KIRKWOOD & Son, Edinburgh

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KIRKWOOD & Son, Edinburgh
KIRKWOOD'S NEW TERRESTRIAL GLOBE with the very latest DISCOVERIES Published by Kirkwood & Son 11 So:StAndrewsStEdm.r and JA.s W. Lyon & Co Edinburgh Bazaar 25 Princes Street Venders by Special Appointment [c.1834]
A rare 6-inch (15.2cm.) diameter terrestrial table globe made up of twelve hand-coloured engraved gores and two polar calottes, the equatorial graduated in hours twice and in degrees, the equinoctial colure graduated in degrees, the ecliptic graduated in days of the houses of the Zodiac, the oceans with an analemma and some notes such as Isles discovered by La Perouse, Davis's Land or Easter I. of Cook Mar.1774 and Owhyhee where Cap.tCook was killed in February 1779, Antarctica showing Enderby's Land with Discd by Biscoe 1831, also showing Graham's Land, the continents with nation states delicately shaded and hand-outlined in various colours and finely detailed showing towns cities and rivers, Tasmania labelled Land of Diemen (minor discolouration, very discrete repairs with no detail loss to northern Asia and Greenland, minor detail loss to Ethiopia) with a stamped brass hour dial and meridian circle, the ebonised horizon with paper ring graduated in degrees, with compass directions, days of the month and days of the houses of the Zodiac, raised on four ebonised baluster-turned legs united by cross-stretchers -- 9¾in. (24.8cm.) high

See Colour Illustration and Detail

出版

CLIFTON, G., Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers: 1550-1851 (London, 1995)
DEKKER, E., Globes at Greenwich (Oxford, 1999)

注意事項

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. This lot is subject to Collection and Storage Charges.

拍品專文

James Kirkwood and Sons were publishers and engravers established in Edinburgh in 1774. One of the sons was Robert Kirkwood, who succeeded his father in 1824. It was probably Robert who engraved the gores, the cartography of which was authored by Robert Scott, a teacher of mathematics and astronomy. James Kirkwood is notable for producing the first Scottish globe, a terrestrial sphere of 12-inch diameter, in 1804, with a companion celestial following in 1806. Alexander Donaldson, a fine publisher of globes himself, as well as being a tool-maker and turner, collaborated with the firm on a celestial globe in 1818, Scott having died in 1803. In 1824, the Kirkwood workshop burnt down, destroying their gores, but the son Robert set up a new one. Up until the fire, brothers William and Alexander Keith Johnston had been apprenticed in the workshop; in 1828, they collaborated with Donaldson on a terrestrial globe, but by the mid-nineteenth century the brothers were the leading globe-makers in Scotland, and the fortunes of the Kirkwoods had somewhat declined.

Clifton does not record James and W. Lyon in Edinburgh, although Hunter Lyon is recorded working as an optician at various other addresses in Edinburgh between 1793 and 1803, and Peter Lyon, similarly employed, and also at various other addresses between 1780- and 1799. Perhaps James and W. were sons. There is also another Peter Lyon, making mathematical, nautical and optical instruments in Leith between 1748 and 1788.