Globe Gores

The Geography and Map Division holds a variety of printed globe gores in a variety of sizes and configurations ranging from some of the earliest examples in the 16^th century to more modern examples in the 20^th century.  Globe gores are strips of paper containing printed maps in the sizes and shapes needed for globe construction. The maps can be either terrestrial (showing the earth) or celestial (showing the heavens) and the gores are typically football shaped.  The gores can be thought of as pre-assembled building blocks for a globe of a particular size which a globe-maker can quickly utilize to construct a globe without having to spend the time constructing the maps.  The printed gores would be cut out of the printed sheet(s) and pasted onto a sphere of appropriate size to construct a globe.

As far back as the third century B.C. written records about globe construction by the ancient Greeks show knowledge of a round earth.  Greek grammarian and stoic philosopher Cratus of Mallus (ancient city in current day Türkiye) is known for constructing the earliest known globe of the earth around 150 B.C.  The 1492 Erdapfel by 15^th century German polymath Martin Behaim is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, which was manually constructed from painted on globe gores and later inscribed with over 2,000 place names by a team of artists and scribes.  Another German cartographer by the name of Martin Waldseemüller created what are thought to be the first set of printed globe gores in 1507.  Coincidentally, this globe gore map along with his wall map also created in 1507 were also where the name America first appears on a map.  Below is an 1879 facsimile of the Waldseemüller globe gores.

The cleric and printer Johann Schöner was another German who played an important role in the history of globe gores.  He was the first to bring printed terrestrial and celestial globes together as a matched pair starting in 1515.   Below is an example of celestial globe gores by Schöner from 1517.

The 16^th century Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator’s terrestrial and celestial globe gores created between 1541-1551 improved upon Johann Schöner’s and Martin Waldseemüller woodcut engraving technique with copper engraved plates for his gores and also added equatorial coordinates and an ecliptic (path of the sun in its apparent orbit around the Earth) line that are now common features of modern terrestrial globe gores.  The copper engraving technique allowed for greater detail than woodcut and the metal plates could be updated with new geographic information. A new edition of globe gores made from a woodcut would need to be entirely re-sculpted from scratch.  The technical additions of features like the ecliptic line made the finished terrestrial globe more useful, especially with its celestial pair which also included this line.

Another Flemish cartographer and engraver by the name of Jodocus Hondius was a contemporary of Mercator.  He purchased Mercator’s Atlas map plates in 1604 and republished and sold a prolific number of updated copies.

Hondius’ terrestrial 1615 globe gores shown above depict the Mercator-influenced features such as the ecliptic line and equatorial coordinates.  The prime meridian on this map appears to be Ferro (Canary Islands), which was common for this time period.

My favorite globe gore maker is 17^th century Venetian friar, cartographer and cosmographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli.  He was famous for making at the time the largest pair of terrestrial and celestial globes in 1684 for the King of France, Louis XIV which were each 12 feet 7 inches in diameter.  After spending two years in Paris building these globes, he returned to Venice and founded the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti where he decided to reproduce the globes at a reduced three-and-a-half-foot diameter scale as printed globe gores.  The Geography and Map Division has a copy of the terrestrial three-and-a-half-foot globe gores (24 gores plus 2 polar calottes) cut and mounted flat daisy style in two frames with northern and southern hemisphere sections.  

The southern hemisphere set of gores above contains a cartouche with a dedication to Cardinal César d’Estrées (who sent him to Paris to make the large globes for Louis XIV) and a self-portrait of Coronelli being unveiled by a trio of cherubs.  Below is a section of a few of the northern hemisphere gores that shows North America at the time with beautifully done cartography and miniatures depicting watercraft and creatures.

A graphic diagram called the analemma representing the position and declination (angle) of the sun in the sky seen from a fixed location on Earth at the same mean solar time throughout the year was created by Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy in 1840 and subsequently started appearing on terrestrial globe gores thereafter.  Below is an example of an analemma in its typical figure-8 shape on a George F. Cram globe.

Below is another example of an analemma on Rand McNally set of globe gores from 1887 in an oval shape not only showing sun declination, but the position of the zodiac for every day of the year.

Modern globe gores typically have the features accumulated through globe gore making history.  As printing became more prevalent, so did the variety of arrangements of the gores on the printed page.  This 1942 military globe gore example by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services below shows an arrangement pattern of interleaved gores presumably as an efficiency with the use of the paper to reduce printing costs.

Printed globe gores provide a fascinating map format, a variety of which can be seen in the Geography and Map Division either in its original printed format on paper sheets, cut out 2D representations, or as part of finished globes. I will leave you with this facsimile 1705 example of a pair of constructed 24” terrestrial and celestial globes by George Christoph Eimmart which used globe gores.

 

Further Reading

A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox | Library of Congress