Cartographers have used color for various purposes, ranging from aesthetic to symbolic to informational. Early mapmakers and colorists added color by hand using watercolor techniques. While a variety of colorants were used, the most available pigments produced shades of green, red, yellow, and blue. With the invention of lithography, adding color became part of the printing process and was increasingly used as a method to communicate information such as regional divisions.
Hendrik Hondius
Virginiae Item et Floridae Americae Provinciarum, Nova Description
Amsterdam: Hondius and Johnson, ca. 1636
This Latin edition copper-engraved hand-colored map draws on two cartographic sources from the late 1500s: Jacques Le Moyne’s map of Florida and John White’s map of Virginia and Carolina, both of which were published by Theodore de Bry in the 1590s. The map depicts the southeastern coastline of North America from St. Augustine to the Chesapeake Bay. Although considered the most important map of the region until John Ogilby’s “Description of Carolina,” ca. 1671, Hondius’s map created geographical misconceptions of the region which lasted for nearly 150 years.
The map is embellished with illustrations of Indigenous people, wild game, sea monsters, sailing ships, and other attractive decorative elements. The cartouches include depictions of Indigenous Florida and Virginia villages. These decorative features and the addition of color made this map very desirable to the public.
North Carolina Collection Gallery
Henry Schenck Tanner
A New Map of Nth. Carolina With its Canals, Roads, & Distances from Place to Place, Along the Stage & Steam Boat Routes
Philadelphia: Henry S. Turner, ca. 1849
By the middle of the 1800s, North Carolina's infrastructure had grown to include rail networks, canal systems, and stage routes. Maps became even more desirable by a rapidly growing population moving west. This map was reissued in editions of the New Universal Atlas from 1859 to 1863. It changed very little over the years except as new counties were added. Along with noting the canals, roads, and distances, this map features inserts highlighting the major port region around New Bern, N.C., and the Gold Region, the site of the North Carolina Gold Rush of 1799-1849.
North Carolina Collection
The four-color map theorem states that no more than four shades are required to tint the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. This mathematical conjecture emerged in the mid-1800s and was confirmed in 1976 as the first major theorem proven using a computer.