Małgorzata Taborska

Scientific instruments, including globes, rarely appear on tapestries. Their images are complex, posing many problems in their creation, both at the design and execution stages. The difficulty is not only the globe, but also the cartographic drawing itself. Early manuscript globes were unique objects. It was not until the 16th century that their maps began to be printed in the form of copperplates. This made globes more common. Therefore, in the 17th or 18th century, weavers could rely not only on a drawing of the object, but also on their own idea of what a globe looked like.

Seventeen tapisseries were found, with 19 representations of globes, of which more than half (11 pieces) are globes of the Earth. In only two cases is the map depicted correctly; in another two, the image refers to a real map. In the case of celestial globes, almost all iconographies have correctly rendered constellations, although the number of constellations is significantly reduced, probably to improve the legibility of the drawing. The images of the globes have been used in a symbolic sense, with only three copies depicting real Earth models. All globes appear in the composition in the context of an attribute or symbol rather than as independently portrayed objects.

National heritage embodies cultural and historic values as well as science and technology. Preservation, protection and popularisation of the data on scientific heritage is important not only from the angle of the development of national identity, but as an element of promoting science nationwide and abroad. The primary question is the preservation of the objects documenting this development, such as scientific tools, natural and medical preparations, chemical and pharmaceutical objects, as well as documents and photographs. The case of France is an excellent example to follow, especially when it comes to the concept and range of creating national digital databases. The Ministry of Culture (ASEISTE base and domain) and the Ministry of Science (PATSTEC base and domain) are involved at the organisational and financial level.

While creating Polish databases, it is necessary to adjust them to local conditions. Databases should be of informational, not register use, merging interdisciplinary data regarding objects retained in museums and institutes’ collections and used in test laboratories and didactics. It is crucial to work out the transparent terminology and ways of record indexation.

Kipp’s apparatus belongs to a group of very special laboratory glassware. Its appearance results from cooperation of two outstanding specialists: Jacobus Kipp and Johann H.W. Geissler. The apparatus serves for obtaining small amounts of strongly reactive gases, on site, at the laboratory. Its asset is the possibility of supervising the reaction. This successful model of apparatus was long used in laboratories, along with its numerous modifications.
It was created in 1860, but small numbers of the apparatus are still manufactured. In laboratory equipment it serves as a source of in situ nascendi gases. Currently it has been replaced by precision electronic apparatus.
 

Polish-language globes are didactic aids, but also valuable cartographic monuments and documents of the Polish language. They have been manufactured since the mid-19th century, initially in Bavaria’s Nuremberg and in Prague in the Czech Republic, and since the 1920s in our country. The production of globes is multi-stage and can be financed partially or entirely by sponsors and patrons. In addition to the products of the company C. Abel-Klinger Kunsthandlung, the first copies were financed by patriot booksellers: Jabłoński, Milikowski, Idzik and Hoesick. After the First World War, copies were financed by publishing companies: Zakłady Główczewskiego, Pomoc Szkolna, Nasz Sklep–Urania, Wydawnictwo Polskie, publishing companies from Katowice, and the mysterious Deutsher Verlag publishing house based in Warsaw and Poznań. Changes in printing technology significantly reduced their price, demand for them by schools and children and young people popularised them as teaching aids. Companies financing and popularising these Polish-language publications played an important role in the publishing of globes. To a large extent, these were companies associated with the production and distribution of teaching materials. In general, all companies discussed can be gathered in three groups: booksellers financing or co-financing the publication of Polish-language globes; publishers responsible for financing and publishing globes; publishers responsible for making maps.

Problem of animal representations in applied art on the example of an inkwell from the Jagellonian University Museum’s Collection
A 19th-century inkwell in the form of a cross spider which can be found in the Jagiellonian University collection represents a large group of Viennese bronze figurines. It was probably manufactured at Franz Bergmann’s shop in Vienna in 1894. In the same year it was bought by Zygmunt Pusłowski in Kraków, most likely at Wilhelm Fenz’s shop (Skład Towarów Galanteryjnych). The inkwell was cast, then chasing and painting were applied, faithfully rendering the specimen’s morphology detail. Despite some anatomic inaccuracies, one can identify the species, sex and age of the original specimen. It can be assumed that the workshop marketed a series of inkwells in the form of spiders. A similar inkwell which has survived in a private collection, features a naturalistically rendered spider with the inkwell container hidden in its abdomen – in this case it is a Theridiidae (tangle-web) spider. The same anatomical errors may be found in both items, but in both cases a similar care for detail, also in taxonomic terms, is shown. Interestingly, the artist has chosen both specimens belonging to synanthropic species which people can see around. While the garden spider was modelled after a live spider during its everyday occupations, the representative of the Steatoda was dead. It was probably found somewhere in the cellar or a cubbyhole.
The figurines were made using the lost-wax casting technique, using a plaster mould, thanks to which precision in rendering detail was possible. The manufacturer faithfully rendered tiny details of the model, but its size was enlarged nearly 1000 times. The items are of interest in the cultural context as well – the spider motif has a symbolic meaning which may be retraced back to the ancient era and which was evolving until the late-19th-century symbolism.

“The Golden Jagiellonian Globe” (early 16th century; in the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum) is the earliest globe of the Earth in the Polish collections and one of the oldest in the world. The oldest known globe of the Earth was made by Martin Behaim in 1492. The second in order are two globes from the same period: the Hunt-Lenox Globe (c. 1510, now in the New York Public Library) and the Jagiellonian Globe. Despite its name, the Jagiellonian Globe is an astronomical instrument – a mechanical armillary sphere. On the orb hiding the mechanism there is a map of the Earth, dated 1510–1511. This object has been sparsely analysed, especially in the last decades. Those analysis that were performed have until now mainly focused on the depicted map and the typology of particular details, though there are also studies on its operation and provenance. Research performed in the 21st century focused on WWII history of the globe.A preliminary analysis of the sphere and the clock mechanism allows a connection with  French products from Blois near Paris. The map of the globe, associated with the Italian centre, presents information on geographical discoveries of the time, based on maps by Martin Waldseemüller and letters by Amerigo Vespucci, published in the edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (Saint-Dié, 1507). The map is a twin to the layout of the lands and seas depicted on Hunt-Lenox’s Globe. It is distinguished by a mysterious continent-island, noted on the Kraków globe as “America Noviter Reperta.” The provenance of the globe is known since the 17th century, when the Kraków professor, Jan Brożek, donated it to the Collegium Maius library of the Jagiellonian University. Its fate during World War II, when it was hidden from the Nazis by docent Jadwiga Schoen, is extraordinary. After the war, the globe found its way to the Jagiellonian University Museum, where it has been exhibited ever since.