Road Map of Paris, 1778

The artwork

Bottom right, on the Seine, there is a crescent-shaped harbour marked “la Garre”: a gare, a station, but for boats, and it was never finished. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• Paris in 1778 street by street, coloured by hand, with an index of the streets.
• In the large format it fills the wall of a study or a hallway.
• A gift for anyone who loves Paris and keeps going back.

In 1764 Louis XV decided to move river traffic out of the city, and the architect Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux designed a basin on the plain of Ivry for more than 650 large barges, closed off by a dike. Over 2,000 workers dug it; costs became a bottomless pit, and the Parlement of Paris cancelled the project before the Revolution. The building site left its name to the district, still called the quartier de la Gare today. And the word really does come from the waterways: when the railways arrived, the first stations were called embarcadères.

The rest is Paris before the Revolution: the Bastille still standing beside the Porte Saint-Antoine, eleven years before 14 July 1789; place Louis XV, today place de la Concorde; fields and nurseries at Le Roule and Gros Caillou. It was a map made to be used: down the sides runs an index of every street, and an engraved note explains how to find rue d'Argenteuil by crossing letter e with number 3. Jean Lattré sold it in rue Saint-Jacques; this is the 1778 issue, coloured by hand, from the David Rumsey Map Collection.

In a study, a hallway or a living room, it is Paris to rediscover on foot, street by street: a gift for anyone who loves Paris and keeps going back. And down there on the Seine, the boat station is still waiting for its first departure.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 in)
With frame: 42 x 62 cm (16.5 x 24.4 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass