EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Stockholm poster, drawn from the real map

59.3293°N / 18.0686°E · Sweden

Water does not border this city, it runs through it. The smallest of its islands sits at the exact middle of the passage: that is where everything began, and the map shows it without saying so.

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 Stockholm poster
What the map shows

Two waters meeting, and an island on the passage

Look first at the width of the waters, then at the place where they touch. To the west, a sheet running off the frame: that is a lake. To the east, another sheet, strewn with islands that multiply the further out you go: that is the sea, and those islands are the beginning of an archipelago. Between the two, a few narrow arms, and set on them a tiny island with a dense weave. Our background makes a single blue of fresh water and salt: the difference is real, it does not show here, and it is for the text to carry it.

Read on

Around that passage, the city spreads over pieces of land that are nothing like one another. To the north, a regular district of straight streets. To the south, one large massive island, nearly as extensive as the rest of the centre put together. To the east, an entirely green island, first of a wooded train running out towards the archipelago. What the map will not give you: the metro, never, and the hydraulic works of the passage, too small to have a shape. Only the arms of water read, which is enough, since they are the subject.

Compose your own

What suits Stockholm

The palette

Water holds nearly half the sheet and it is all one piece: it is your principal colour, and it has to be frank, because the whole drawing depends on the outline of the islands. Then take care with the green, which counts here more than elsewhere: the eastern island and its train are protected and wooded, they make a real mass, and too timid a tone would hand them back to the built fabric. The built fabric itself can stay pale and even: it is the edges that tell the story, not the fills.

The framing

Portrait, the passage in the middle of the sheet with the lake to the left and the sea to the right. The setting is tight: come closer and the central island becomes handsome but the green island to the east leaves; pull back and you gain the archipelago, but the island shrinks to a mark and the subject goes with it. The chosen frame keeps it just legible, with its immediate neighbours. The western shore of the lake, by contrast, can leave at no cost.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of an island, a quay number, the year of a winter: when a city sits on separate pieces, the caption line says which one you were on.

The sheet
Subject
Stockholm, Sweden
Palette
Enduit de Stockholm
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Classic
Typeface
Modern
Framing
Zoom 11.8
Fade at the edges
10%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Enduit de Stockholm

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

1252The name appears on a document

Stockholm is mentioned for the first time in 1252, in a document signed by Birger Jarl. A fortified merchant town was then growing on Stadsholmen, the island you can see at the middle of the passage, at the crossing of the trade routes by land and by sea. To hold that island was to hold the one point where the lake and the sea communicate: the city did not choose a pleasant site, it chose a lock.

1602The present centre was a separate town

Norrmalm, today the central district north of the passage, was a town in its own right between 1602 and 1635, under the name Norre Forstaden. By around 1580 the suburbs already housed a quarter of the inhabitants. What you take for a single centre is therefore an assembly, and the map keeps the record of it: the weaves do not join up from one island to the next, they sit side by side.

1995The world's first urban national park

The ensemble running from Ulriksdal to Djurgården and Fjäderholmarna was designated in 1995 the world's first urban national park: twenty-seven square kilometres protected under the Swedish environmental code. That is what explains the green island to the east and the train that continues it. The green on this print is not a scrap of countryside the city caught up with, it is a legal status.

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?

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.

All the questions

Your Stockholm

The bridge you had to take, the island you lived on, the boat that leaves for the islets. The passage is the same for everyone. The shore you came home to is not.

Compose my Stockholm poster