EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Glasgow print, drawn from the real map

55.8611°N / 4.2500°W · United Kingdom

A grid, but a grid with moods. And a motorway that does not go round this city: it runs straight through the middle of it.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Glasgow print
What the map shows

A grid tilted to its river, and a motorway that stops halfway

Look at what the motorway actually does here. It comes up from the south-west, crosses the Clyde, runs north along the west side of the centre, turns east along the top, and then simply leaves. It is a hook, not a ring, and the shape is not an accident of framing: an inner ring road was planned and only its northern and western flanks were built. The south and east sides were never made, so what you see is a road that goes three-quarters of the way round a city and gives up.

Read on

Beneath it, the grid is doing something Edinburgh’s never did. It is not one plan by one hand but a stack of private developments, which is why it tilts to the river in the middle and comes apart at the edges instead of ending cleanly. The lawn pushing to the water in the east is Glasgow Green. The hill of winding paths in the north-east is the Necropolis; it is there, though at this distance it reads as slope rather than mass. And the Clyde itself is less natural than it looks: the channel was deepened by engineering, which is the only reason ships ever reached the city at all.

Compose your own

What suits Glasgow

The palette

Two sandstones share this city, the red of the eastern and southern tenements and the blond of the western terraces. A map has one ink for all its buildings, so you have to choose one of the two, and that choice alone makes the print look like Glasgow rather than any northern city. Our poster takes the blond of the west. Keep the Clyde a dark ribbon. Glasgow Green and the Necropolis cannot take opposite greens, since a map has one ink for all its greenery: their shapes are what set them apart. If you colour the motorway at all, let it cut against everything else: it is a scar, not scenery.

The framing

Vertical, though the city stretches east to west along its river. The portrait works because the motorway hook is the strongest shape on the sheet and it runs corner to corner. Keep the whole curve of the Clyde in frame, since it is the curve that explains why the grid tilts. Come in and you gain the streets at the cost of both parks and, worse, of the open ends of the hook, which is the part that tells you something.

The caption

The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. A street that climbs, a square, a date: that line is what turns a plan of Glasgow into your plan of Glasgow.

The sheet
Subject
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Palette
Giffnock sandstone
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Split top
Typeface
Elegant
Framing
Zoom 12.6
Fade at the edges
0%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Giffnock sandstone

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the city

1751Before the grid, a town with two poles

Medieval Glasgow had no grid at all. It had two centres, the cathedral to the north and Glasgow Cross to the south, with four streets running out from the cross: High Street, Saltmarket, Gallowgate and Trongate. The West Port, the western gate, was pulled down in 1751 as the town prepared to spill past its old plan. That matters for the drawing, because Trongate and Argyle Street became the line everything later was built parallel to. The tilt of the modern grid is a medieval street, still giving orders.

1770The grid was sold, not planned

From the 1770s the landowners around Argyle Street began feuing their ground in lots. Barry’s plan of 1782 set out Queen Street and Buchanan Street towards what became George Square. The Campbells feued the Blythswood estate, four hundred and seventy acres, with rules about street widths, and its hilltop grid was laid out in 1796, imposing right angles on a slope steep enough to make the streets hard work. The rectangular parcels were finally fixed on Gillespie’s plan of 1820. There was no single civic scheme: what looks like one plan is fifty years of separate ones agreeing to line up.

1970The bridge was built, the ring road was not

The Queen Mother opened the Kingston Bridge on 26 June 1970, two hundred and seventy metres long and more than forty wide, and it now carries over 150,000 vehicles a day. It was built as part of an inner ring road, but the southern and eastern sides of that ring were never constructed. The motorway was left alone to carry the crossing of the city centre, which is why the heaviest line on this map has two ends rather than joining up with itself.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Making depends on the edition: 1 to 3 working days for Fine Art paper and wooden hangers, 3 days for the poster and the mounted frame, 3 to 5 days for the framed canvas. Transit depends on the country:

Delivered toIn transitIn total
European Union5 to 7 working days6 to 12 working days
United Kingdom2 to 3 working days3 to 8 working days
United States4 to 6 working days5 to 11 working days
CanadaNational deliveryGiven at dispatch
AustraliaNational deliveryGiven at dispatch

These are standard delivery times and remain indicative. For a set date, order two to three weeks ahead.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece can be downloaded from your account as soon as you order, and an email lets you know the moment it is ready.

All the questions

Your Glasgow

The street you climbed with the shopping, the side of the motorway you lived on, the corner of the Green you cut across. The river is the same for everyone. Which side of the scar you grew up on is not.

Compose my Glasgow print