Description
This huge globe — on a striking Arts and Crafts Movement stand — makes a major statement in a library, entrance hall, or executive office. It has an interesting provenance as a diplomat’s globe formerly in the historic Dumbarton Oaks house in Washington, D.C. where the United Nations charter was drawn up in 1944. The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection was founded there by the Bliss family. They gave the property to Harvard University in 1940. The considerable size of the globe allows for extensive cartographic detail.
The globe was likely manufactured by the famous and prolific British globe maker, W. & A.K. Johnston based on other extant models with their cartouche. In this example, a Rand McNally overlabel cartouche, as issued, is likely covering the original Johnston cartouche of the same size, general form, and usual location of that cartouche on Johnston 30-inch globes. Rand McNally provided the stand and sold and marketed the globe as a whole under its name as shown in extant Rand McNally catalogs of the period. This particular model with the same style stand was shown as a “Thirty-Inch Floor Stand Library Globe,” in a Rand McNally trade catalog issued about 1920 and described there as the largest size offered and “one of the most complete — a globe unrivaled in wealth and accuracy of data and in beauty and perfection of finish. This globe cover is the highest expression of the engraver’s art.” The construction of the stand and the mechanism by which the meridian could be moved and the globe rotated was also of the highest quality.
For more information about the manufacturers, see our Guide to Globe Makers entries on W. & A.K. Johnston and Rand McNally.
Cartouche overlabel within lozenge shape, including an illustration of a hemisphere map: 30 INCH/ TERRESTRIAL GLOBE/ MANUFACTURED BY/ RAND MCNALLY & CO./ CHICAGO/ NEW YORK.
Reference:
School and Library Globes. Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, c. 1920. pp. 32-33, plate 55.
