Millennium House, a publishing house based in Australia, has unveiled the world’s largest Atlas, reportedly named the Earth Platinum. The 6-feet tall book is up for sale, for a staggering $100,000 per copy. Every book contains 128 pages and 45 pages plus of fine modern day photos, as well as breathtaking landscapes.
Overall being referred as “an artistic showpiece”, it has surpassed the Klencke Atlas, edited in 1660 as gift for Charles II of England, who was the closest one, in terms of size, to this one. The one who was behind this project since decades ago is Gordon Cheers. The whole idea was penned down 25 years ago, while the work on the mapping has lasted for more than four hard work years. It involved 100 people worldwide, including photographers, cartographers and geographers.
The exquisite atlas was printed in Italy, during last December, and tied up in Hong Kong. It boasts extreme detailing and accuracy, decked with up to date information about any country, high quality photos from every country, even showing locations of shipwrecks. In addition, there are around 30 photographs that feature the most compelling attractions in the world.
The largest ones involved Gigapan Technology. For example, a photo shows Shanghai’s skyline and was comprised of 12,000 individual photos – Altea Gallery declares it as the largest photograph in the world. Furthermore, archival acid free paper was used for printing all these, on traditional presses, while the binding was done thoroughly, by hand.
The volume was then covered in leather, and is expected to be valued for hundreds of years from now on. As a 2011 world record, it will also feature moments of our lifetime, for the generations that come to study, and call it history.
The Earth Platinum will be printed in only 31 copies, as this book took almost a whole month to manufacture. One of the copies has already been put to sale by the Altea Gallery in Mayfair, London, while a few more replicas have been reserved for future owners within the Middle East.
