creativeness. Of each collections, Sunderland Cohen says: “We’re very bijou. We’re very targeted on content material and situation.”
A map that featured within the guide of the unique, 1986 floppy-disk model of the favored online game The Legend of Zelda
Courtesy of Zentralbibliothek Zürich
Since 2021 the Sunderland Assortment has been out there in digital kind, as a website referred to as Oculi Mundi. “We didn’t wish to put cash right into a basis, or taking up a constructing,” says Sunderland Cohen. Occuli Mundi is open to everybody.
In Zurich, the Ex Carta works will probably be joined by further items from the library’s personal assortment. In the meantime, different gadgets from the Sunderland Assortment will characteristic within the exhibition Evening Mapping, which opens on the Warburg Institute in London on 21 October.
- Fantastical Maps from Legendary Tales, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, 4 September-5 Decemeber