.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Johann Bernard Bauer (1752-1857) was the founder of one of the most successful family firm of Nuremberg globe and scientific instrument makers in the first half of the nineteenth century. The earliest apparent appearance of his name is on the 1790 celestial globe by Johann Georg Klinger, where he is recorded as the engraver; a year later he published the first globe of his own, a 2¾-inch diameter. terrestrial globe dated 1791. Together with and succeeded by his sons Carl Johann Sigmund (1780-1857) and Peter (1783-1847), Bauer produced globes from 1¾ to 8-inch diameter, as well as folding globes, a hollow wooden celestial sphere with a terrestrial globe inside, and the well-known "The World and its Inhabitants" terrestrial globes. "The World and its Inhabitants" globe comprises a 1¾-inch diameter terrestrial globe in a box, the inside base of which is applied with a long strip of hand-coloured figures, depicting the different national characters of the inhabitants of the world. Many of these are known and recorded, with variations in the illustrations and in their number, including "The World and its Animals", and in the language used. Whilst some of these examples bear the initials JCB, CJB, JCB or PB, they are most often found either unsigned or with the initials MPS (which, it has been suggested, may stand for "Marke Polar Sterne"). It is almost certain, however, that the company producing these was in some way connected with, or actually the same as, the Bauer workshop. Carl Bauer would also work with publisher Friedrich Campe, and Peter would work with the successors of Klinger's firm, the Klinger Kunsthandlung.