ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 62 | April 2003
A Most Curious View of the World!
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Carl Johann
Sigmund Bauer (1780–1857)
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A small, beautifully crafted paper box houses one of the National Library’s most curious map acquisitions which arrived in February 2003, the twin, collapsible terrestrial globes created by the German engraver and globe maker Carl Johann Sigmund Bauer in 1825.
One globe is titled: Neueste Erdkugel, mit Parry’s Entdeckungen am Nordpol and the other has French text, but no title. The globes illustrate not only the knowledge of the earth’s surface at the time but also the explorer William Edward Parry’s first expedition in 1820 to the North Pole where he resolved the ancient mystery of the ‘North-West passage’.
Each globe is carefully constructed of six coloured gores or elliptical sections of the earth’s surface, neatly backed on the verso with thick brown or green paper and carefully attached to its companion by tape. Each gore is joined at each apex or pole to its counterpart by fine cord held in a metal twist so that when carefully opened and balanced on a table an expanded view of the earth appears—if you can achieve the balance of paper and cord in an upright position long enough!
Accompanying the globes is a set of 16 maps, in German, on each of the continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, America and Australasia together with more detailed maps of Spain and Portugal, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, Austria, Prussia and Germany, Britain and Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and Russia. Accompanying each map is a set of notes. It is interesting to observe that the shape of Australia is quite different not only between each globe but also from that appearing on the map.
Carl Bauer was a member of a family of globe makers who were based in Nuremberg for two generations. While his father appears to have issued standard, large globes of both the earth and stars, Carl appears to have favoured the combination type globe, i.e. globe and accompanying text or maps or illustrations. Gruenwald was an established engraver based in Nuremberg during Bauer’s lifetime.
The globes and their accompanying maps and notes remain an innovative nineteenth
century tool designed to capture and hold the interest of young student’s minds
while teaching the geography and exploration of the world.
—Maura O’Connor, Curator of Maps
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