The Map Room

French artist Sabine Réthoré works with maps and globes from a different perspective. Her globes frequently spin the world on a different axis; in her maps, north is often not up. At right: Lovely Place 1, 2005-2007.

Laura L. Sweet looks at globes by Wendy Gold. “The ‘Imagine Nation’ globes are handmade using vintage globes whose geography is no longer accurate. Wendy finds, cuts and creates the art that she then decoupages onto the old globes. From Superheros to Rock and Roll, each is one of a kind. She also takes on commissions. The globes vary in size from the small novelty bank globes to the larger traditional 30" diameter globes. Prices range from $99-$300.” Via MAPS-L.

John Horrigan recounts his encounter, in a local travel shop, with a hand-drawn “Texas Globe,” which depicts the world as seen by a stereotypical, bigoted Texan. “Half the Earth is filled by a swollen United States, with Texas taking up about one third of that. Canada is squeezed between New York and an Alaska that touches the 49th parallel. Beyond, the geography becomes even more bizarre.”

English Russia has a post about local globes, which were apparently all the rage immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union (for example, you could buy a globe of just Ukraine). The post is really about how to make one of your own, but I’m just wigged out by the concept of a globe of just a part of the world. It’s a crime against geometry. Via Make.

One way to determine the age of a recent globe (or world or regional map) is to look at the political boundaries: if you know when boundaries changed or when countries became independent, for example, you should be able to zoom in on the year of production if it isn’t printed somewhere on the map or globe. Both globe maker Replogle and map and globe maker Cram have compiled tables to help you figure out the age of your globe (or map): here’s Replogle’s; here’s Cram’s (PDF). Via Map the Universe.

Previously: Determining a Map’s Age.

Also at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a 20-metre globe onto which climate-related information is being projected. Here’s a photo. Via Collins Maps Blog….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet is a travelling public art exhibit about global warming that for some reason is in Copenhagen right now. The exhibit “will feature over 25 super-sized Cool Globes, each conveying a different…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Large globes can be kind of pricey; David Burwell built his own 20-inch globe using the Generic Mapping Tools datasets and a beach ball mold. Ingenious. Via Boing Boing and Make….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Astrum 2009: Astronomy and Instruments, an exhibition of astronomical equipment, celestial globes and manuscripts taking place at the Vatican Museums until January 16, 2010, includes equipment like astrolabes and planetariums, and 16th- and 17th-century celestial globes by Coronelli and Vanosino….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Java programmer Kohsuke Kawaguchi built a globe out of Lego; being a programmer, he did so in a programmer-like idiom, hacking together a program to figure out what colours go where, and using CAD software to build it virtually…  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you’re interested in buying a globe of a world not the Earth, you have three options available. The Moon Replogle makes a 12-inch globe of the Moon that is touted as being NASA-approved. It rests on a clear plastic…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Curious Expeditions visits the Mapparium, the three-story walkthrough glass globe that was built in 1935 for the headquarters of the Christian Science Monitor; they also have a Flickr photoset. Via Cartophilia. Previously: The Mapparium….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Astronomy reports on Return to the Moon, a short film designed for the Science on a Sphere platform (see previous entry): “‘Return to the Moon’ takes imagery and data sets from the Apollo, Clementine, and other missions and projects them…  •  Continue reading this entry.

While visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta last December, I encountered this globe in the horned dinosaur section of the museum. At the push of a button, a projector displays the location of the fossil beds for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A globe used in the New Year’s festivities in Northampton, Massachusetts will be kept up for another six months and may well be a permanent fixture (and tourist attraction), The Republican reports. The six-foot, 300-pound globe has 350 computer-controlled LED…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Science on a Sphere is seriously cool: “a room-sized, global display system that uses computers and video projectors to display planetary data onto a six-foot-diameter sphere, analogous to a giant animated globe.” Developed by NOAA researchers, there are now…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Chicago History Museum looks at Chicago globe manufacturer Replogle Globes in this short video: I always wondered why the seam along the equator had to be so big. Via Kottke….  •  Continue reading this entry.

More good stuff from Modern Mechanix; this time, an item from the April 1930 issue of Popular Science about a combination globe-atlas: it was a globe “with a complete index and gazetteer inside it. Inserted in the globe are…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Remember those two Blaeu globes I was telling you about — the ones that belonged to the royal family of Liechtenstein and were being auctioned by Christie’s? They were bought, by a private collection, for €800,000. Via Map the Universe….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A digitized version of Willem and Joan Blaeu’s six-volume Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas (1659), produced for the city of Leiden, is available online from the Leiden Regional Archives; click here for the map viewer. Christie’s is auctioning two…  •  Continue reading this entry.

At the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square through June, Boston and Beyond, a collection of bird’s-eye-view maps of Boston and New England from the second half of the 19th century. At Harvard University’s Pusey Library until April 1, Henry F….  •  Continue reading this entry.

You’re no doubt familiar with the controversies about what gets depicted on a map: disputed territories, disputed names (e.g. Persian Gulf vs. Arabian Gulf, Sea of Japan vs. East Sea). Here’s an interesting article from the International Herald Tribune that…  •  Continue reading this entry.

More on Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, the 500th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year. The Library of Congress reports that construction of the hermetically sealed encasement for their copy of the map — the last surviving…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I was not previously aware of the existence of pocket globes: made of wood, paper or papier-mâché, from the late 18th and early 19th century, and frequently three inches or less in diameter. More about them at Dream Tree…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Make: Blog, DIY map fold-outs that you print, cut, and fold into a polyhedron. Mark Wilson used one to make a unique, rhombicuboctahedral gift wrapper (shown here). Or, if your tastes run to metal rather than paper, and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Blue Planet Globe, encased in a smoked acrylic box, simulates the earth’s rotation and seasonal changes in sunlight — for a mere $850. But on the Science Source catalogue page, there is a less-glamourous manual version for only…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Science fiction writers frequently create maps of the worlds they create for their stories; one of Robert J. Sawyer’s fans turned around and made him a globe from those maps. From his blog: “A fellow named Patrick J. O’Connor,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Opening today in Vienna, the Globe Museum of the Austrian National Library at its new digs in the refurbished Palais Mollard. The collection of more than 400 globes, 240 of which are on display, includes early modern globes by Mercator,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Géo212 reports that Coronelli’s globes are on display in Paris for the first time in 25 years, as part of the reopening of the Grand Palais. See coverage from the Nouvel Observateur and Radio France Internationale; if you don’t read…  •  Continue reading this entry.

With a diameter of 12.5 metres, the 1:1,000,000 scale, three-ton Eartha, built in the lobby of map publisher DeLorme, is the world’s largest rotating globe. Housed in a three-story glass atrium at the company’s headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine, Eartha…  •  Continue reading this entry.

World Processor showcases the globes of Ingo Günther, which depict social, environmental and political data: everything from life expectancy to pollution to wealth distribution. Via WorldChanging….  •  Continue reading this entry.

This has to be seen to be believed. James Lin writes to tell us about the Relief Globe Company: “Alan Folmsbee, a former Sun Microsystems engineer, has set up his own globe company with massive vertical exaggeration: 250× for the…  •  Continue reading this entry.