Limited Edition: Sanuto Globe Gores facsimiles(16th c.) Start Price USD 146.78 Current Price USD 146.78 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, November 12, 2008 End Time Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Location Chicago, Illinois See more about 'Limited Edition: Sanuto Globe Gores facsimiles(16th c.)' Description This specially designed 10" x 24" case holds 24 long maps and a compartment for the descriptive book about the Sanuto globe gores. The original gores are the largest surviving complete set of sections for a 16th century world globe. (#129 in Shirley's bibliography of printed maps.) The unique collection, never assembled into an actual globe, is in the hands of a collector who in 1987 allowed 150 sets of these facsimiles to be made. The book describing the originals, and explaining how we know who made the globe and when, was both written and printed by the late David Woodward, world-renowned map expert, who signed each copy as well. (And, I suspect, printed the maps and built the cases.) The maps give a view of the world as seen by a 16th century cartographer, when continents held vast blank areas of unexplored territory and the seas carried wooden sailing vessels and large finny monsters. (The first scan shows a segment of the gore showing the eastern edges of the Americas: Cuba, Panama, eastern Canada, etc.) This is one of a small number of sets tucked away in 1987 by the publisher, and offered here, completely new and unused in its original cardboard mailing case. A set of the original globe gores, if obtainable, would easily cost something in the upper six figures, and you aren't going to find all that many copies of these facsimiles on the market, either, even at the original price of $600. Purchaser pays $10 no frills shipping and handling within U.S., more (much more) for international or insurance Several people have emailed to ask me whether these could be cut apart and assembled into a globe. I happened to meet the man who pushed this production and he said that was one of the factors considered in production of the book. The gores are, in fact, printed on handmade paper for just that purpose: machine-made paper will shrink and expand all in the same direction, while handmade paper will do it more randomly, allowing for fewer gaps in your globe when the paste dries. He passed along further technical information, which I add here, not endorsing it, since I know as little about making globes as about practically any other subject on earth. I am giving it to you for your own experiments. The globe should be roughly 10.5 inches in diameter, if my old math courses taught me anything: we say roughly because your gores will shrink a bit when the paste is drying. (The man informed me the cores of old globes began with a wooden ball which was then covered with papier mache to nearly the size wanted, and then smoothed with plaster of Paris.) You want to save the gore with the least information on it for last, because that is the one which will show the most shifting. You put the gores on your core exactly opposite each other: this chunk of North America first and then across the globe for Russia, and build it up that way, rather than simply starting at Chicago, say, and putting the gores on in order. The gores should be damp when applied, and I take it you apply them together, not waiting for one gore to dry before you apply the next. You will need to go through the process twice: once for the northern hemisphere and once for the southern. Once everything is more or less in place, you let everything dry, and then, if desired, you apply the color. The original globemakers did it that way for the same reason you might: if the stretching and shrinking of the paper has made any real gaps, you can color these over. Then you can apply a coating of shellac, if you want to be authentic and have it turn dark brown over the next three hundred years, or some modern acrylic coating. You will then have an official replica of a Sanuto globe of the world. I have not made the experiment; I couldn't even manage those topographic maps made of salt in grade school. But have fun. Place a Bid!