The Vineyard Island - 1/50,000

[Kishkindha]

Hand-drawn 1/50,000 scale imaginary map imitating the style of the 1922 type topographic map of France (as often…)


As often, it is on a poem by my friend Philippe Despeysses, which verses are reproduced in the toponymy. The poem is a kind of marine painting which describes the birth of the landscape in/through the gaze of the poet, with very simple words but endowed with a great evocative power.


One of the advantages the typographical hierarchies of the toponymy imply is to allow a deconstruction of the poem which can reveal an underlying meaning that is a priori unsuspected. This is how I discovered this poem perhaps was speaking about the relationship to alcohol…

Of course, the island in the southern half of the map has a beautiful vineyard in its heart.

The city in the north-east corner of the sheet is a portrait of Philippe, but this is also a “real” imaginary metropolis with everything one could expect in such an entity.