An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland – Bernard Sleigh
An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland
An idyllic fantastical fairyland created by Bernard Sleigh at the end of the Great War and which then stood in sharp juxtaposition to bomb-blasted Europe.
An extraordinary 5-foot-long presentation edition of Bernard Sleigh’s 1918 fantastical map of Fairy Land. This incredible map offers a wide panorama view of the island of ‘Fairy Land’ which it describes as ‘newly discovered and set forth’. Fairy Land, as set forth by Sleigh, is a magical place full of European fairy tales, literature, and Greek mythology. One can travel from King Arthur’s Tomb to Peter Pan’s House to the ‘Bay of Moaning,’ or the visit the roost of Dragons, watch Perseus save Andromeda, chat with Hercules, or visit the ‘Harbor of Dreamland.’ A red line indicates the route of passage ‘From the World’ to ‘a place that never was and always will be.’
As pointed out by map historian Tim Bryars, this map was originally printed in 1918, the final year of World War I. It’s thought that the map represents a yearning for a return to pre-1914 Edwardian innocence. Compared with the devastated, bomb-blasted landscape of northern France, this vision of a make-believe land may have seemed a seductive escape for a European society bearing the psychological and physical scars of mass conflict.
Sleigh was a close associate of Robert Morris and this map clearly follows Arts and Crafts Movement ideology. The typeface and decoration are very much in the style of Morris’s Kelmscott Press and its embrace of tradition pre-industrial ear production techniques.
CARTOGRAPHER
Bernard Sleigh (1852 – 1954) was a British author, muralist, stained-glass artist, illustrator and wood engraver active in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was born in Birmingham, England and studied at the Birmingham School of art. He was a student of Arthur Gaskin. His work is deeply influenced by his early association with William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists between 1923 and 1928. His most famous cartographic work is An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth, published at the end of the Great War or World War I. He also published several less well known maps of Birmingham and other parts of England. Sleigh retired to Chipping Campden in 1937. For those who are unacquainted with ‘Chipping Campden’ or ‘Chippy,’ in the heart of England’s picturesque Cotswolds, it is a place that seems more akin to ‘Fairy Land’ than to the modern industrial world.
