About MapShopCompany
The facts, plainly: what MapShopCompany is, how the prints are made, and where the maps come from.
MapShopCompany is a small map restoration shop based in Spring Hill, Tennessee. We find maps that already belong to everyone — in the Library of Congress, the U.S. Geological Survey's historical collections, NASA and USGS Astrogeology mission data, the Federal Aviation Administration's charts, GEBCO's ocean grid and OpenStreetMap's open data — and make them worth framing.
What we actually do
- Find. Every antique map we sell begins as a public scan, and every such listing names its archive and record. You could find the scan yourself, free; what you pay for is that we already did.
- Restore. Scanner borders trimmed, a century of grey lifted without bleaching the age out, the sheet sized to print at a true 300 dpi. When a size is enlarged past the scan's native resolution, the listing says so.
- Deliver. Digital files sell on this site (for the maps our order-check service can deliver) and in our Etsy shop. Posters are made to order by a US print partner; most sell directly on this site to US addresses, with the same print also on the Etsy shop, which can ship further and is the checkout for any map not yet in our own.
The lines we draw
- Public archive is not the same as public domain. We record the rights note on every design and we hold anything uncertain.
- We use no agency logos and imply no endorsement. This is the public's data, printed well.
- Modern overview maps and star maps are decorative prints, not for navigation, and say so on the plate.
- The Modern World Atlases collection is drawn from current public data, not from archive scans, so the archive promises above do not apply to it. Its first editions are in review; nothing in it is for sale yet.
- Our custom star maps are drawn at StellarSkymap, our star-map engine.