Our research library

What you’ll discover in our Etsy shop

Handcrafted photocards featuring the world’s best places and the stories behind them. Think of them as bespoke journeys-in-an-envelope to share with those you care about most, no passport required. Below, the journey of our travel essays and blog content, from print to post.

The world’s best places and the stories behind them

Please note the photocard prints do not have a white watermark. They arrive as shown in the video clips below.

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Facade—Galaxidi, Greece.

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Rosa ‘Iceberg’—Sydney, Australia.

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‘Baux’—Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.

Can we share a few words?

Why you can trust the stories and voices accompanying our photographs

That Abe (and Marie, Albert, and Mark)

You can’t believe everything you read online.

Even Abraham Lincoln agreed, when he wisely said, “The problem with quotes found on the internet is that often they’re not true.”

Smart man, that Abe.

Truth is Napoleon was not so short, the Great Wall of China is not visible from space, and Marie Antoinette didn’t say, “Let them eat cake.” (Nor, for that matter,“Let them eat brioche.”) Famously, author Philip Roth faced a rather dystopian challenge in correcting an inaccurate entry posted by others on Wikipedia about his own work. Meanwhile, on webpages (including travel blogs, folks) trite aphorisms are so often misattributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde that their actual words on the printed page can seem dull by comparison. Caveat emptor, dear reader.

A FEW HOURS LATER
Somewhere the universe was listening as I typed the above paragraph, because a few hours later this article hit the New York Times online (though it references Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Bob Marley, not Oscar Wilde):

Famous People Didn’t Actually Say
Your Favorite Wedding Quotation

—New York Times, August 23, 2025

Despite the Times’ solidarity with my thinking, I certainly cannot claim infallibility—I’ve no doubt gotten a date wrong somewhere in the thousands of travel essays I’ve written, or a word may be mis-typed, if not missing altogether.

I freely confess I sometimes ignore iron-clad accuracy when a point is easily made without being a stickler. For instance, experts pinpoint the beginning of Egypt’s Old Kingdom (the Age of the Pyramids) to 4,638 years ago. I shorthand that figure as 5,000, because when you’re talking millennia, centuries and decades increasingly become mere rounding errors. (And there is no pass/fail test after reading one my photocard essays, honest!)

What’s in a number?

I’m not alone. I make my decision about short-handing 4,638 as 5,000 because I have five scholarly books on Ancient Egypt in my library, and when referring generally to the era of pyramid building, the books’ various authors and publishers use the same high-altitude figure. Like them, I drill down to a more precise number when discussing specifics within the era itself (e.g., the roughly 26-year period during which the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed).

125 feet of shelving and 5,000 pounds of credibility

I chose Egypt’s pyramids for this example because there is another 5,000 figure to consider. Our library’s contents total several thousand books weighing an aggregate 5,000 pounds. That’s 2.5 tons of books spanning more than 125 feet of sturdy bookshelves. By and large these are hardcover volumes. And even when they’re softcover, they are still heavily illustrated, and printed on heavy coated paper.

I think of it as 5,000 pounds of credibility.

Currently on offer in our Etsy shop

Please note the photocard prints do not have a white watermark. They arrive as shown in the video clip below.

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Giza Plateau—Cairo, Egypt.

The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

—Chris McCandless

An upcoming Vast Compass collection

Iconic Egypt I

Library highlights

And a few tchotchkes, more

Guidebooks

An app can be a handy substitute for a guidebook in a pinch, but when you need a deeper dive, expanded insight, a large fold out map, zoomed in detail, and more than just the top notes of a story, an actual book is hard to top. Our collection of travel guides come from numerous companies, each with a particular editorial strength. Taken in total they help us discover the larger truths and most interesting stories behind the places and people we encounter while abroad in the wider world. The best travel is grounded in recorded facts and illustrations that match what we experience IRL.

l. to r.: Imperial Porcelain Factory egg, St. Petersburg, Russia; Pulpit Rock collectible, Lysefjorden, Norway; Last Supper icon, Meteora, Greece; Keepsake cremains urn, Bangkok, Thailand; Danish Royal Crown ornament, Copenhagen, Denmark

France

France is a nation of readers—it consistently ranks in the Top 10 countries publishing new books each year. Books set in France, about France, or simply by French authors. It sometimes seems all of them crowd our home’s library shelves, but with good reason. Its bounty of important sites, dramatic history, and vibrant culture make France and all things French worthy of a lifetime of study. From blueprints for the Eiffel Tower to the varieties of flowers used in plantings at Monet’s gardens in Giverny, we do extensive research from among these volumes when writing essays for our photocards.

l. to r.: Encens Mythique Eau de Parfum de Guerlain; Cast iron fleur de lis finial; Rigaud Reine de la Nuit candle; Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir Absolu Eau de Parfum Intense; Eiffel Tower collectible; L’Instant Homme Eau de Parfum de Guerlain; Christian Dior Sauvage Eau de Parfum; 3D-Printed Eiffel tower

Italy

From the Roman Empire and its fall, to the High Renaissance personalities we revere (Michelangelo, da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Raphael, so many more), and the eventual unification of its city states, Italy’s history is a rich tableaux of larger-than-life figures and equally outsize influence across every aspect of today’s global culture from art and religion, to literature, music, fashion, design, cuisine, more. Our research into Italy’s greatest achievements and historic sites comes from a diverse range of voices in literature and travel writing spanning millennia, right up to the modern age.

l. to r.: 18th-century finial, Florence; Bronze commedia dell'arte Zanni mask, Venice; Truffle plane, San Gimignano; Laser cut marble cupola of Florence’s duomo; Ceramiche pitcher, Amalfi; Handblown glass vase with gold leaf, Murano

You can quote me on that

We maintain a spreadsheet of nearly 2,500 quotations from which to draw when crafting content printed on the back panels of our photocards. Quotes, poems, lyrics, scripture, aphorisms, and proverbs all make appearances. Most times there’s an obvious link between the image on the front and the personality or piece of literature referenced. Other times, the connection is a bit more abstract, requiring some free association or imagination. Occasionally the juxtaposition is wry.

I’m not sure what’s afoot, but compilations of quotations these days are often printed in small form factors and organized by theme, say things a dad would say, or wisdom from the kitchen. Many are targeted in scope, like proverbs from Japan or Hawai’i, while others flow from the pen of a single author, like naturalist John Muir.