A rare pair of reverse-printed zograscope maps, published in Germany c.1830 depicting imaginary “Coffee Land” & “Land of Dancing”.

Maps of Caffee-Land (Coffee Land) & Tanz Meer (The Sea of Dancing)

1. Das Caffee-Land für Herren und Damen. / 2. [Tanz Meer]: Könnten fröhlich wir durchs Leben Bei Musik, Scherz und Gesang Arm in Arm hinüber setzweben Bis zum letzten Sondenklang.

Pair of small circular maps. Both trimmed to outer line borders and mounted on old card. Both measure circa 9 cms in diameter and are curiously printed in reverse, possibly an indication that they were to be viewed using a zograscope.

Remarkable and charming pair of early 19^th Century curiosity maps, seemingly from the same as yet unidentified German or Austrian source.

The first of the two maps illustrates the Island realm of Coffee Land, divided between the “Land of Real Coffees” (Land der aechter Caffeen) and the “Land of substitute Coffee” (Land der Surogaten). Real Coffee Land has its capital in Kettle-town (Kesselstadt). Other features include Acorn Coffee (Ersatz) Wood (Eichelcaffee Wald) , and a long Milk Canal dividing the Island in two with its source in the Heiser See (The Hot Lake). Other names on the map elaborate on the Coffee theme. Charming illustrations around the map include, at the bottom, a gathering of ladies and gentlemen enjoying coffee around a table.

Coffee had arrived in Austria & Germany in the late 17th Century, gaining particular popularity in Vienna and in the German region of Saxony. One of the first coffee houses of Vienna was established in 1686 and in Leipzig shortly afterwards in 1694. The Viennese also invented the novel habit of adding milk to their coffee in a break with all previous Arabic and oriental traditions of coffee consumption.

Johann Sebastian Bach, cantor of the church of St Thomas in Leipzig had composed his well-known Coffee Cantata (BWV 211) shortly afterwards, in which the female singer praises the private pleasures & benefits of drinking coffee and secretly hopes to catch a husband who will continue to fund her regular coffee habit.

However, whilst the coffee houses might increasingly become centres of male political and artistic debate, in Germany at least, women were largely banned from the new Coffee Houses. A new social development gained increasing popularity in the 18th and 19th Centuries not just in cities such as Hamburg and Leipzig but across the country as a whole : the Kaffeekränzchen, regular coffee parties held by middle and upper class women in the privacy of their own homes. The parties remained popular giving rise to the late 19th Century term Kaffeeklatsch (literally “coffee gossip”) until in the early 20th Century women finally gained long-sought access to the male-dominated public coffee house.

It may well be one such Kaffeekränzchen that is depicted here. Interestingly the title is quite clear in stating that Coffee Land is for both men and women, perhaps to make just that point.

The second map shows the outline map of a couple, dancing arm in arm, set in the middle Tanz Meer (The Sea of Dancing). Topographical features & settlements are picked out on the bodies and clothes of both figures, with surrounding islands highlighted & marked with wonderfully evocative names such as Pianoforte Island, Strauss Island, Fandango Island and the like. The surrounding script suggests that the happy couple illustrated will dance merrily, arm in arm through their lives amid Dance, Jest and Song, “until the final note is played”.

The two maps are all the more curious in that they are both engraved in exceptional detail in reverse, deliberately so, in the same fashion as 18^th Century vue d’optiques, probably in order to be viewed through an optical chamber, mirror box or zograscope which would flip the image & enlarge it to make it completely legible to the viewer. Their circular format would probably also endorse this suggestion, as the zograscope usually featured a circular enlarging lens.

Given their ephemeral nature, these remain a highly unusual and exceedingly scarce pair of early 19th Century imaginary maps, reflecting the particular social preoccupations and pastimes of the period.

Interestingly we first offered these maps (with one other) in our 2005 Cartographica Curiosa catalogue. They were sold back to us several years later through the trade.

Refs : Roderick M Barron Catalogue 2005/1 Cartographica Curiosa #22