Description
Oceans are green, some geographic entities outlined in yellow or green. Coastlines and currents are shaded with parallel lines. Ocean currents are also labeled with their names and directions indicated by arrows. Mountains are shaded with hatch marks. The Antarctic coastline is partially mapped reflecting knowledge at the time. In the United States, states are not labeled but their boundaries are drawn with dotted lines. South Pass, Longs Peak. and Pikes Peak are indicated in the Rocky Mountains. There is an elongated oval analemma in the Pacific Ocean. The horizon band zodiac illustrations include stars with important ones named and a key to their sizes up to the sixth magnitude.
This globe is noteworthy for the use of Gothic motifs in the stand, in this case in the form of trefoils and quatrefoils. In America in the second half of the 19th century, there were numerous successive periods of revivals — designs based on traditional styles but with a Victorian interpretation. The use of motifs of the latest Victorian revival style, in this case Gothic Revival, is characteristic of American globes; designers of stands often would utilize the styles of decorative arts movements of the period. Moreover, iron was a favored material of American globe makers for use in stands. By contrast, well into the late 19th century, British globe makers favored mahogany or ebonized wood, and the stands that some of them produced were virtually identical to those of the earlier Georgian period or followed designs that had become popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Such wooden stands were also used on American globes in this period, but far less so than in Great Britain.
For information on A.H. Andrews, please see our Guide to Globe Makers.
O.D. Case & Company was a publishing firm, bindery and school desk manufacturer in Hartford, Connecticut, during the second half of the 19th century. The company was founded by Orlando Dwight Case (1826-1903). Born in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, Case moved to Hartford in 1849 and founded O.D. Case & Co. in 1851, which he operated for 52 years until he died of a heart attack in his office in 1903. An engraving in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, Fall of the City Bindery of O.D. Case & Co., Hartford, Ct. (1866) shows the collapse of the back wall of the company’s five-story building at 49 Trumbull Street. They clearly recovered from this disaster and eventually moved to Asylum Street. In addition to publishing books, O.D. Case produced maps and atlases from at least 1857 to 1881. These included Case’s Bible Atlas, which provided maps related to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament designed for Sunday School teachers and their students. During this period they are know to have collaborated in their map and atlas publication with the firms of S. Augustus Mitchell, A.H. Andrews and W. & A.K. Johnston respectively. O.D. Case also published advanced textbooks for use in college classrooms and reference books such as American Commercial Law.
A Map of the Seat of War of the Eastern United States during the 1860s apparently was O.D. Case’s most popular map; it accompanied their popular publication of Horace Greeley’s two-volume, 1,430-page history of the Civil War, The American Conflict (1864-66). Although it proved to be an influential work, according to Case’s obituary in Publishers’ Weekly, it “nearly swamped the firm, the public refusing to buy the book after Greeley signed Jefferson Davis’ bail bond.” Case also published various of Mark Twain’s earlier works. The firm patented classroom desks in 1870 and 1879. An 1881 advertisement by Case in an almanac promotes the company as “School Desk Manufacturers and Publishers of Camp’s Outline Maps.” The latter were designed by David N. Camp (1820-1916) and accompanied by a study guide. Case is listed as a school desk manufacturer in the 1899 edition of directory of U.S. manufacturers.
Cartouche: ANDREW’S/ Eight Inch/ TERRESTRIAL GLOBE/ with latest discoveries/ and oceanic currents/ A.H. ANDREWS & CO. Chicago, Ill./O.D. CASE & CO. Hartford, Conn.
Condition: Globe and horizon generally very good with the usual expected light scattered surface wear to varnish, discolorations, fading, toning, small cracks and abrasions, all now professionally restored. Stand very good, with the usual light wear to paint, oxidation to metal.
References:
An Illustrated Catalogue of Improved School Furniture and School Supplies. New York: Baker, Pratt & Co., 19 Bond Street, 1879, p. 42. (Shows one very similar but slightly different quatrefoil decoration.)
Andrews Broadside. (Show one nearly identical but with slightly different quatrefoil decoration.)
“Fall of the City Bindery of O.D. Case and Company.” Connecticut History Illustrated.http://connecticuthistoryillustrated.org/islandora/object/40002%3A10998 (7 March 2016).
“Holbrook’s School Globes.” Broadside in George Glazer Collection.
How to Use Globes in the School and Family, 16th Ed., Chicago: A.H. Andrews & Company, 215-221 Wabash Avenue, 1888. (Cover illustration very similar but with a slightly different quatrefoil decoration.)
Hoyt, Edmund S. Maine State Year-book, and Legislative Manual, for the Year 1881-82. Portland: Hoyt, Fogg & Donham, 1881. p. 404. Online at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=WX0fAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA404-IA2 (7 March 2016).
“Obituary Notes.” The Publishers’ Weekly. 63: 1617. 24 January 1903. p. 118. Online at Google Books:https://books.google.com/books?id=o-IxAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA118 (7 March 2016).
“O.D. Case.” Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library.http://emuseum.chs.org/emuseum/view/people/asitem/C/59?t:state:flow=a1b82e3f-52a8-46f7-8c19-ad1816efedea (7 March 2016).
“Search results for O.D. Case & Co. maps.” Worldcat.org. http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=O.D.+Case+%26+Co.#x0%253Amap-format (7 March 2016).
Seeger and Guernsey’s Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States. New York: United States Industrial Publishing Company, 1899. p. 148. Online at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=u0FgyWc_xcAC&pg=PA148 (7 March 2016).
Warner, Deborah Jean. “The Geography of Heaven and Earth.” Rittenhouse Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise. Vol. 2, No. 2, 1987. p. 52.
