There are many maps I have a fable for, but this one is unquestionably the most graceful:
'A Burmese Map of the World, showing traces of Mediaeval European Map-making' (17th Century)
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From 'The Thirty-Seven Nats — A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma' by William Griggs, chromo-lithographer to the king (London, 1906)
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Another map I really hold dear is 'Squirrels highways' by Denis Wood.
'Nervous squirrels, afraid of an attack on the ground, use the phone and television cables as highways wherever the tree canopy’s broken' (From D. Wood's 'Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas', 2010)
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Maps drawn in the sand by Tuareg herders from the Sahel region, put on paper by Tuareg informants and modified for publication by French geographer Edmond Bemus
(from Edmond Bemus, 'La représentation de l'espace chez des Touaregs du Sahel', in 'Mappemonde' 1988/3)
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Ferdinando Marsigli's gorgeous 'Mappa Metallographica' (1726).
Drawing of the mining town of Banská Štiavnica, published in the 'Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus' (1726) by Italian naturalist Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730).
It's worth zooming in...
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And these are the most charmingly deviceful maps I have ever seen:
Greenland Inuit tactile maps carved out of driftwood
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Kind of analogic navigation system...
Hand held rotating color map of New York (1923) in black metal box 17x11, 4 cm. deep. in 13 sections, with window to display map sections
I can never forget the story of a person that bought a huge folder of map sections at a St Louis GoodWill. They later put the pieces together and discovered it to be a very old priceless map of Paris that was the first map to show lat/long.
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