Description
Some of the cartography on the outer globe is the same as the inner map, but other aspects are different. The globe has much more detailed information than the map, with some countries and cities labeled, and some national borders indicated by dotted lines. The Holbrook Apparatus Mfg. Co. had its antecedents in the globe business started by Josiah Holbrook in Connecticut in the 1830s. Josiah’s sons, Alfred and Dwight, followed their father’s lead, with the establishment of a Lyceum Village in Berea, Ohio, in the 1840s, where students gathered to learn and to assist in globe production for Holbrook & Co. This was followed in the 1850s by Holbrook Apparatus Mfg. Co., in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and The Holbrook School Apparatus Co. in Hartford. The firm was continued by family descendant Charles Holbrook in Chicago in the later part of the 19th Century. For more information about the Holbrook firm see our Guide to Globe Makers.
The Wethersfield facility produced innovative hinged three-inch globes such as the one offered, as well as five-inch hemispheric pocket globes. The cartography was generally very simple because the globe was designed for student use. There are several variations of this Holbrook 3-inch globe. Most are cream colored, with the continents having thick outlines in red, green and blue, and sometimes yellow. One variant has continents fully shaded in deep colors; another incorporated more conventional subtle full shading in pink, green, and yellow, with blue oceans.
Cartouche on Globe: HOLBROOKS/Apparatus/ Mfg. Co./ WETHERSFIELD. CT.
Rectangular Cartouche on Map: Holbrook/ Mfg. Co.
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 (all Holbrook manufacturers).
Yonge, Ena L. A Catalogue of Early Globes, Library Series No. 6. American Geographical Society: 1968.