Description
Oceans are blue, faded to a greenish hue, and geographic entities are colored yellow, orange, and bright green. Geography shows countries, major cities, rivers, and mountain ranges indicated by shading. Ocean currents are labeled. Variously patterned dotted lines mark steamship trade routes. Certain key routes such as Cape Hope to Bombay and New York to Liverpool include the number of days for the given voyage, adding educational value to the globe as a useful tool for instruction on world geography and international trade. Telegraph lines are also marked including the submarine transatlantic cable. The equator and the ecliptic are graduated. Antarctica is labeled “Antarctic Circle” and is largely unmapped. Nonetheless, the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica, now referred to as the Antarctic Peninsula, is mapped rudimentarily and labelled by its original British name, “Graham Land.”
This globe is unique in that it also has lines marking the around-the-world route of American Elizabeth Bisland (1861-1929). In her role as a journalist for Cosmopolitan — a popular newspaper of the period published in New York — she circumnavigated the globe in a well-publicized race that commenced late in 1889. This was the first actual worldwide race inspired by the fictional circumnavigation record proposed in Jules Verne’s popular novel Around the World in 80 Days, which had been published in 1872. Her route is indicated by a thick dashed line, labeled “Route of Miss E. Bisland around the World” in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan and along her transatlantic leg between New York and Ireland. This globe can be confidently attributed to Robert Gair due to the inscription on the stand. Extant examples of Gair globes with the Bisland route are quite rare.
Robert Gair (1853-1927) was a New York City entrepreneur and manufacturer, whose company produced paper goods, color printing, lithographing and embossing. In the 1870s, Gair invented a machine for making corrugated cardboard and patented the first machine equipment to mass-produce folding cardboard boxes. The company also manufactured and sold globes in New York from about 1889 to 1910.
Condition: Generally very good recently professionally restored, with some scattered minor abrasions touched up, now with light remaining toning and wear. Base very good with considerable wear to gilt finish and light oxidation.
References:
“All Around the World: Miss Bisland Now on Her Ocean Voyage to New-York.” New York Times, January 19, 1890. https://www.nytimes.com/1890/01/19/archives/all-around-the-world-miss-bisland-now-on-her-ocean-voyage-to.html (24 September 2024).
Descriptive Catalogue of Globes, Atlases and Maps. New York: E. Steiger, 1876.
Descriptive Catalogue of Terrestrial and Celestial Educational Globes. New York: Robert Gair Company, [c. 1897]. pp. 54-55.
Gannon, Devin. “How the cardboard box was accidentally invented in a NYC factory.” 6SqFt. 7 June 2018. https://www.6sqft.com/how-the-cardboard-box-was-accidentally-invented-in-a-nyc-factory/ (3 February 2020).
Goodman, Matthew. “Elizabeth’s Bisland’s Race Around the World.” The Public Domain Review. October 2013. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/elizabeth-bislands-race-around-the-world/ (23 September 2024).
Roggenkamp, Karen S. H. “Dignified Sensationalism: Elizabeth Bisland, Cosmopolitan, and Trips Around the World.” Presented at Writing the Journey: A conference on American, British, & Anglophone Writers and Writing. University of Pennsylvania Conference, 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/20100112042246/http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/kroggenkamp/bisland.html (23 September 2024).
Schedler, Joseph. An Illustrated Manual for the Use of the Terrestrial and Celestial Globes. New York: 1875, 1877, 1887.
Science Museum Group. “Globe showing the circumnavigation of Elizabeth Bisland.” Science Museum Group Collection Online. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8918161/globe-showing-the-circumnavigation-of-elizabeth-bisland (23 September 2024).
Steiger’s Educational Directory for 1878. New York: E. Steiger, 1878. p. 234.
Warner, Deborah Jean. “The Geography of Heaven and Earth,” Rittenhouse Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1987). pp. 125-27.
