Following looking through the Henderson Bull archive in the County Record office, I noticed some incomplete plans.

It turns out that Henderson Bull (a noted mining cartographer) had his collection stored at the CSM. The whole lot was donated to the CRO in the mid 50s. Whilst they were bundling the plans, it appears that some quite vintage student's plans were also included and these demonstrated varied degrees of skill and completion. My attention was taken by a plan of South Terras which was complete, bar the title. This was laid out as a matrix of pencil lines which had been carefully measured. It offered an insight into how the title was created.

I have been getting better acquainted with GIS recently and it is possible to produce exceedingly good quality maps with very little talent. There is something empty about this process and I've decided that I'd like to study and attempt to create some classic plans of my own.

I am interested in locating and studying some classic texts on the matter. It is in this area that I would benefit in help separating the wheat from the chaff. It appears the internet is full of people who like to create maps for their ridiculous computer games! I would like to know, if I was Henderson Bull and about to embark on a career of making outstanding additions to the mining records office, what books I'd need to have a go at.

I am already aware/tooled for the surveying/plotting dimension, I'm more concerned with the flair and the art and the skills which make an old plan special.

I am very much an art luddite and have about as much of a flair for art as Steven Hawking.

Presumably you are thinking about the flamboyant titling with flourishes and script lettering like royal signatures on significant documents?
I suspect there was a bit of competition between draughtsmen to create the best looking one. Or because they weren't allowed to put little additions like Here Be Dragons along with a picture of a dragon!
I'm sure there are publications on the subject but it is a wee bit detailed, try searching 'map cartouches' on t'interweb

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Not sure if I have interpreted the post correctly but if you want the classic old look to your plans/drawings then you don't need any artistic flare, just cut and paste or copy someone else's original ideas as it were.

If you want it to look original then you could do it modern style with a choice of modern fonts etc then date and sign it, you could also draw some illustrative pictures/drawings within the plan that are relative to it if need be.

To me art is about originality.

Lozz.

gNick, you are on the ball. I could have been much more concise!

The idea is being able to produce a plan from first principles in it's entirety. No scanners, no rasters, no vectors and no printers, just paper, pen, brush, etc.

I have been clarifying bits of my archive by taking better photos of the stuff at the record office. After a while, patterns start to emerge and there are clear "families" of plans produced by individual cartographers.

The East Pool plans are a bit OTT in that the chap has done the most ridiculous embellishment of the title which includes a globe and some naked nymph things with bows and arrows.

Later on in the 19th century, things became slightly more formalised with actual fonts and "typical" edging embellishments.

This seemed to continue until the 40s-ish when plans started looking like proper plans (the sort that come out of a modern day printer, courtesy of CAD).

There was an art to it, but this art was consistent and it's principles must have been outlined. The students of the various mining schools must have learned these techniques as a part of their training. It must have been based on a synthetic process, rather than a deductive one.

A clear reply would be "Well, look at your pictures of plans and figure out how they did it yourself". This leaves out a whole load of potentials which were never realised.

Surveying practice and Mining Geology of that period are documented by several definitive texts. I assume the same is true for cartography/draughtsmanship.

It's always a better idea to consult the rabble first, rather than embarking on climbing the mountain of information there is on the subject. Amazon is buried under literally tens of thousands of modern cartography books and there is no way of sorting them, apart from grinding through the whole lot page by page.

....This seemed to continue until the 40s-ish when plans started looking like proper plans....

....There was an art to it, but this art was consistent and it's principles must have been outlined. The students of the various mining schools must have learned these techniques as a part of their training....

....Surveying practice and Mining Geology of that period are documented by several definitive texts. I assume the same is true for cartography/draughtsmanship....

I think you're on the right track there.

I'd agree there was a change 1940's onward, with stencilled titles and lettering appearing. Not sure when the "Rotring" pen came into general use - something else to Google!

Don't limit yourself to mining - I think all draughtsmen and engineers were taught drawing and lettering to a high standard. I think the artistic bit was left to the individual, as long as it was clear. As you mention, corners to the border give an opportunity to "express oneself" with what I think is called a Greek Key - also seen in the lining on old buses and shop fronts etc. North points can also be very elaborate.

I have a couple of old books on draughtsmanship, not to hand at the moment, but they're probably more recent than what you're looking at. Also most of the older surveying books will have a chapter on drawing. Perhaps you already have a collection of old books you could look through?

Have fun, the dark evenings are nearly here!

I might be wrong but wasn't there a British Standard for hand lettering which might explain why many post 1940s plans look similar.

Try Sopwith, Treatise on Isometrical Drawing, as Applicable to Geological and Mining Plans

http://books.google.de/books?id=ClVkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=sopwith+mine+plans&source=bl&ots=vlHgRh3uIV&sig=uJQtgUEi9B4lZuFbd_b3Z1e3QC4&hl=de&sa=X&ei=-m0HVKnJIaT5yQOJj4G4BA&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=sopwith%20mine%20plans&f=false 

As a mining engineer who was trained in the noble art of surveying in the 1970's, I was very glad of stencils and Lettraset because the best I can do artistically was stick men.

This summer we have been to Slovenia looking at mines and some of the plans there were a pure art form. I agree that there seems to have been some sort of competition as to who could embellish their plans the best!

I suspect that the first thing you have to acquire is a good pen-knife, then catch your goose and pluck the quills? ::)

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I might be wrong but wasn't there a British Standard for hand lettering which might explain why many post 1940s plans look similar.

Or the all pervading influence of the NCB.

