This 32-page manuscript notebook, dated to the second half of the eighteenth century, is an instruction manual on the systematic use of color in mapmaking. Though the writer and exact date of publication are unknown, it is assumed that the writer was a master mapmaker and that this notebook was meant to be distributed to students who were learning how to make maps. An English translation of the notebook is published in "Coloring Manuscript Maps in the Eighteenth Century," Clements Library Occasional Bulletin 4 (January 2017): 5-11.
The writer begins by explaining the process that one should follow when preparing and using colors for a map. After the writer explains how to mix colors, they offer detailed notes about the use of eight main colors; a palette of those colors is found on page three of the manuscript. Throughout the rest of the manuscript, the writer explains how to mix colors and correctly render features like cultivated lands, meadows, pastures, woods, vineyards, mountains, trees, hedges, rocks, quarries, sand, and rivers. Interspersed throughout the manuscript is the writer's observations about common mapmaking mistakes and diagrams illustrating different techniques.
"The challenge for any large-scale mapmaker . . . is the rendering of landscape and showing the nature of the land—its variety and its three-dimensionality—in a way that can be easily read without the use of words. To achieve such readability, the mapmaker relied on line and color to define, enhance, and identify elements of landscape and to add a layer of meaning to the drawn outline. In the eighteenth century the role of color was particularly important on manuscript maps, which were the common medium for property surveys, engineering projects, and military maps. Color on these manuscript maps is neither random nor whimsical as such maps were created for a particular purpose. As delineations of extent and descriptions of ownership, property surveys could become legal documents; engineering plans focused on new building or renovation of existing structures; military maps were designed to document past or existing situations and to plan for new campaigns. In the same way, manuscript maps were used for administrative purposes—to identify, to plan, to project. Within the contexts of these different types of mapping activity, color was used to highlight and identify landscape; to denote architectural features and/or ownership; to convey plans for alteration through new building, remodeling, or destruction." (Mary Sponberg Pedley, "An Introduction to the Translations" in Clements Library Occasional Bulletin 4, January 2017: 3)
