You don't have to be a stamp collector to appreciate Ernest Dudley Chases' excellent pictorial map. It covers the world in an array of notable and desirable stamps, both on the countries themselves and along the map's edges. In a clever bit of design, the map's border emulates stamp edges, and the borders of individual countries appear to be perforated. The map is filled with facts of interest to the philatelist. A quote from Voltaire highlights the importance of the post, while Franklin D. Roosevelt recommends stamp collecting because "it makes one a better citizen." A cartouche at bottom showcases the Penny Black, the first government-issued adhesive postage stamp. The decorative compass rose incorporates four portraits (of Louis Pasteur, Henry Morton Stanley, George Washington, and Simon Bolivar) and an image of the "World's Rarest Stamp," a one-cent magenta from British Guiana in 1856 with only a single known copy. The title cartouche at top right features images of an ocean liner, hot air balloon, airplane, blimp, and train. Designed and drawn by Ernest Dudley Chase (1878-1966), one of the leading figures in pictorial mapmaking during the middle 20th century. During the 1940s and 50s, Chase designed a series of maps with a postage stamp theme. As Hornsby writes in his Picturing America, "Although stamps frequently show images of countries, conjuring up thoughts of geography and travel, Chase was perhaps the first mapmaker to explore this connection." The map is similar to Chase's later map The Philatelic Institute's Stamp Map of the World, published in 1959 by the Philatelic Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with minor variations and a different color scheme.

References: Hornsby (Picturing America) pp. 31-34; Rumsey #8095.

Condition: A

A clean and bright example, professionally backed in archival tissue to repair a tear that enters less than 1" into the image at right. There are a few tiny chips and abrasions along the edges of the sheet.