Posts Tagged ‘globes’
“I wisely started with a map”*…
From Daniel O’Donohue, 29 print-ready folding globe templates (the one above is “Earth Today”; there are also globes of the sun, the moon, the planets, and lots of different “views” of Earth) — every one free to download, print, and fold, and every one customizable into other shapes or create your own, with your own pinned places. via the custom globe builder…
… This project started with a simple observation: we look at maps on screens all day, but almost nobody gets to hold a planet. A paper globe is the cheapest possible spacecraft — print a sheet, cut along the lines, fold, glue, and you are turning the actual shape of the world over in your hands.
Nothing here is decoration. Every globe is built from openly licensed scientific data — NASA satellite imagery, USGS planetary mosaics, Natural Earth cartography, NOAA ocean data, the Smithsonian’s volcano inventory — rendered through real map projections into print-quality PDFs. Each globe credits its source, and the source is always one click away.
The fold shapes are the classics of mathematical cartography: icosahedra, dodecahedra, gores like a 17th-century globemaker would cut, even the Airocean projection that unfolds the world onto twenty triangles with barely any distortion.
The curated globes are free — print as many as you like. When you want a globe that is yours alone — your places pinned, your countries highlighted, your choice of shape — the builder is where it happens…
Getting our minds– and out hands– around the places we are: “Folding Globes.”
Harmonic: “24 Times,” from Gysin-Vanetti: “A collection of twentyfour variations on the theme “clock” created for HeK… Each of these clocks shows time in a distinct form. The result is a sequence of numbers, letters or punctuation marks animated in different ways….”
* J. R. R. Tolkien
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As we orient ourselves, we might spare a thought for William John McGee (or “WJ McGee, without the periods, as he referred to himself); he died on this date in 1912. An inventor, geologist, anthropologist, and ethnologist, he is remembered for his pioneering studies documenting the occurrence of waves of invasions and recessions of ice sheets in North America (thus establishing the complexity of the Great Ice Age). But he worked in a number of governmental and organizational capacities that contributed to teh development of geography as a discipline: e.g., as a director in the U.S. Geological Survey, and as a founder and president of the National Geographic Society. While on the staff of the Bureau of Soils, in 1918, he organized the landmark Conference of Governors on Conservation of Natural Resources, for whihc he has been called the “chief theorist of the conservation movement.”
“The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are”*…
A good globe is a thing of beauty and a source of wonder, perhaps none more than those made by Peter Bellerby, founder of artisan globemakers Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, one of only two handmade globemaking companies in the world. In an excerpt from his book, The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft, he explains how it’s done…
The simplest way to make a globe is to construct a sphere and paint it. The earliest globes would have been made of wood or metal, with the celestial or terrestrial map painted directly on by hand. Later, in the sixteenth century, hollow globes were made of thin sheets of metal which were then hand-painted. Mapping doesn’t lend itself to painting and lettering by hand, and cartography was in its infancy, so early painted globes were necessarily very inaccurate.
Later makers pasted blank gores onto the sphere to create a more forgiving canvas for the hand-painted map and lettering. These are called manuscript globes. The invention of the printing press meant that maps could be printed as gores. A silversmith or skilled engraver would etch a reverse map on copper plates before printing using a process known as intaglio, from the Italian word for ‘carving.’ In intaglio printing the etched plate is coated with ink, then wiped to leave ink only in the incised depressions, before being run through an etching press, in which dampened paper picks up the ink to create the printed image. Copper is a soft metal, so the plates lose their clarity relatively quickly; smaller print runs were therefore common. The effect, though, is very satisfying, with an intense character to the image. The globemaker then pasted the printed gores onto the globe and finally the painter would add color.
It was at this point that the globemaking craft became assimilated with the printing and publishing industry. Globes were after all now printed just like books, and since this time each edition has been referred to as a ‘publication.’ And as in book publishing, copying the map from a rival’s globe is plagiarism.