I might be wrong but wasn't there a British Standard for hand lettering which might explain why many post 1940s plans look similar.

Or the all pervading influence of the NCB.

Are you sure about that? I think hard rock mines where thought as more Quarries than collieries, NCB had little influence.

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I might be wrong but wasn't there a British Standard for hand lettering which might explain why many post 1940s plans look similar.

Or the all pervading influence of the NCB.

Are you sure about that? I think hard rock mines where thought as more Quarries than collieries, NCB had little influence.

There probably was a BS, but I only remember DIN and ISO standard lettering.

I don't agree there was any difference between quarries, hard rock and coal - a plan is a plan, drawn and lettered using what was available at the time from the arts and graphics shops, to the style the engineers and surveyors were taught in the colleges. That's really irrelevant - the OP was talking about old plans, not stuff from living memory.

I might be wrong but wasn't there a British Standard for hand lettering which might explain why many post 1940s plans look similar.

Or the all pervading influence of the NCB.

Are you sure about that? I think hard rock mines where thought as more Quarries than collieries, NCB had little influence.

There probably was a BS, but I only remember DIN and ISO standard lettering.

I don't agree there was any difference between quarries, hard rock and coal - a plan is a plan, drawn and lettered using what was available at the time from the arts and graphics shops, to the style the engineers and surveyors were taught in the colleges. That's really irrelevant - the OP was talking about old plans, not stuff from living memory.

Don't dissagree with that, just a challenge to Tamarmole's statement that it was due to NCB influence.

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I would say that there was a heavy NCB influence generally in UK mines. The NCB (and coal companies before) were obliged to train engineers and surveyors on a massive scale. Many, including myself, escaped after our training was paid for.
Surveyors especially, went to many different jobs. At one time quite a few local authorities had ex mine surveyors lurking in their planning or engineers departments.
By no means all metal mine surveyors were NCB trained but plenty were.
Up until the coal industry wages left the fluorspar mine wages behind in the early 70's, there was a frequent exchange between North Derbyshire coal miners and Laporte spar miners, depending on who was paying the most at the time.
I have worked with men who had been to both employers more than once.

In earlier times, many surveyors were contractors and would survey whatever their customer wanted, mine one day, road the next. In those days mines did not have to be surveyed by law so plans were only as and when required.

I imagine a lot of you are talking about the Leroy Lettering type stuff.



Thanks for the input so far. I'm following some of it up.

The Concord/Crofty/Pendarves/Jane/Geevor modern plans are all pretty much identical in format.

Having had a bit more of a read into the subject, it appears what I am looking for is more of an "arty" book. You are armed with your hard data and it's a matter of composition, typography and colour.

I have a whole series of books, which I expect were standard college texts early last century. One of these is titles "A treatise on mine surveying - Brough" It has a section on plan production and goes into the various standard colours expected and a few rules of setting out, but nothing really concrete.

Perhaps this is the way they went about things. "Here is my raw data, here are the few conventions I must obey, the rest of it is up to me"

Perhaps they did their own calligraphic and typographic research and then this is what set them apart for others.

Being moderately lazy, I like to absorb things via a book. I see there are modern books on composition, typography and colour as applied to map making, but again, it's not going to teach me how to draw a super edge ornament, or a really spangly title from first principles.

I have surveyed workings and plotted them for a while, it remains a challenge to present them in a way which is a bit beyond a "pass" grade.

The isometric drawing e-book is interesting BTW.

As a mining engineer who was trained in the noble art of surveying in the 1970's, I was very glad of stencils and Lettraset because the best I can do artistically was stick men.

This summer we have been to Slovenia looking at mines and some of the plans there were a pure art form. I agree that there seems to have been some sort of competition as to who could embellish their plans the best!

When I did my cartography training in the mid 1980s as part of a planning degree we used Rotring pens and stencils. The sky would have fallen on our heads if we resorted to Letraset.

For larger lettering for titles the college library had a number of lettering books. You photocopied the alphabet of your choice, traced your title from the alphabet onto tracing paper, rubbed the other side of the tracing with a pencil, placed the tracing paper on the drawing paper, went over the tracing with a pencil which left and outline on the paper which was then inked in - simple.

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There's the picture of what I was talking about earlier. A plan in progress.

Quite a lot of the HB archive is filled up with crap. ie:- unfinished students plans. Comparing with others, I wonder if some of these had been "copied" on purpose as an actual task.

your starting point will be good quality mapping pens and a good drawing board with parallel motion.

Drillybilly,

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/VirtualArchive/Explore/ 

A quick trawl shows nothing too elaborate, but a variety of titles, lettering and colour wash on the older material. A lot are architectural rather than engineering drawings. Suggest you try Forth Bridge, St Pancras and Charing Cross to start.

Notice Images 2 and 3 of Charing Cross have stencilled titles, Image 3 is dated 1909. I'm trying to imagine the drawing board they used for the Bridge!

A drawing board wouldn't be right for mine plans. You'd work with a set of squares on mine plans and maps and a drawing board for engineering drawings.

Have a look at this page for good drawing pens and compasses:
http://www.haff.com/ 

This set is the one for surveyors: No. PS 4K

Good drawing pens are: No. 133AK & No. 135H

You might also want a diagonal scale (No. 710 - 4) and a proportional divider (No. 195 E)
(and some money).

You'll also need a good selection of dip pens for lettering by hand.

This is basically what was issued to me when I started my apprenticeship as mine surveyor 24 years ago and I still use them today. You can't beat good quality tools.