Others are topical, such as patriotic maps published during World War II showing the European and Pacific theaters of war. Maps such as World Wonders deal with past history, showing important sites of human civilization worldwide. He also produced continental maps of North America, South America, and Europe, and a few of European countries. He made two different maps of the United States, one of them entitled America, The Wonderland. Various companies also published his maps in the 1950s and 1960s, and his third wife, Clara Katrina Holland Chase, produced a popular map of Cape Cod, published by Trina Publishing or the Atlantic Card Company.Ī large number of Chase’s maps depict his native New England, especially locales in Massachusetts. Chase began drawing maps at age 49, which he self-published from his home in Winchester, Massachusetts, principally in the 1930s and 1940s. An avid traveler, he took numerous trips in the U.S. He authored The Romance of Greeting Cards, the first complete history of the medium, published in 1926, with a revised edition in 1956. He subsequently served in several managerial positions there until his retirement in 1958. He established his own greeting card company, which he sold to Rust Craft Publishers in 1920. The biographical pamphlet A Meticulous Maker of Maps describes Chase’s “passion for perfection,” executing the detailed pictures under a magnifying glass “dot by dot, with tiny pens.”Ĭhase was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and began his career as a graphic artist. As works of graphic art they are finely drawn and composed with a decorative flair. They typically incorporate large numbers of minutely rendered illustrations with explanatory captions that blend a scholarly approach with wit, patriotism, and optimism. Chase’s maps cover a broad range of geographical locations and varied topics including historical and current events, architecture, and technology. 9-10)Ī 1955 edition of this map, printed in different colors and with various modifications, including to the cartouche, is in the Harvard Map Collection (see References below).Įrnest Dudley Chase was one of the most prolific and renowned pictorial map artists of the 20th century, producing about 50 maps published from the 1930s to the 1960s. will be in great demand after the war by our men in the armed forces to show just where they have been, as the illustrations will mean much more than just pictures to them - they were in many of the buildings shown, saw the “points of interest” with their own eyes! (pp. In fact, it is anticipated that many of the Chase maps - such as those for the British Isles, Italy, France, Germany, etc. Thousands of his “Total War” maps have been used to follow the course of our armies and navies abroad. In a biographical pamphlet on Chase published toward the end of World War II, author Tim Thrift asserts that Chase’s battle maps had helped the American public follow the war as it unfolded:
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