The project of “Protection and preservation of Cieszyn’s writing heritage” included restoration of the Map of Czech Kingdom owned by the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia.
The Map of Bohemia (Mappa Geographica Regni Bohemiae), published in Augsburg in 1720, was made by Johann Christoph Müller on commission of the authorities with the aim of providing important information for military, administrative and economic decisions. Therefore, apart from geographical data (natural topography, waters, forests) the map also 10presents all municipalities and settlements (including ones that do not exist anymore), roads, mills, vineyards, mines of gold, silver, copper and other minerals, steel plants and glass works, postal stations and other facilities. Such detailed presentation of information is allowed by the impressive size of the map, was based on the scale of 1:132 000 and made on hand-made paper with the use of hand-colored (borderlines, washed land areas) copper printing tablets, aqua-fortis etching and dry-point painting techniques.
The original map included 25 separate sections with the size referring to a single copperplate impression, i.e. 465 x 540 mm each, with total area of 2403 mm x 2822 mm. The copy kept in the Museum was merged and re-sectioned to 18 parts (circumstances unknown). The renovation process included restoring the map to the original division into 25 sections. Other operations relating to the map processing involved disinfection, cleaning, deacidification and structural reinforcement, refilling of missing sections with paper pulp, pressing and color-matching of sections covered by paper pulp refills.
Restoration work was performed by Aleksandra Behal-Czerch. Dorota Nowak, expert of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for preservation of historical facilities with respect to image, library and archival resources, reviewed the quality of the performed restoration work and reported high quality and professional delivery of the operations.
