An early draft version of the modern London Tube map is going up for auction at Christie’s next month and is expected to bring in as much as £100,000.
Londoners will clock what the map is in an instant, but this Harry Beck draft is the better part of 100 years old.
The draft is dated as a 1932 document, the year before Beck’s reworked tube map was released to the public.
By this point, the London tube system had already been in operation for 69 years. But as it became more complicated and line-laden over the decades, so did the map detailing it.
Harry Beck’s design, the foundation of the modern tube map, largely ignores the varying distances and geographic locations of stops in favour of a simpler and more visually coherent design. And, of course, it bears the Tube system’s colour coding.
“It’s a real privilege to bring to auction Harry Beck’s own annotated proof of the 1932 Underground map – and to do so here in London makes it even more special,” says James Hyslop, Christie’s science and natural history head, as reported by The Standard.
“Seeing his handwritten notes alongside those of his predecessor, Fred Stingemore, is like witnessing the moment London’s transport identity was born.”
In 2012, a 1933 print of the Harry Beck design was auctioned at Christie’s, and went for far in excess of its £2000-3000 estimate, selling for £10,625.
This latest auction is for something rather more special, though, its rarity and hand-written annotations earning it a £70,000 to £100,000 estimate from Christie’s. It's up for auction on December 11th.
The very same map was exhibited in London last year, at The Map House in Knightsbridge.
It “highlights some of the tricky design questions [Beck] had to overcome, such as whether to use the official name of 'Willesden Junction (New Station)' or stick with a simplified 'Willesden Junction’,” says The Map House’s notes on this particular piece.
The London Transport Museum offers up two designs from the pre-Beck era. And they might just give you a headache.
Beck's 1933 design was released as a pocket edition, originally printed as a (for the time) massive 750,000 copy run. He continued to head up Tube mapping until 1959.
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