Elliot Park: “Why would you want to create a relief map you can’t touch?”

Very Expensive Maps

Columbia designer, illustrator, artisan and country songwriter Elliot Park on his ten year quest to hydraulically press a good map into good materials. Discussed: the lack of texture in today’s stuff, moving from DEM to CNC to a big beautiful copper/leather map, learning by (expensive) trial, the quest for a leather globe, and the challenge of creating lasting art that’s meant to be touched. See his leather and copper maps at columbiapressworks.com

• 25x60" pressed leather elevation map of Tennessee
• 32x42" pressed copper map of NYC
• Columbia Machine Works: get your own 520-ton hydraulic press
• Bellerby & Co. hand-painted globes
• Carved Earth: hand-carved physiographic globes
• The Lord of Maps
• The Mediaeval Mapmaker
• My hand-lettered map of the Tongass National Forest

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