EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Hamilton poster, drawn from the real map

43.2557°N / 79.8711°W · Canada

A bay very nearly shut, held by a bar of sand that a single cut crosses. And lower down, a line runs across the sheet that no stroke actually draws: that is where the streets change their logic.

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 Hamilton poster
What the map shows

A bay closed by sand, a city standing on two levels

Start with the bar. It closes the bay from north-east to south-west, thin and continuous, a highway running along it like a spine. Its only interruption is a narrow, perfectly clean line of water: the canal, through which everything that enters must pass. Sand had almost sealed this bay and a cut reopened it: the map tells both in a single image. Along the south shore the street fabric breaks off into a geometry of right angles, wharves and slips pushed out into the water; on the detailed background they become vast sheds, with nothing else like them on the sheet.

Read on

Across the lower third a line runs from edge to edge: above it, tight oblique streets following the shore; below it, very large regular blocks; between the two, only four or five roads make the climb. That is the Niagara Escarpment, the step that gives Hamilton its two levels, the lower city and the Mountain. No relief layer draws it: what you are reading is the street pattern tipping over. You can change the background without losing it.

Compose your own

What suits Hamilton

The palette

Water is the great mass on this sheet, and it takes the upper third: it decides everything else. Keep it deep enough that the sand bar stays legible in negative, and the canal with it. Green draws one precise thing: north-west of the bay, wooded ravines run down to the water in long strips. The woodland on the escarpment, on the other hand, is a band so thin that no ink will turn it into a mass. So the division falls between the water and the line of the streets, with two greys answering each other, one for the lower city and a broader one for the Mountain.

The framing

Portrait, the bay in the upper third and the whole bar inside the sheet, canal included: that is the first thing to protect, and the instinct to centre on the engraved point pushes it off the right-hand edge. The centre is therefore shifted east, which costs the botanical gardens to the west, half out of frame. Leave room at the bottom so the large blocks of the Mountain have time to settle: the step only reads if both patterns get their share.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. A street that climbs the step, a wharf number, the year of a move: that line decides whether the print is about the city or about yours.

The sheet
Subject
Hamilton, Canada
Palette
Cast iron
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Label
Typeface
Elegant
Framing
Zoom 11.0
Fade at the edges
35%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Cast iron

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

1815A farm bought, a town drawn on top of it

In the aftermath of the War of 1812, George Hamilton bought the Durand farm and had a town plan laid out on his land: eighty lots of fifty foot frontage, wide streets, a twelve foot lane behind each block, and a triangular public square where King crosses James. That square, the Gore, is still the centre. The new Gore District made it its seat at once, and the regularity you read in the lower part of the sheet begins exactly there.

1823An act of parliament reopened the bay

An act of Upper Canada authorised cutting a navigable canal through the sand bar that closed Burlington Bay. Dug over the following decade, it gave this water its only opening onto Lake Ontario and made Hamilton a port. It is the shortest stroke on the map and the most consequential: without it the bay would be a closed sheet of water, and the city would have had no reason to line itself up along that shore.

1846Thirteen years a village, then a city

An act of the Province of Canada incorporated Hamilton as a city, after thirteen years as a police village. The region was known then as the Head-of-the-Lake, and the name said what the map still shows: this is the end of the water, the point where Lake Ontario stops and the land steps up.

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 Hamilton

The hill road you took home, the view from the top of the step, the bridge from which the canal shows itself all at once. The two levels are the same for everyone. The one you look from is not.

Compose my Hamilton poster