Cartography in the sixteenth century was an art born from the marriage of conquest and commerce as thousands of ships sailed from Sevilla and Cádiz to the New World.

Captain and crew spun an astrolabe to catch the stars’ bearing as the waves broke over the bow in an attempt to accurately record their position for the benefit of future expeditions.

With a cross and a compass they traced the borders of Empire in their ships’ logs, following a royal command to produce maps for La Casa de la Contratación in Sevilla, headquarters of trade and exploration for what would become known as Las Americas.  Established by Columbus’ patron Queen Isabella in 1503,  the House of Trade’s most valuable asset and the country’s biggest state secret was El Padrón Real, a continuously annotated master chart of the newly discovered paths that crisscrossed the infinite blue to El Nuevo Mundo in a great maritime web.

By candlelight the mapmakers scaled spindrift into latitude and translated the treason of tides into gold leaf.

This was the age of cherubs with cheeks full of wind that blew painted ships across a vellum sea…

To celebrate the Art of Mapmaking, I commissioned Mariana to create a pattern inspired by a Portolan chart threaded with rhumb lines and starred with a compass rose.