Description
The Holbrook globe making family traces its origins to Josiah Holbrook (1788–1854), founder of the American Lyceum movement and a pioneer of object-based pedagogy, who began producing educational apparatus in Connecticut in the 1830s and subsequently relocated his business to New York City. His sons Alfred and Dwight established a “Lyceum Village in Berea, Ohio in 1840, operating the family enterprise as Holbrook & Co. Dwight returned to Connecticut in about 1854, opening a manufacturing company in Wethersfield, Connecticut, notably making use of contract labor from the Wethersfield State Prison. In 1855, Dwight opened a salesroom in Hartford under the name Holbrook School Apparatus Co., trading under the motto “Good enough for the best, and cheap enough for the poorest.” Dwight and Alfred Holbrook discontinued direct retail in about 1860 and transitioned to distribution through school suppliers including A.H. Andrews of Chicago and James W. Queen of Philadelphia. Dwight’s son Charles succeeded to the business in the 1870s, locating in Chicago as it emerged as a major railroad hub and center of map and globe production.
The label in the Holbrook box is significant as the only known reference to the firm under the precise designation “Holbrook Apparatus Co.” of New York and Chicago. Warner records an eight-inch terrestrial globe in the collection of the Kansas Museum of History by the Holbrook School Apparatus company with the following cartouche: “Eight Inch TERRESTRIAL GLOBE with latest discoveries and Oceanic currents. New York & Chicago Holbrook School Apparatus Co.” The horizon band on that globe is inscribed “Dwight Holbrook, Designer and Manufacturer.” The cartouche on the Kansas eight-inch globe and the label on the present box showing two models of eight-inch globes differ only in the inclusion of the word “School” on the former. It is plausible that these are one and the same company and that the word “School” was simply omitted from the label in the globe box for no particular reason.
American globe-maker catalogs of the period document that certain globes were supplied in plain utilitarian boxes of this type for storage and transit. A few larger Holbrook boxes survive containing other apparatus: orreries, tellurians, and geometric teaching blocks. Slightly more elaborate globe boxes by competitors such as A.H. Andrews in the later 19th century opened to form a hanging shelf for display. Surviving examples of American globes retained in their original boxes are quite rare, and as indicated above, the present example is of particular documentary interest for its label, which preserves both the otherwise unrecorded “Holbrook Apparatus Co.” imprint and a graphic record of the firm’s stand variants for the eight-inch globe.
Condition: Generally very good, with considerable wear, abrasions, and light indentations to the surface commensurate with use as a utilitarian shipping box.
References:
Dekker, Elly and van der Krogt, Peter. Globes from the Western World. London: Zwemmer, 1993. p. 175.
Sumira, Sylvia. Globes: 400 Years of Exploration, Navigation and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. p. 31.
Warner, Deborah Jean. “The Geography of Heaven and Earth.” Rittenhouse Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise, Vol. 2, No. 3. 1987. pp. 94–98.
Yonge, Ena L. A Catalogue of Early Globes, Library Series No. 6. American Geographical Society, 1968.
