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Make a Small Book of Islands: The Isolario I love islands, I love books. Isolarios are both of these things: they are books of islands. Let’s make one! A book of maps of islands in a turquoise cover. This book will be slightly bigger than the previous one and will still conform to the international paper sizes of A4. Although they are lesser known and less studied they are important historically as the precursors to grander atlases and then globes. The story starts with small islands. For me the isolarios represent beginnings, and a time of wonder and curiosity, just past the portolan littoral coast-hugging phase and before the Age of Sail (and colonial expansion and everything that goes with it). The mapping of islands was by definition small-scale. And although islands may be small, their implications are huge: even Columbus was originally looking for islands but stumbled upon a massive, inhabited continent. January is also a good time to think about warm tropical islands if you’re cold. I’ll also be physically on an island - not the British Isles as usual but the eternal spring of the Islas Canarias, the Fortunate Isles of the Canaries! They were a vital link between 4 continents of Africa, Europe and the 2 Americas and were a stopping point for sailors and privateers including Murat Re'is the Elder* to catch the trade winds - and lucky isles that merry mapmakers would pepper the sea with and that just happened to be there - something I researched further in my paper on Floating Islands, available at academia.edu (and it’ll be on the Miniature Painting Forum). As an islomane of course I went to the Caird Library in Greenwich, London to do some isolario research (which will also be at the Forum) and we’ll use a mixture of primary and secondary sources spanning the history of isolarios starting with Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s very first isolario (see a paper I wrote on this at academia.edu and the Forum) blended with our imaginations to create the island book isolario of our dreams… *Who fought alongside Piri Reis, the cartographer… who also made maps of islands… For those of you in Art of Attention: Court of Gayumars: please note that the sessions on 18 and 25 January will be rolled over to February. Class includes a bespoke handmade turquoise leather envelope-flap cover to paint and free postage to anywhere in the world… except if you live on a remote island like St Helena, of course (might take 2 months to arrive apparently!)