DESNOS, Louis-Charles HARDY, Jacques, Paris, 1744/1757

細節

DESNOS, Louis-Charles HARDY, Jacques, Paris, 1744/1757
A fine mid-18th Century paper and pasteboard Ptolemaic armillary sphere, the 1½-inch (3.8cm.) diameter terrestrial globe at the centre made up of twelve hand-coloured engraved gores, the cartouche in the northern Pacific GLOBE TERREST. 1744 and a note in the southern Pacific par Hardy, the equatorial graduated in degrees, the meridian and ecliptic not shown, the continents showing only country names and some rivers in South America and Africa, South America and Europe heavily outlined in brown, Europe also shaded green, Australia labelled N. Hollande and shown joined to Papua New Guinea with no eastern coastline and only intermittent stretches of southern coastline, New Zealand shown by a stretch of western coastline, North America with little western and no northern coastline, held in the centre of an armillary sphere, card Sun and Moon discs suspended on iron arms moving around it, each engraved with the appropriate face, with polar circles ungraduated and tropic circles, equatorial and colures graduated in degrees in four quadrants on applied hand-coloured paper, also with an ecliptic band with hand-coloured engraved paper showing days of the month and of the houses of the Zodiac with attractive pictures and names for both, all edged in red, with a similarly constructed hour dial and iron pointer, the meridian with degrees in four quadrants and a scale for Climats and Heures and further engraved se monte et se vend chés Desnos rue St Jacque S.^t Severin AParis 1757 and Monte Par l'Auteur, held in a pasteboard meridian with hand-coloured engraved paper circle graduated in degrees in four quadrants, with days of the houses of the Zodiac with attractive pictures, days of the month, thirty-two compass directions in French and sixteen wind directions in Italian, raised on four curved quadrant supports edged in red, each with applied engraved paper listing the latitude and longitude of thirty-two international cities and towns, raised on an ebonised and baluster turned wooden column and circular plinth base -- 16in. (40.7cm.) high

See Colour Illustration and Details

出版

DEKKER, E., Globes at Greenwich (Oxford, 1999)
--,and van der KROGT, P., Globes From The Western World (London, 1993) van der KROGT, P., Old Globes In the Netherlands (Utrecht, 1984)
STEVENSON, E., Terrestrial and Celestial Globes (New Haven, 1921)

拍品專文

Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1791) was an engineer, living and working in Paris, of Danish origin according to Stevenson and French according to everyone else. He was, however, known to title himself "Ingénieur-géographe de la Ville de Paris et du Roi de Danemark" and "marchand libraire" although the reason for such an honour from the King of Denmark remains unrecorded.
What is certain is that Desnos was at the heart of mid eighteenth-century French globe-making; he is recorded as being a close friend of globe-maker Didier Robert de Vaugondy (1723-1786) and he came into globe-making in 1749 via marriage to one Marie-Charlotte Loye, the widow of Nicolas Hardy (before 1717-1744) who in 1738 had set up and run a globe-making workshop with his father Jacques (fl.1738-1745). Desnos also, naturally enough, gained possession of their copper plates.
The Hardy workshop already had a repertoire of globes of about 7, 11, 16 and 32cm. diameters and Desnos produced, in collaboration with engraver Jean-Baptiste Nolin the younger (1686-1762), globes of 16, 21.5, 26 and 32.5cm. diameter. None of the 1½in. diameter seen in this armillary appears to have been recorded. Desnos also published an Atlas Général et élémentaire in Paris in 1778, and in 1782 reissued Coronelli's 110cm. diameter celestial gores, together with a new set of celestial gores incorporating the work of Abbé Nicolas de la Caille (1713-1762) whose expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in 1751/52 resulted in his cataloguing of 9800 southern stars and 14 new constellations.
Many of Desnos globes bear a similar inscription on the brass meridian to the one found here giving the address of rue St Julien le Pauvre. This was the address of the Hardy workshop, but he appears to have moved to the address in rue St Jacques in about 1757, making the example here offered one of the first instruments issued from the new workshop.