Afrikaans Edition of Gill's Map of Sri Lanka

"Landkaart van Ceylon toon aan haar Tee & Ander Nywerhede", Gill, MacDonald

This is a rare Afrikaans edition of Leslie MacDonald Gill's Art-Deco map of Sri Lanka, issued by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board. The radiating sun, striped waves, and superb compass rose are characteristic of this Art-Deco style. The natural resources and industries for which Sri Lanka is known are identified throughout the map, including tea, rubber, coconut, cinnamon. Various types of local animals are also labeled, such as elephants, crocodiles, cobras, and leopards. A 17th century Dutch warship is shown at right, and a Portuguese galleon is shown at left with a note regarding the 1505 landing in Sri Lanka by explorer Lourenço de Almeida. This map was also published in an undated English edition, entitled Ceylon, her Tea and Other Industries, which is more commonly found on the market than this Afrikaans edition. Created as part of a marketing campaign to increase the consumption of tea from Ceylon within the British Empire, it is likely that a limited run of this map was printed in Afrikaans to target the Dutch-originating population of South Africa in the early 1930s.

Leslie MacDonald Gill (1884-1947), more commonly known as MacDonald Gill or Max Gill, was a British artist, architect, graphic designer and cartographer. He is known for his bold, colorful, Art-Deco style in pieces such as his Wonderground map of the London Underground.

References: cf. Rumsey #12060.

Condition: A

A brightly colored example, professionally backed in thin, archival tissue with some minute tears and creases along the edges of the sheet.