2 - Vintage 1940s Jo Mora Carmel-by-the-Sea map, original, unframed

Vintage 1940s Jo Mora Carmel-by-the-Sea map, original, unframed. 24" X 31". Unframed in original roll.

Joseph Jacinto Mora knew all the dogs in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California. He knew Bess, a friendly brown mutt who hung out at the livery stables. He knew Bobby Durham, a pointy-eared rascal who, as Mora put it, ?had a charge account and did his own shopping at the butcher?s.? He knew Captain Grizzly, an Irish terrier who went to town with his muzzle on and invariably came back carrying it, having charmed a kind stranger into taking it off.

If you spend time with Mora?s map of the town?which was first printed in 1942?you?ll know the town dogs of that era, too. They?re all stacked in a column on the right side, lovingly described and illustrated, and looking as natural as those items you?d be more inclined to expect on a map: streets, land masses, the compass rose. On this particular map, those elements aren?t so typical either: the streets are strewn with tiny houses, and both the land and sea are peppered with busy people. The compass rose is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, and?as befits an artist?s town?is helmed by a painter, a performer, a writer, and a musician.

Such is the way of a Jo Mora map. Over the course of his life, the ?Renaissance Man of the West,? as some have called him, packed history, geography, and personal details into a series of maps of different parts of California. Although well-known in his time??Mora has produced works of art which have told their story to more persons, probably, than have the works of any other Californian,? columnist Lee Shippey wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1942?he has largely fallen out of the public consciousness. But a few minutes with one of his maps plunges you back into his era, and his own worldview.

His map work included Grand Canyon (1931), Yosemite (1931), Yellowstone (1936), Carmel-By-The-Sea (1942), California (1945) (large and small versions), Map of Los Angeles (1942), Monterey Peninsula (date unknown), and Seventeen Mile Drive (date unknown).

Joseph Jacinto "Jo" Mora, born 22 October 1876 in Uruguay, died 10 October 1947 in Monterey California. Jo Mora came to the United States as a child, he studied art in New York, then worked for Boston newspapers as a cartoonist. He was a man of many other talents including artist-historian, sculptor, painter, photographer, illustrator, muralist and author. All of his maps are highly prized by collectors.

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