Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.***If you ever paused to wonder which airline had the most extravagantly illustrated, whimsical-yet-elegant advertising posters in the middle part of the 20th century, you probably paused for exactly two seconds before guessing Air France.Rumsey Map CollectionSure enough, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Air France produced some of the most striking route maps in the history of aviation.Rumsey Map CollectionWhether featuring celestial constellations or elephants and architecture, these maps were all the work of a single exceptional illustrator named Lucien Boucher.Rumsey Map CollectionLooking back over Boucher’s career and collected output — I assume he would have called it his oeuvre — it’s hard to do more than just marvel. But Boucher’s work also raises a number of questions, the answers to none of which will surprise you at all.For example, did Boucher have a fantastically French nickname?That would be Monsieur Planisphere.Were his maps also reprinted as silk scarves?Rumsey Map CollectionAnd ashtrays for the exclusive use of passengers flying first class?Rumsey Map CollectionWhen he wasn’t making Air France maps, did Boucher at some point illustrate a hand-made atlas for a centuries-old perfume company so exclusive it referred to itself as a “fragrance house?”Rumsey Map CollectionAnd draw a fantasy tourist map depicting the Land of Love?Rumsey Map CollectionThis guy could probably even make an advertisement for some industrially mined chemical like potash look good, couldn’t he?Rumsey Map CollectionSo, he really enjoyed drawing insanely whimsical sea monsters, huh?Rumsey Map Collection, excerpt 1 and 2.And I get the feeling that, if you look closely enough,
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Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.***If you ever paused to wonder which airline had the most extravagantly illustrated, whimsical-yet-elegant advertising posters in the middle part of the 20th century, you probably paused for exactly two seconds before guessing Air France.Rumsey Map CollectionSure enough, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Air France produced some of the most striking
