Beschreibung:

MINIATURE SILVER TERRESTRIAL GLOBE -- AFTER JOANNES OTERSCHADEN (fl.1580-c.1603)
MINIATURE SILVER TERRESTRIAL GLOBE -- AFTER JOANNES OTERSCHADEN (fl.1580-c.1603) A silver Terrestrial Globe. [Germany: last quarter of 16th century], diameter 6 cm, (2½ inches). An elaborate and finely engraved miniature globe with a detailed image of the world, the seas stippled and decorated with four sailing ships and three sea monsters, the land showing mountains and rivers, named as profusely as space allows, and small crowns placed to denote kingdoms. The two silver spheres joined along the plane of the eliptic, holes at North and South Poles for earlier supporting pins. Several small texts are to be found notably in the Southern Continent below India 'Terra nove plane cognita Inventa A° 1499' and by the Moluccas 'Insula nove inventa'. The globe names all the continents, Equator and tropics, the oceans and some islands. (Several small indents to the surface.) Mounted on a modern metal tripod stand. A RARE AND BEAUTIFULLY ENGRAVED MINIATURE SILVER GLOBE, MODELLED ON THE WORK OF JOHANNES OTERSCHADEN, probably made to form a part of a globe clock or elaborate armillary sphere. Johannes Oterschaden published a pair of globes at 17cm diameter c.1600. The date chosen since they are dedicated to Bishop of Comminges in the south of France, who held office 1580-1613. Cf Dekker Globes at Greenwich GLBO119; Shirley Mapping of the World 237. Elements of Oterschaden's geography almost certainly derive from Francois Demongenet's terrestrial globe of 1560, both were in Southern France, Demongenet in Vejoul in Franche Comté. In addition a copper engraved globe diameter 21 cm ascribed to Christoph Schleppp, 'the Welserglobus' now in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris is almost identical with Oterschaden. (see Fauser Die Welt in Haunen , 1967 pp 68-71.) It seems likely that a group of globe makers in France, Germany and Leiden namely Oterschaden, Schniepp, and Willem Nicolai were using a similar source of geography, and to this group, 'the crowned globes', must be added this miniature example.