Globes Revisited

When I started researching the globes I was operating under the basic assumption that the date of the globes was appropriate to the period in which Paul McCobb might have likely designed them, which is to say 1952 to 1959. Later I learned this assumption was inherently flawed as further research and study revealed that the globes were in fact produced in the 1970's.

The problem this presented is that when I contacted Replogle to ask them about it I specifically asked them about their production during the 50’s, 1950 to 1959! To which they replied that they had not manufactured anything of the sort in that time period. With that answer in hand I believed I had reached a dead end in this line of enquiry. I despaired of ever finding who manufactured these globes.

A year ago when I started on this line of research it had never occurred to me that the timeline estimate could possibly have been quite so wrong and misleading. It was only recently after revisiting my notes on the globes that I decided to date them myself using the information Replogle provides for doing so. After doing this the truth of the matter became readily apparent, as I have already written about in a previous blog post.

Early this AM the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, it came to me that I had never inquired about their production in the 70’s! I never asked the question because I had foolishly trusted in the general competence of the questionable Paul McCobb attribution to have gotten the year right if not the specifics as to designer and/or manufacturer.

A quick google books search for Replogle Globe without the limiting factor of only searching between the years 1950 and 1959 told the tale and yielded this clipping from the November 1977 issue of the Texas Monthly page 180 which very clearly gives us all of the information necessary to finally debunk the fallacy of the Paul McCobb Globe.



"GLOBE ON BRASS STAND
- 3' tall 16" dia. globe.
Replogle Globe, Inc. World Classic Series -
Leroy M. Tolman, Cartographer . . .$199."

There it is in black and white, mystery solved! It is indeed a 1970’s Replogle design. In fact variations on this Replogle design persisted from the mid 70’s all the way through to the early 90’s. A version of it in wrought iron, The Eclipse Globe (now discontinued), was manufactured until very recently and can still be purchased from several vendors.


Comments

  1. FInding an ad crediting the cartographer (who is only responsible for the MAP on the globe) does not debunk the McCobb attribution to the Globe base. Nor does the fact that these globes were manufactured well after his death. Licensing of designs and the shelving of design work to only be made available years later for any variety of reasons are common in the design world.

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  2. This might have been true providing that there was any licensing of his designs after his death. This however was not the case according to family members.

    A) There is absolutely no tangible proof to support the idea that these globes ARE designed by Paul McCobb, not one smidgen. Your stated argument seems like the words of a antiques dealer or auction house trying to desperately defend a sale that they now know might be contested.

    B) The McCobb family has no record of this design or of any licensing of the design.

    B) There is also the quite damning evidence of this exact globe base appearing in the Replogle catalogs starting in 1976 (and not before).

    I would say that the matter is really not ambiguous at all or open to interpretation.

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