As Lloyd Brown, in his The Story of Maps, writes: "At the outset, sea charts, by their very nature, were
destined to be removed from the academic realm and from general
circulation. They were much more than an aid to navigation; they
were, in effect, the key to empire, the way to wealth. As such,
their development in the early stages was shrouded in mystery,
for the way to wealth is seldom shared" (Brown 1949, 121). Might
this be the reason that so few portolan charts have survived?
In the beginning portolan charts were created for commerce. Though
their decoration is often spectacular as art, their business was
business.
No doubt thousands of portolan charts were made. But portolan
charts were used at sea. They went down with ships; they got wet
and were damaged; they became outdated and were discarded. One
problem is the material from which they are made: vellum, which
is animal skin prepared for writing. Vellum was expensive and
was not wasted. Sir Thomas Phillipps, the nineteenth-century collector
of all the manuscripts he could get his hands on, found that his
competition included "goldbeaters, glue makers and tailors, all
of whom derived some advantage from the destruction of vellum
manuscripts" (Campbell 1987, 173). Bookbinders used vellum in
binding new books. The combination of reuse, damage, the discarding
of outdated portolan charts, and the utilization of vellum in
other ways help to explain their rarity.
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