38.9067°N / 1.4206°E · Spain
A bay open due south takes half the sheet. On its edge, a headland carries a knot of streets far tighter than anything around it: you will recognise the upper town by its weave before anything else.
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.
The creek of the harbour is the first thing to follow. It comes in from the north-east, narrows, and closes behind a headland; that headland carries Dalt Vila, the upper town, whose weave is so dense that it makes a stain in the middle of an otherwise loose city. West and north, the streets spread into regular subdivisions; to the south-west a long pale band crosses the countryside, the airport runway. The eastern edge of the bay cuts into a run of small coves, and the coast falls away in an arc to the bottom of the sheet.
What the map does not show is worth the detour, because it is what brought the first inhabitants here. South of the airport lie salt pans, worked since Phoenician times, the largest wetland on the island. On this sheet they are not water: the background does not know those basins and renders the whole area as one pale mass. Salt made this town, and the map turns it green. The Renaissance walls do not draw either: no layer knows fortifications, and it is the density of the streets, not their edge, that gives the upper town away.
The sea takes half the sheet and there is no other mass: everything turns on it. A deep water ink gives a blunt print in which the town is only a pale border; a paler one gives you the bay and lets the town breathe. Both work, but they do not tell the same story. Then keep a slightly denser value for the built fabric, or the upper town will not stand apart from the rest, and the upper town is the subject. The pale zone in the south will stay pale whatever you do: it is not water.
Portrait, the town in the upper third and the bay below it, with the whole creek of the harbour inside. This is a print that accepts emptiness: the lower half is sea, and you should not try to fill it by pulling back, because you would lose the weave of the upper town, which only reads at this distance. To the south-west, the airport runway gives a long pale diagonal worth keeping: it is the one straight line on the sheet.
The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of a cove, a mooring number, the year of a first summer: on a half-empty map, one line carries the whole story.
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.
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.
The island's first Phoenician settlement, Sa Caleta, dates from the eighth century BC. Early in the sixth its inhabitants abandoned it and settled on the site the upper town occupies today, in the bay. That move is the only decision that matters on this map: everything built that you can see descends from a choice of anchorage made two thousand six hundred years ago.
The fortifications of the upper town were raised between 1554 and 1585 by two Italian engineers, Giovanni Battista Calvi and Jacobo Paleazzo Fratin. That bastioned model went on to serve the Spanish strongholds of the Americas. No layer of our background knows city walls: on the print, the enceinte exists only through what it contained, a block of streets tighter than anywhere else.
The salt ponds south of the town have been worked since Phoenician times and form the largest wetland on the island. They have been protected since 2001 within the natural park of ses Salines d'Eivissa i Formentera. It is the resource that fixed the first inhabitants here, and it is now the only thing on this sheet that has been put beyond the reach of a decision.
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.
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.
Four, from the barest to the most dressed.
Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.
Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.
The cove you always came back to, the lane that climbs steeper than the others, the stretch of quay where you wait for the boat. The bay is the same for everyone. The edge you looked at it from is not.
Compose my Ibiza poster
