Globalicious

• 24 May 2025
• Author Suzanne Hendriks

As proud owners of two huge inflatable globes, and generally, lovers of everything map- and globe-related, we at De Facto were thrilled to find a copy of ‘Around the World in 200 Globes. Stories of the Twentieth Century’ on our doormat, published by Luster and written by Willem Jan Neutelings.

Neutelings is what you might call an accidental collector. After being a renowned architect and cofounder of Neutelings Riedijk Architects in Rotterdam, known for the MAS building in Antwerp, Gare Maritime in Brussels and the Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, he got hooked on globes. In an interview with Sabato, Neutelings explains how all of this got started. He had acquired a small American celestial globe from the fifties and couldn’t find any good books about its context and background. He decided to make one himself and started collecting globes along the way, to get to their stories. Their material evolution (from paper to Bakelite to plastic) and style development (from art nouveau to postmodernist) tells the tales of the 20th century, with mass-production and ever-increasing mobility and social or political change.

Neutelings collected more than 250 globes at his home in Brussels and wrote a book about the bulk of them. The book is much more than a collection of photos and descriptions of all sorts of globes, it’s also a history of design, discovery, science and material developments in the 20th century, as the byline on the cover ‘Stories of the Twentieth Century’ already gives away.

What I like best about the book is that it doesn’t have an order stemming from the collector’s point of view. As your own bookshelf might have an order that makes most sense to you (a shelf for travel books, a shelf of must-reads, a shelf of ‘given-to-me-but-probably-not-going-to-be-read), this book has lovely categories like Soviet Moon Globes, Black Slate Globes, Kitsch Globes, Relief Globes, Psychedelic Globes and Romantic Moon Globes, each title tantalising the reader in wanting to know more.

Fans of De Facto will most likely love reading the chapters about political globes. The twentieth century saw numerous dramatic events that changed the shape of borders and political states, like World War Two, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the break up of Yugoslavia, and of course the decolonisation of African, Asian and South-American countries. Take for example African decolonisation on globes: political globes of the first half of the 20th century show an Africa divided into only seven colors, representing European colonizers, as this was the way Africa was divided at the Berlin Colonial Conference, without any African leader present. In three decades following World War 2, 54 African countries emerged in reality, and thus also on maps and globes, making Africa ‘a globemaker’s nightmare’, as quoted in the book. Because every time a border changes or a new country comes into existence, all maps and globes that depict the previous situation, are outdated and will result in unsellable stock. At the same time, they provide an excellent clue to pinpoint and date the object.

Can you imagine being a globemaker in geopolitical unsteady times? ‘Wartime is complicated for globe makers’, Neutelings dryly notes. It’s understandable that people refrain from buying expensive globes if borders are likely to shift any time soon. Neutelings depicts a 1939 advertisement of one of these worried globe makers ‘Do not hesitate to purchase this globe because it shows Europe as it was in September 1, 1939’, it reads, offering a ‘Self-Revising Globe’ and a guarantee for a free map revision service after the war: ‘The publishers of this Cram Globe will supply new, revised map sections accurately die cut and so prepared that with the aid of very simple instructions the owner may bring his globe up to date.’ With paper, it was easier to update an existing globe than with later materials like plastic, as Neutelings also shows in the book.

There were even amazing semi-translucent globes with physical mapping on which you can switch on the political boundaries and switch them off again, to make them appear and disappear, as if to emphasize that it’s us humans, who made these borders. They are not really there, seen from space.

For educational purposes, black (or blank) slate globes were produced as early as the 19th century, so students could add on borders, rivers or time zones with chalk and later with felt pen and erase them again. A very cute educational tool was the see-through globe, by American Robert H. Farquhar. In the late 1940s he developed a transparent globe out of plexiglas, called it ‘One World’ and hoped that through the transparency, students would be more aware of the other side of the globe and the relationships between them.

I also enjoyed the historical photographs of people posing with globes. Understandably, it’s often world leaders (or people who would like to be one) who pose like this. The globe one of the 20th century popes is photographed with, apparently has some handwritten notes the pope added himself. And when Saddam Hussein ordered globes from Paris, he ordered that all Islamic countries would be coloured identically in bright orange, symbolizing a pan-Islamic unity. And the globe that Suharto is posing with, has the south pole on top instead of on the bottom, putting Asia more central stage.

Globes, like maps, always have a political aspect. A Chinese globe will represent Taiwan as part of China, and an Argentinian globe is likely to show the Falkland island (Malvinas) as an integral part of Argentina. And, worth an honourable mention, although not very geopolitical, is the photo of Marilyn Monroe and her magnificent smile, astride on a globe.

This book is a world in itself, with each highlighted globe telling its own story, whether it’s about trends, materials, political borders or scientific frontiers. There is a cigarette-lighter globe, a Braille globe; a talking globe, lunar globes (like the first Soviet moon globes, with the dark side of the moon left blank, as it was only explored by Russians in 1959), radio globes and inflatable globes. All these globes are lovely little windows on the 20th century and the people who designed, manufactured and bought them. Much like a map or a globe will not bore you easily, this book also doesn’t, you keep seeing new interesting stuff with every page you turn.

Around the world in 200 globes. Stories of the Twentieth Century, by Willem Jan Neutelings 2024 Luster publishing.

Suzanne Hendriks is a researcher for documentaries, tv programs and exhibitions. She studied archaeology and journalism and is interested in everything that has to do with history and the scars it left on the present and on maps.