MAPS WITH imagination as well as precision set you free; passports to fly like a bird over the world and land in interesting places. This is the idea behind A Map of the World: According to Illustrators & Storytellers, a cornucopia of playful but always accurate visualisations of different locations around the globe.
A Map of the World: According to Illustrators & Storytellers front cover
Every map chooses a particular way of representing sections of the world and the ones in this book give free rein to cartography for the inquisitive traveller. Visitors to Seattle looking for entertainment and nightlife will head for Capitol Hill and Sarah Robbins has drawn for them a 20-foot map of the vicinity. Side panels indicate what makes the city a primary gateway for the Pacific Northwest, from Vancouver in the north to Portland and Mount St Helens in the south.
A triptych-style map by Sarah Robbins for newcomers to Seattle
Cities with a density of large buildings, like London and New York, can bewilder the newcomer but Katherine Baxter’s craft combines intricate details with lucid presentation skills to make inviting what can feel like pandemonium.
Adam Dant’s hand-coloured map of Manhattan is populated with monochrome caricatures of the communities and kinds of people associated with particular districts.
Carissa Potter, responding to the historical association with witchcraft in the coastal Massachusetts town of Salem, fills her map of the city with dinky, witch-related drawings illustrating the key sights and places of interest (and, thank goodness, without the clichéd broomstick).
Katherine Baxter’s London and New York.
Adam Dant’s New York and Carissa Potter’s map of Salem.
What makes A Map of the World endlessly attractive is the wealth of detail that comes from repeated readings of the maps, the riot of colourful designs and the joyful variety of themes and formats: literary, historical, geological, abstract, culinary, cycling, architectural, geographical …
Remote Places to Stay front cover.
Four pages of maps are from Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands but for near-secret destinations with accommodation Remote Places to Stay is the book that earns a place in your home. It comes with an introduction by Pico Iyer, a seasoned traveller who spent the last day of the last millennium on Easter Island, “the loneliest inhabited place on earth”. The book’s content is compiled by Debbie Pappyn and David De Vleeschauwer.
Their descriptions and the photographs of 22 remote outposts offer compelling reasons for heading off to one of them as soon as possible. ‘Shaped by intense silence, solitude, space, emptiness, secret doors, and pitch black, starry skies’, the hotels are remote in more than just the geographical sense.
The first place shown in the book, HótelBúðir, is next to a lava flow and the Atlantic ocean on a peninsula in West Iceland but high levels of comfort, a bar and cosy restaurant make it an alluring place to get away from it all. If the proximity of glaciers feels too cold, consider Amangiri in a Utah desert surrounded by rocky outcrops of red sandstone. The hotel’s design chimes with the natural architecture of the location by providing constant natural light and bedrooms that look out on the untamed landscape.
HótelBúðir, Snaefellnes, Iceland
Amangiri, a near-secret location in Utah, close to the border with Arizona
There is a similar kind of appeal to Jalman Meadows, a private yurt camp in the middle of Mongolia and a four-hour drive from the Ulaanbaatar, the country’s capital. Situated in a national park, it is an exemplary showcase for low-impact tourism and one that offers a startling contrast with the modern world. The whole camp is set up each May and dismantled in September, leaving its space to the snow and wind of Siberian winters.
Between those months, rest assured, there are creature comforts by way of Western-style beds with camel- or yak-wool blankets, warm showers and French and Spanish wines. Treks and other activities fill the days while the nights are given over to Mongolian cuisine and star-filled skies in what feels like the middle of nowhere.
Jalman Meadows Ger Camp in central Mongolia.
One of my other favourites is Fogo Island Inn, on an isolated island in Canada’s Newfoundland. Every aspect of the design, inside and out, relates to the location and local culture (2,500 Newfoundlanders live on the island): the wooden rocking chairs are from local carpenters; the patchwork quilts from a nearby quilters’ guild; the food from produce found in and around the island.
The hotel’s slogan, Far Away from Far Away, justifies itself fully and it could also serve as a subtitle for this splendid book as a whole.
Fogo Island Inn, Newfoundland, Canada.
Bringing The Hotel Home is a digital book raising funds for the hospitality and tourism industry at a time when an estimated 100 million jobs are losing out to the coronavirus pandemic. It features 35 spectacular hotels, from the glamorous Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the French Riviera to the serene Hoshinoya Kyoto in Japan, and each hotel provides material like original recipes and design ideas.
Interviews with esteemed hoteliers, like Luke Bailes of Singita and Marie-Louise Sciò of Hotel Il Pellicano, and award-winning designers André Fu and Bill Bensley contribute to the appeal of this most worthy endeavour.
by Sean Sheehan