1844 Newton's Terrestrial Floor Globe
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GUEST:
My grandmother had a cousin who didn't have children, so she left the contents of her house to my grandmother. They were travelers. They had received an inheritance that stipulated they needed to spend it on travel, so every year, they would go to a country, set up household, everything-- dishes, furniture. When they were done, they'd ship it all home. So I've got a collection of stuff from all over the world, and this was one of the things.
APPRAISER:
This would have been presumably from one of their trips to Europe. Hard to see because the varnish that's on this paper-mounted globe has aged and oxidized, which is why it's so brown, but over in this area, it says "Newton's" and it talks about the fact that this is a terrestrial globe, and then further down, it says it was made in London in 1844. Now, what's interesting to me is that the globe is 1844, but if I look at the stand that it's on, which, by the way, overall it's monumental, it looks more like 1810 to 1815. So it tells me that as the geographical information was being updated with travel, continuous travel, they were changing what's seen on the globe, but they kept putting it into a base that was visually successful. What's interesting about this globe also is that it would have been one of a pair. This is the terrestrial globe, and they also had a matching celestial globe. Newton's made globes in all sizes, from little tiny pocket globes that lived in a case to mantel globes, tabletop globes, bookshelf globes and ultimately this monumental floor globe. For auction estimates, you'd be looking at the $30,000 to $50,000 range.
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