Hard to ask when you don't know the terms. Little round pictures in maps.

[BordersoftheRealm]

Hi, all.

Please bear with me. Though I like drawing maps, I am not a trained cartographer. But I do have a question, and it's hard to ask when you don't know the vocabulary.

Say you've got a map of a city, like an old map of London. And around the border of the map, you have little round or square windows or medallions with pictures of some highlights of the city, say Tower Bridge or The Crystal Palace.

What kind of map is that? Is there even a term for that? And what are those little pictures called?

Basically, if I wanted to do a Google image search to see examples for inspiration or style cues, what terms should I be using?

"map with little pictures on it" didn't yield any results, you know what I mean?

Thanks in advance.

G

[Greason Wolfe]

Try searching for "map inset" as that sounds like what you are asking about.

[Tiana]

Nameplate.
Coat of Arms.
Frame.
Illustrative inset.
Woodcut.

Lots of phrases you can use, but I don't think it has a 'name', they're just insets with illustrations.

You would be better off going to a historical archive than punching in keywords, I think, as many of the best archives are badly tagged, if at all. Enjoy this fine collection, for example. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

[BordersoftheRealm]

Nameplate.
Coat of Arms.
Frame.
Illustrative inset.
Woodcut.

Lots of phrases you can use, but I don't think it has a 'name', they're just insets with illustrations.

You would be better off going to a historical archive than punching in keywords, I think, as many of the best archives are badly tagged, if at all. Enjoy this fine collection, for example. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

Sweet! I found this, more or less exactly what I meant, in the first minute of searching:

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/...8-00505686a51c

[Redrobes]

This came up as a question a while back and I found that it was known as Marginalia. That includes all of the scale, legend and other items on a map but encompasses all of the pictures and border items too. Maybe there is a specific term just for the images which narrows it even further. Certainly hardly anyone actually calls it marginalia so I think a map pictorial insert is a good bet. Your right in that it is hard to search for when the term is so undefined.

[BordersoftheRealm]

Thank you, everyone.

I truly appreciate all the assistance.

Great group.