More for the wall...

I do love a map... and I love words too so this is perfect.

A fabulous type map of New Zealand drawn in place names from the UK company Bold & Noble.

You need a closer look...  see, how cool is that?

See what I mean too about unpronounceable Kiwi place names? I'm okay with Hamilton but Ohakune and Pahiatua are taking more time to remember.

America and Australia are available too and kindly they haven't left Tasmania off the Australian mainland... as a Tasmanian it's the first thing you look for! 

 Of course this is what they started with... good old blighty....

There's a new London version too and there are more rather lovely, covetable items.  I have seen this on a few walls lately in the piles of magazines I'm sifting through before I bin them. I love it. 

I found the prints on one of my favourite UK shopping blogs - Home Shopping Spy and the talented folk at Bold and Noble have a blog too.

Now here's a map obsession...

I may have a thing for maps but nothing like the woman behind the iconic A-Z London Maps. Iconic is a word is abused and overused by journalists but in this case I feel justified using it.

Phyllis Pearsall was pretty amazing. An artist, she decided in 1935 that the Ordnance Survey map she was using to find her way around London was totally inadequate so she'd make one herself. Working long, long days she catalogued the city's 23,000 streets - on foot, mind you - and then devised the alphabetical index to go with her guide.

The woman was unstoppable. When no one would publish her new atlas she started her own company, the Geographers' Map Company which she ran until she died.

I've read this book twice (once would have done but I quite often read books again. There are Agatha Christie mysteries I've read half a dozen times and still can't remember 'who done it.' What will I be like when I'm eighty?!)

The story of Phyllis Pearsall's work is amazing enough but her childhood and family shenanigans also makes for an incredible life. Of course the author has taken a liberal dose of creative licence but that makes for a much better read - I'm not one for a stack of dry facts as bedtime reading. If you prefer the bare facts, her own book might be good too.

Thank you Miss Pearsall for providing me with the bible for all those lovely jaunts on foot, bus and tube across London.

Thank you too for all those times we got lost together - my dog-eared A-Z sliding off the passenger seat and gout of reach as I drove around a corner distracted and lost in a new London suburb. Good times indeed - who needs a GPS?

The map obsession...

The nice thing about blog hopping is the lovely things you find on Etsy without actually having to spend hours searching the site. It's too hard for a lazy shopper like me.

This will be be perfect for my littlest boy's room - he's not a William but Sweet Prints will make it just for him.

It's cute but not too cute. After all he's nearly two and about to grow out of the baby stuff.

Janette has some other lovely things she blogs about.

Maybe I should ease up on the map obsession and we'll stay put for a while?

All mapped out

God bless google and its online street maps but they are simply not up to the real thing... an antique map, a creased city guide on a weekend trip or the thick bound atlas on the newsroom's foreign desk.

That creamy paper in your hands, those gorgeous faded colours and lightly drawn contour lines. Endlessly fascinating. Full of places you'd love to go back to, those you'd forgotten existed and the ones you can't quite place. To the right of Afghanistan or below?

A little while ago on the covetable Velvet and Linen blog I found this beautiful room that California designers Brooke and Steve Gianetti put together for a client.

They created a map room complete with room for lounging and planning the family's next trip. The maps have been framed without glass so the client's children can use pins and mark where they'd been. Love it.

Love too the thought of a house with an office, playroom, garden room, television room AND map room. Cancel the en suite I want one of these.

We've collected a few maps over the years - the favourite is the London A-Z. We lived in London in the pre-iPhone age (the five year old calls it the Olden Days which is enough to give me another wrinkle). A tatty A-Z lived in the handbag, another in the car and a few littered the house. When I shared a house there was a poster version on the kitchen wall - it was always a conversation starter.

You can buy your own poster on the A-Z website, have one custom made or get an A-Z application for your iPhone.

Ours has waited five years for a wall. Now it's going in a frame and I can stroll the streets of my favourite city.