6231. Rare Swedish Miniature Terrestrial Globe by Åkerman 1762.

RARE MINIATURE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE BY ÅKERMAN - THE FIRST SWEDISH GLOBEMAKER. ÅKERMAN, ANDERS. Globus terraqueus congruenter recentissimis observationib, cura. Uppsala, Anders Åkerman, 1762.

Miniature terrestrial globe, hand-coloured, 11 cm diameter, also named "Åkermans dubbelglob" (double-globe), the sphere applied with 12 engraved and hand-coloured gores, pivots at poles. Original sheep-skin case with each half applied with 12 celestial half-gores on the inner side, 2 metal hooks. The terrestrial globe with some minor repairs to the two poles and in the Pacific (near Solomon Islands), some minor browning. Case with only slight wear.

EXTREMELY RARE.
In 1968 The Royal Library in Sweden owned the only traceable copy of this miniature globe (according to Bratt's work on Swedish globes (published 1968).

Anders Åkerman (1723-1778), mathematician, engraver and globe manufacturer, known as the first Swedish globemarker. He was a mathematics student at Uppsala University and in the 1740s he studied for Carl Bergquist in Stockholm, who was an engraver for the Royal Academy of Science. Åkerman was appointed engraver for the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala (Kungliga Vetenskaps-Societeten) in 1757. Two years later he started his globe workshop, which in a short time became highly regarded. The first globes he produced were a pair of 30 cm globes, the first to be published in Sweden.
As Uppsala in 1766 was hit by a devastating fire, Åkerman lost about 60 pairs of globes. After his death, the workshop was taken over by mapmaker Fredrik Akrel, who continued to publish globes in Åkerman's name.

Literature: Bratt, A chronicle of Swedish globes, p. 58 ff., 135-36 (1968); Hultmark-Moselius, Swedish coppersmiths and etchers, p. 378-80.

Provenance: Gunnar Skoog (died in 2016), Swedish map collector; also a representative at IMCS (International Map Collector's Society).