Replogle – The Map Room

Waldseemüller Globe Ornament

Published on 4 December 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

I didn’t know Replogle made Christmas ornaments. I stumbled across the above, a Waldseemüller globe ornament—i.e., an ornament based on the Waldseemüller globe gores—while poking around my local map store for the first time in years. I bought the last one they had in stock. It’s 3¼″ (8.3 cm) in diameter, comes with a stand, and cost me all of $10. There’s apparently a Coronelli globe ornament as well.

No links to point you at. Amazon doesn’t stock them (though they have other globe ornaments, like this one and this one), and Replogle’s terrible website is Flash-only.

Globemaking Films

Published on 20 November 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

This short film on globemaking from 1955 has been making the social media rounds:

Compare it to this short film from 1949:

It’s nearly identical in its turns of phrase and factoids, though there are slightly different emphases. Though the firm is unnamed, it’s clearly the same one: it’s even the same guy doing the varnishing.

These films fascinate me because they describe a kind of globemaking—layers of plaster, paper globe gores, and varnish—that I don’t think happens any more. There are some similarities to Bellerby’s globemaking methods, but Bellerby’s underlying globe isn’t a plaster shell. And most of us don’t have the money for a Bellerby globe: if we have a globe, it’s almost certainly a Replogle. As this short video from the Chicago History Museum reveals, Replogle’s globes are a combination of paper, cardboard and glue: