Author: Jessica Leigh Hester / Source: Atlas Obscura
Around 1745, Elizabeth Cushee shrank the entire world onto a wee little globe measuring just three inches across. Fashioned from paper gores curved and pasted onto a hollow wooden orb, the globe weighs no more than a few ounces.
It fits snugly inside a fish-skin case, the scaly exterior of which evokes the celestial confetti of the night sky. A smattering of colorful constellations are pasted onto the inside of the case, where they loom over land and sea. Continents and cosmos mingle in a curio the size of a plum.Pocket globes had been circulating since the 1600s, especially among sailors and students of cartography, write science journalists Betsy Mason and Greg Miller in their recent book, All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey. At the time, cartographic works ran the gamut from erudite and accessible, both in content and price. Lavishly illustrated atlases and star charts were designed for a lay audience, while comprehensive catalogues helped astronomers and navigators get more precise bearings. Cushee’s fell somewhere in between.
Other 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and English pocket globes sold for 6 guilders and 15 shillings, respectively, Miller says—roughly $75 or $100 today….
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