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In the fifth century BC, portraits of rulers started to appear on coinage, as the utility of these widely-disseminated pieces of metal began to be realised for political ends. A golden aureus minted in Rome could travel as far as India, propagating an image of power across the known world. Much later, in the sixteenth century, it was found that playing cards could be used to much the same effect.

Grab your invisibility cloak, don your seven-league boots, pack your Turkish Delight, and join us on an unexpected journey, “I wisely started with a map!” – an exhibition that explores the creation of fantastical worlds, through 2,700 years of fictitious cartography, featuring maps of such magical lands as Middle-Earth, Lilliput, Oz,… there and back again.

For those of you who missed Frieze Masters, or simply want to relive the experience of walking through the wardrobe, you can find the link to the virtual reality tour here.

Near-blind and approaching his death, John Speed produced his final atlas in 1627. The first English world atlas, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, was the product both of Speed’s cartographic skill and his passion for all things historical.

We invite you to explore the virtual tour of our stand at TEFAF Maastricht 2024.

• for the first printed map, to the mapping of Mars

• the first pocket globe, to the largest colour plate book published in the nineteenth century

• and the Dutch golden age, to the California gold rush

Explore our virtual stand here.

For the 70th anniversary of The Winter Show, we’re delighted to present the Petros G. Pelos collection.

From the arrival of the tall ships of the Pacific voyagers of the late eighteenth century, to the coming of the trans-continental railroad in the mid-nineteenth century, the Petros G. Pelos Collection is the story of the building of a nation.

The 100 items in the collection do not just reflect the emerging shape of the United States, but were fundamentally instrumental in creating its identity.

Explore our virtual stand here.

A journey through 500 years of cartography, art, and science.

Explore our virtual stand here.

Gathering 28 of his 37 known works, the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has brought together more of his paintings than ever before. Despite being one of the most highly anticipated and in-demand exhibitions in recent years, some of the team at DCRB were lucky enough to get a closer look at the 17^th century masterpieces.

Whether alone or in teams, for pleasure or profit, sporting or seated, games have been an ever-present feature of every civilization. With multiple participants vying to achieve a goal by following a set of rules, games provide an outlet for the natural human instinct for competition without the risk incurred in, for example, battle. Indeed throughout history, many games have served as a microcosm of war, whether that involves taking down one’s opponent’s king, as in chess, taking turns to attack and defend, seen in all sorts of games from rugby to bridge, or racing to a certain destination, be it on foot or with a counter.

Maps have always been indispensable tools of war. A clear knowledge of one’s own and one’s enemy’s territory allows leaders and rulers to strategise, plan and arrange resources around the land they strive to conquer or defend. On cartographical representations, obstacles can suddenly become obvious, as too can weak-points. In today’s world of live-mapping, frequent updates on everything from traffic to changes in the travel network have also been utilised by the military. For this reason both Apple and Google recently disabled live-mapping updates in Ukraine, so that the feature would not aid the Russian invasion.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Europe experienced several periods of cooling known as Little Ice Ages. Many factors have been proposed to explain these dips in temperature, and their effects were likewise manifold. One of the most well-loved and well-documented results was the phenomenon of the Frost Fair.

In 1820, self-proclaimed Scottish nobleman Gregor MacGregor launched one of the most audacious and elaborate frauds of all time, tricking thousands of Brits into investing in “Poyais”, a territory in Central America which turned out to be entirely fictional.

Scotland’s one and only attempt at colonisation resulted in thousands of deaths and an economic disaster that paved the way for the 1707 Act of Union.