The golden age of the printed and then hand-painted globe coincided with the age of European expansion, reaching its peak at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In this period, as astronomical, geographical and cartographical knowledge developed apace, globemakers too were inspired to experiment and refine their art. In turn, the proliferation of printing presses made it possible over time to produce more globes at a less than exorbitant cost so they became more affordable to a greater number of people.
Nevertheless, the acquisition or commission of a globe was still the preserve of the aristocracy and the affluent merchant class. Because of the delicate and time-consuming nature of the work, a budding globemaker probably would have required considerable financial backing. Globes therefore were prized symbols of status and prestige.
Studying these venerable antique globes, it was striking to see how little the methods of manufacture had changed from the mid-sixteenth century until the twentieth century, albeit there is always a mystery about the exact construction and methods because so much is hidden under the surface – it was only in the last century that the rot set in. I knew that I had high aspirations but did not want to simply reproduce some sort of cheap faux-antique facsimile. Instead, my ambition was to produce a handmade globe that felt classic yet at the same time unusual, relevant and contemporary…
Read on for a fascinating unpacking of the ingenuity and skill involved: “On the Artisanal Craft of Making a Globe,” from @globemakers in @lithub.
* Terry Pratchett
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As we spin the sphere, we might send cartographical birthday greetings to Dimitrie Cantemir; he was born on this date in 1673. A Moldavian prince, statesman, and man of letters, he led a storied life as a statesman (twice serving as voivode of Moldavia), but also distinguished himself as a philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer.
To that lattermost distinction, Cantemir’s c. 1714 manuscript map of Moldova (as the region which Moldavia centered was also known) was the first real map of the country, containing geographical detail as well as administrative information. Printed in 1737 in the Netherlands, it formed the basis of most European maps of the country for decades.
“It is not down in any map; true places never are”*…
Still, maps hold us in thrall. Consider, for example, this exquisite piece created around 1715 by Johann Baptist Homann, a German mapmaker working in Nuremberg. It measures 2 ¾ inches in diameter.
This particular pocket globe came in four pieces that nest inside each other like matryoshka dolls. The outside case, made of leather and featuring an S-shaped hook that secured the two pieces together, is lined with concave representations of a celestial map, showing constellations as seen from the earth. (Celestial globes were among the earliest globes produced, and were once commonly sold alongside their terrestrial cousins.)
Inside, the terrestrial globe (on which California is depicted as an island, a common misconception of the time) is hollow. Split into two parts, it reveals an armillary sphere: a type of skeleton celestial globe that represents the movement of heavenly bodies through circles. This armillary sphere has a band around it that’s illustrated with zodiacal symbols.
Katie Taylor, of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in the U.K., writes that pocket globes could have served as “status symbols for wealthy gentlemen,” or functioned as educational tools for children. Homann made no other globes, specializing instead in maps and atlases; he might have sold this pocket version as a trinket…
The globe is featured in Sylvia Sumira’s Globes: 400 Years of Exploration, Navigation, and Power. Read more in “An Itsy-Bitsy Early 18th-Century Pocket Globe” at Rebecca Onion’s essential The Vault.
* Herman Melville
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As we plot our courses, we might spare a thought for Samuel Warren Carey; he died on this date in 2002. As a geology graduate student in Australia, he read a translation of Alfred Wegener‘s The Origin of Continents and Oceans, the book largely responsible for introducing the concept of continental drift to the English-speaking world; as a result, he became an early advocate of Wegener’s theory. Carey’s plate tectonics reconstructions led him to develop the Expanding Earth hypothesis– a theory now largely rejected by the scientific community, but one that generated research and debate that helped advance the field of tectonics materially.
Where on the world…
From the not-altogether-vested-interest-free folks at Replogle, “How Old Is Your Globe?” : scan down the chronological list of country name changes (full list at link)… “when you find a FORMER place name on your globe instead of the NEW name, you have determined the age of your globe…”
[TotH to Kottke.org]
As we reorient ourselves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1550 that William Cecil, later one of Queen Elizabeth’s closest advisors (a role for which he was rewarded with elevation to 1st Baron Burghley), was sworn in as King Edward VI’s Secretary of State– and then appointed himself Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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