1765126867Code 8388 Large Terrestrial GlobeLarge globe published in the 1940s by Paravia based on a design by C. Boehmer.
In addition to the territorial map, ocean currents are depicted.
Papier-mâché and plaster sphere covered with twelve spindles and two lithographed paper caps, base and meridian circle in burnished metal.
Good condition, two conservative restorations on the Atlantic Ocean and soldering on the base, very good legibility.
Dimensions: 40 x 65 cm – 15.8 x 25.6 in.
The G.B. Paravia publishing house was founded in Turin in 1802 when Giovanni Battista Paravia took over an existing printing press. Initially, it published religious and scholastic texts, but under the leadership of his son Giorgio, it consolidated into a solid company well-established in the Piedmontese publishing landscape. Upon Giorgio's death, the business passed to Innocenzo Vigliardi, who combined his surname with that of the Paravia family and gave a strong impetus to the company's expansion. During the 19th century, Paravia grew to become one of Italy's leading publishing houses in the school textbook sector, expanding its production to include dictionaries, children's books, essays, fiction, and teaching materials. In 1873, it acquired the Stamperia Reale and significantly increased its production capacity. In the early 20th century, it continued to grow, introducing illustrated teaching aids such as atlases, wall maps, scientific maps, and terrestrial and celestial globes, used in schools throughout Italy. In 1920 it became a public limited company and in 1927 it moved to a new, modern complex, which however was destroyed by the bombings of 1942 during the war, causing the loss of many historical archives.
After the war, the company resumed operations, rebuilt its headquarters, and adapted to the changing needs of Italian schools, expanding its catalog with updated textbooks and new educational resources. In the decades that followed, Paravia remained a key brand in national schoolbook publishing, until 2000, when it merged with Bruno Mondadori to create Paravia Bruno Mondadori Editori. In 2006, it was incorporated into the international Pearson group. Its long history, spanning over two centuries, reflects the evolution of schoolbook publishing in Italy and the fundamental role Paravia has played in educating generations of students through widely distributed textbooks, atlases, and teaching materials.
The first recorded terrestrial globe is the one attributed by Strabo, historian and geographer, to the Greek Crates of Mallo (c. 150 BC). The first globes, constructed in the early 16th century under the impetus of great geographical explorations, immediately began to be used for educational purposes in princely courts, monasteries, and colleges; the globe later began to conquer universities and high schools. In the 18th century, the official geographer of Louis XV, King of France, Didier Robert de Vaugondy, thanks to the practice acquired in the construction of globes, expanded the article “Globe” of the Encyclopédie by illustrating in detail the distinction between a celestial globe (which represents the concave surface of the sky with its constellations) and a terrestrial globe (which instead represents the surface of the Earth with the seas, islands, rivers, cities, etc.) and the techniques for making them: two papier-mâché hemispheres pressed and modeled on or inside a hemispherical mold, dried and strengthened on the inside with a wooden board, then glued and covered with a thin layer of plaster on which the spindles of the globe were glued of areas between two meridians, usually twelve, on paper previously printed from copperplate engravings and colored, each covering 30 degrees of longitude.
It was with the nineteenth century, with its boom in trade, circulation, and the introduction of compulsory education, that the desire to explore distant lands increased, making the old method of globe construction inadequate. Maps printed from engraved plates were no longer sufficient, and the only real resource became lithography, which made it possible to print and promptly update maps that, with the growth of geographical discoveries in various countries, became increasingly obsolete.
