A Map of Duke of York Square

Here’s a beautiful hand-drawn map by Camilla Charnock, who was commissioned to draw it for a new retail development at Sloane Square in west London.

I am very enthusiastic about developers commissioning attractive and original maps to promote their developments, it’s so much nicer to see something unique as opposed to a simple online map or an edited Google Map – nothing wrong with these per se, but a bespoke map suggests a genuine passion in setting a new development in its place. This particular graphic appears on the construction hoarding for the project (Duke of York Square, by Cadogan Estates).

We’ve previously featured a Camilla Charnock work before – Carte Blanc, a map of restaurants in an up-market chain. Like that piece, this map includes lots of attractive adornments – a dinosaur skeleton for the Natural History Museum, a Chelsea Pensioner and a dalmatian dog (below). The main streets are shown, along with tube stations. Trees and flowers further soften the map. The development itself, shown in a blown-up section, includes the various retail units in pastel colours with symbols for the shopping types, and a few further adornments. Note that, rather unusually, the map is orientated so that upwards is eastwards.

Thanks to Camilla for carefully photographing her artwork, joining the pieces together and sending them in.