A Record, Not a Shop Ceylon · Britain · the Wider World
The Meridian

A Private Archive of Antiques & Historical Objects

The Lead·Writing & Correspondence

Hermes Media Portable Typewriter

A Swiss precision portable built in wartime (c.1939–1945) by Paillard of Yverdon, with a rare professional fraction keyboard, its original case and instruction booklet, and the label of a London dealer founded in 1884.

Hermes Media portable typewriter by Paillard S.A. in its original metal carry case with QWERTY keyboard and Taylor's Typewriter Co. dealer badge
Cast steel body, metal carrying case, rubber keys, chrome fittings

From the Writing & Correspondence Shelf · c.1939–1945; serial no. 2018220 · Verified

A typewriter made to peacetime standards in a neutral country while the rest of Europe built weapons, then sold on Chancery Lane by a firm already half a century old. Its fraction keys (½, ¼, ¾, ⅝, ⅞, ⅛) were an extra-cost option ordered for serious technical work, and the survival of machine, case, booklet, and dealer labels together gives this portable an unusually complete biography.

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The Meridian Line
55 objects
1590 – 1979
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Original 16th-century copperplate engraved map of Taprobana by Tomaso Porcacchi, Venice c.1590, with title cartouche and sailing ship decoration, conservation framed

1590 · Italy

Descrittione dell'Isola Taprobana

A Venetian copperplate map of an island Europe argued over for two thousand years: Taprobana, the dream-version of Sri Lanka, engraved by Girolamo Porro for Porcacchi's island atlas, c.1590.
Pietas Quotidiana pocket prayer book c.1826-1840, dark full leather binding with gilt page edges and stipple-engraved frontispiece by Henry Corbould

1830 · England

Pietas Quotidiana: Prayers & Meditations

A Georgian pocket prayer book with no title on its spine and a deathbed angel for a frontispiece: daily piety in navy leather and gilt, London c.1826–1840, with a prayer by a guillotined French princess inside.
Albumen photograph by Scowen & Co. showing a worn flight of stone steps rising to an ornate shrine-gateway with a makara-arch and guardstone figures, set on a brick terrace among large trees, on the terraced approach to the Sacred Bo Tree at Anuradhapura, Ceylon.

1885 · Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

Sacred Bo Tree, Anuradhapura

A Scowen & Co. albumen view of the terraced steps to the Sacred Bo Tree at Anuradhapura — the oldest human-planted tree on earth with a recorded planting date.
Albumen photograph by Scowen & Co. of the white bell-shaped Thuparama dagoba at Anuradhapura, Ceylon, rising behind many rows of leaning ancient stone pillars and fallen carved slabs, with tall palmyra palms against the sky.

1885 · Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

Thuparama Dagoba & Dalada Maligawa, Anuradhapura

Scowen & Co.'s albumen view of Thuparama — the first stupa built in Sri Lanka — ringed by the leaning pillars of its ancient relic-house and a lost Temple of the Tooth.
A.W. Faber Castell model 360 slide rule with celluloid-faced pearwood body, aluminium cursor marked Made in Bavaria, and English-language conversion table on reverse

1930 · Germany

A.W. Faber Castell 360 Slide Rule

Before calculators, this is how the world did its maths. A celluloid-faced pearwood Mannheim slide rule by A.W. Faber "Castell", made in Bavaria c.1927–1934 for the English-speaking export market, with patented anti-warp bracing and its original glass cursor.
Shortland Brothers SB wall barometer and thermometer in Art Deco dark oak case with chrome-bezelled square barometer dial and brass Saltash United F.C. dedication plaque dated 22 November 1947

1947 · England

Shortland Brothers Wall Barometer & Thermometer

An Art Deco oak weather station with a patented dual-hand forecasting dial, presented by a Cornish football club to one of its own on 22 November 1947, name and date still polished into the brass.
Ensign Ful-Vue Super pseudo-TLR camera with large brilliant viewfinder above taking lens, collapsible pressed-steel hood, and cast alloy body

1954 · England

Ensign Ful-Vue Super Camera

The camera that taught Britain to look down, not through: a 1954 Ross Ensign pseudo-TLR with a glowing waist-level finder, one shutter speed, and a lineage reaching back to Daguerre's London licence of 1839.
England South by Sydney R. Jones, The Studio Publications 1948, hardback with illustrated topographical cover

1948 · England

England South

Forty years of sketch-books opened in the year England needed them most: the first volume of Sydney R. Jones's illustrated journey through the southern counties, from London to the very end of Cornwall (1948).
NarrativesAll narratives →

Featured Narrative

Picturing Place: Four Centuries of Looking

From an engraved guess at Taprobana to albumen prints of Bremen to pen-and-ink England: three technologies for taking a place home.

5 objects · 1590–1954

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Original 16th-century copperplate engraved map of Taprobana by Tomaso Porcacchi, Venice c.1590, with title cartouche and sailing ship decoration, conservation framedAlbum von Bremen 1891 by Ernst Roepke, souvenir photographic album with 12 albumen silver prints, green cloth accordion-fold leporello bindingEngland South by Sydney R. Jones, The Studio Publications 1948, hardback with illustrated topographical coverEngland West by Sydney R. Jones, The Studio Publications 1950, hardback with illustrated topographical coverEngland East by Sydney R. Jones, The Studio Publications 1954, hardback with illustrated topographical cover