53.4072°N / 2.9917°W · United Kingdom
Liverpool reads first as a front, backed onto the Mersey. And in front of it, an estuary that keeps its full width all the way to the Wirral.
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 repetition is the motif, and there is nothing else quite like it at this scale: basin after basin, each one squared off, together drawing a serrated edge where other cities have a shoreline. The estuary is the second subject, and it is deliberately given room. Across it lies Birkenhead with docks of its own, so the two banks answer each other. Look for a bridge and you will not find one: the crossings are underneath.
Two honest notes. The comb is not continuous along its whole length. It is dense to the north and thins out to the south, where several basins were filled in and built over, so the ribbon you see is the surviving part of something that once ran seven miles. And the Albert Dock, opened by Prince Albert in 1846 as the first fireproof warehouse system in the world, built of iron, brick, stone and granite with no timber frame, sits within this comb rather than apart from it: today it is the largest group of Grade I listed buildings in the United Kingdom, but on a map it is one rectangle among many.
The main contrast here is not land against sea but city against estuary, so give the water real weight: a grey-green holds the Mersey better than a frank blue, which would make it look like a lake. Treat the basins as dark, tight, regular hollows, because their rhythm is what the eye follows. The built fabric takes a brick tone, rust or brown, and the St George’s plateau can stay lighter to give the centre one clear pause.
Vertical, which suits this city better than the wide format its estuary suggests, because the comb of docks runs north to south. Both banks have to stay in: cut the Wirral and the Mersey becomes an ordinary river, and the whole point of the drawing goes with it. Pull in tighter and you gain the basins at the expense of the far bank. Pull back further and you gain more of the ribbon, but the basins stop reading as separate shapes and become a serrated line.
The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. The name of a dock, a street on the hill, a date: that line is what turns a plan of Liverpool into your plan of Liverpool.
King John’s charter of 1207 created the borough, and by around 1300 it held seven streets: Castle Street, Chapel Street, Dale Street, Tithebarn Street, Old Hall Street, Water Street and Juggler Street. They were widened over the centuries but never erased, and all seven are still in the plan of the modern centre, a short H-shaped figure a few hundred metres across. At this framing they are too small to pick out; come closer and they are the oldest thing on the sheet.
In 1715 the town opened the Old Dock, the first commercial enclosed wet dock anywhere, cut into the tidal creek called the Pool that had given the city its name. Every basin in the comb descends from it. The Old Dock itself is not on the map: it was filled in, and its outline now lies beneath the Liverpool One shopping centre. The line of The Strand follows the old shoreline, which means the water once came up to where the traffic runs.
George V opened the Queensway Tunnel on 18 July 1934, after nine years of digging. At 2.1 miles under the Mersey it was the longest road tunnel in the world, running from the centre of Liverpool to Birkenhead. The 1.2 million tonnes of spoil were used to build the Otterspool promenade to the south, so the excavation is still on the map, just not where you would expect it. This is why the estuary on this print is unbroken: the crossings are below it.
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 basin you walked around, the street that drops towards the water, the ferry you took across rather than the tunnel. The estuary is the same for everyone. The bank you watched it from is not.
Compose my Liverpool print
