‘VELVET STRAND’ maps are made near Drogheda, a historic port town north of Dublin in Ireland. Drogheda is located about 20 minutes drive from the Velvet Strand. It is a beautiful length of beach near Portmarnock in County Dublin. In the 1930’s, the Velvet Strand was the airstrip used for the very first trans-atlantic flights from Europe to the east coast of North America.
Our cartographer, Joe Kelly, was attending an exhibition of antique, cloth-backed maps and nautical charts 15 years ago, when he saw a particular exhibit of maps and liked the look of what was there. Always interested in maps and cartography, he started wondering how they were made. He began studying the field in detail, and the result is the maps we have today.
Although they look and feel like they were created in the 1700’s or 1800’s, they are actually extremely high quality reproductions of maps from those eras.