How do you display a 26-part Moon map? | The Moon exhibition

Conservator Bethia Grice lays out Hugh Percy Wilkins’s map of the Moon. Find out more: Made up of 26 individual sheets of varying sizes and measuring 100 inches across in total, the challenge of displaying this map lies not only in ensuring the pieces are displayed in the right order, but that in mounting them the sense of the Moon as an entire, circular entity is retained. Each sheet will be individually framed. This means that creating the sense of the Moon as a whole is even trickier. Before the sheets are laid out for mounting, the condition of the paper is examined, to ensure it is fit for moving and for display. These sheets were humidified and flattened to prepare them. Hugh Percy Wilkins was an amateur astronomer, based in South East London. Working as a civil servant by day, by night he studied the Moon in great detail. In 1951 he created a 300-inch map of the Moon, which this 100-inch map is a recreation of. The map is on display at the Nation