Here be dragons: in celebration of illustrated maps

Do you ever wish you hadn't googled something (apart, of course, from anything medical)? - Well, I wish I hadn't googled the phrase "here be dragons"... I have been thinking a lot about maps, illustrated and otherwise, recently - and started thinking about all those maps bearing this phrase. I used to love the image that it conjured up, of medieval cartographers (in my mind they are illuminating - and illuminated - monks, with a proper sense of the absurd), diligently delineating the known world, and then reaching the end of their knowledge and inserting a jaunty dragon. Imagine being so bound up in accurately recording something for posterity and then being forced to go no further. "Here be dragons" in my mind became a symbol for the terror, and the rich mytholgical possibilities, of the unknown: just as the pillars of Hercules at the gates of the Mediterranean bore the injunction non plus ultra, to warn adventurous sailors to go no further - a literal warning that beyond the plillars lay "nothing" itself - so hic sunt dracones served as an exhortation to cast one's mind no further beyond the limits of knowledge.

To me, they made maps more than just a physical geographical guide, but turned them into something which both told a story (and I've always loved a story), and acted as a guide to the limits and navigation of knowledge. They also seemed to confirm the analogy between physical and mental exploration.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I tried to find some maps bearing this phrase to rekindle my imagination and discovered that it only exists on one map - and that that map is actually a globe (the Hunt Lenox globe - a tiny little sixteenth-century globe that is now in the collection of the New York public library). If you look below, you will see that the dragons appear to live on the south-east Indian sub-continent - and that the coast is pretty well delineated. So much for the limits and possibilties of knowledge - my monks probably just didn't know how to spell Pondicherry....

Nevermind - my love of maps that tell stories remains (mind maps not included - they do not tell a story), as does my fascination with Grayson Perry's map etchings. He doesn't always call them maps, but that is absolutely what they seem to be. They may not be a map of a recognisable place, and they may be full of judgement-laden labels as to population and perversion, but maps they nevertheless are (and I have seen more than my fair share of judgement-laden colonial maps).

Animal Art

As I may have already mentioned, I love animal art. I am sure that there is a lot that can be said about what this means, anthropomorphism, the projecting of emotions onto animals, and seeing some answering emotion there (Grizzly Man anyone?), etc. - but while I mull this over, here are two of my favourites... Edinburghers both.

And - if you're in the market, I should add that I think they are both amazingly cheap- so grab them now, before they realise how good they are...!

Zaza Shelley is something of a Renaissance woman - from lecturing at the National Gallery, coming up with some very lovely, very funny cards, to creating utterly adorable teacup jewellery, and making the most beautiful Christmas decorations you've ever seen, she does it all. But mostly what she does is draw and paint like heaven... (and my reproductions of her images do her no justice - go to her wesbite to see them properly: http://www.zazashelley.com/)

Hares are a new obsession of mine - joining the pre-existing bird obession.

Caroline Hepburne Scott is from the Borders, although she now lives in Edinburgh (and is currently travelling in South America). She has the most amazing draughtsmanship which enables her to capture her subjects in an extraordinary way. Look and wonder....

As well as through her own website, Caroline's work can also be found on Caroline Hay's Art Amatoria.

Dogs etc. - Domenica More Gordon

I have always been an unashamed dog lover (the unashamedness becoming a little more pronounced - and the Kirstie Alsopp fan-dom, becoming a little more intense - in my early post-university days, upon reading this Observer article about Kirstie's misspent Bedales-youth: "Kirstie wore velvet hairbands and kilts and Puffa bodywarmers, when everyone else wore ripped jeans and DMs and grandad overcoats. She had framed pictures of domestic pets on her bedside locker, and liked mum music...Elkie Brookes, Neil Diamond" - how could you not love her?!) - and yet I have NEVER been one of those people who invests time and energy in pet-related artefacts. Soppy paintings of dogs staring lovingly into the eyes of little blue-eyed, ringletted Violet Elizabeth Botts have always left me cold, as have dog-portraits as accessories and, if I'm honest, most dog portaiture. This is my idea of decorative hell.

For some reason, though, I just can't get enough of Domenica More Gordon's dogs. They are the antidote to sentimental animal kitsch - partly because they don't seem to be trying to be anything else. They are individual, idiosyncratic, bizarrely realistic - and utterly sweet. I want them all - they make me want to stage my own little Crufts, in my own little pint-sized NEC. I can make them jump over match-stick hurdles, while pretending I'm Claire Balding.... but I digress.

Domenica More Gordon is from East Lothian and lives in Inveresk. She is the daughter of Harry More Gordon (watercolourist, owner of the most elegant studio I have ever seen, and landlord to Clarissa Dickson Wright - and he and Domenica are both included in her memoirs, Spilling the Beans and Rifling Through my Drawers). She studied textiles at Central St. Martins (following in the footsteps of her textile-designer mother) and over the last few years has been taking the art world by storm with her miniature felted dogs - the excitement culiminating in a Dog Sale at the end of 2011, in which the successful puchasers were chosen from a "well-shaken" hat.