The Cary family firm of globe-makers was founded in the late eighteenth century by John Cary (1755-1835), the son of a Wiltshire maltster. Cary was in the engraving and map-selling business from about 1782 at Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London and then at the Corner of Arundel Street, Strand. He had previously been apprenticed to William Palmer and become a freeman in 1778. The first globes by Cary were advertised in the Traveller's Companion in January 1791. The advertisement mentions that the 3½, 9, 12 and 21in. diameter terrestrial and celestial globes were made "from entire new Plates", a proud boast for a maker launching his globes on the market for the first time, in a climate where the copper plates for gores were commonly bought or inherited and altered or otherwise amended.
The Cary firm was unusual in its early adoption of non-figurative celestial cartography; in the advertising material they offer celestial globes with constellations depicted either with the traditional animals and mythical figures, or, as here, with simply the boundaries outlined. It was not until the third quarter of the eighteenth century that this latter presentation became standard in celestial cartography. In addition, rather than following the usual practice of presenting the celestial gores pasted to the interior of the case for the terrestrial globe, they here provide a separate celestial globe, and paste to the inside of the terrestrial case the useful list of towns and cities for which there is not space on the globe, and the quaint map of the world as it was in the time of Caesar.