A PAIR OF GEORGE II 16 INCH GLOBES BY JOHN SENEX, The globes: English, dated 1740
The stands: English, circa 1755
Diameter (across legs): 26¼ in; 66.5 cm
Further images
John Senex (1678-1740) was one of the leading cartographers of his time. After Senex’s death, James Ferguson acquired his copper plates for the gores (the flat printed maps that can then be shaped to fit a globe) at auction. The plates then passed to Benjamin Martin and subsequently to Dudley Adams who published a new edition of Senex’s globes in 1793.
A comparable pair of globes, formerly the property of the Earl of Hardwicke of Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, are now in the collection at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. The carved mahogany stands were added to these globes some fifteen years later when they were in the possession of the 1st Viscount Hampden.
A Dudley Adams terrestrial globe with Senex gores circa 1740 and updated by Adams in 1793 is in the collection of All Souls College, Oxford.
Provenance
Robert Hampden-Trevor, 1st Viscount Hampden (1706-1783), for Hampden House, Buckinghamshire, England;
By descent to the Earls of Buckinghamshire, Hampden House, Buckinghamshire, England, until;
Curtis & Henson and Hamnett, Raffety & Co., ‘Hampden House, Buckinghamshire’, 17-22 April 1939, lot 457;
Private collection, England.
Literature
An Inventory and Valuation for Probate of Furniture, Paintings and other Effects being in Hampden House, Great Missenden, the property of the Executors of the Right Hon.able and Reverend the Earl of Buckinghamshire, 1887, ‘pair of globes on stands’ and listed in the Old Library.
An Inventory of Furniture, Paintings and other Effects being in Hampden House, Great Missenden, Bucks, July 1887, ‘pair of Globes on carved mahogany stands with leather covers’ and listed in North East Wing Old Library.
Curtis & Henson and Hamnett, Raffety & Co., ‘Hampden House, Buckinghamshire’, sale catalogue, 17--22 April 1939, lot 457 listed in the Great Hall, ‘A pair of globes, 18th century, celestial and terrestrial, painted with emblems and signs, and revolving on Early Chippendale mahogany stands, which are carved in relief foliage, and each standing on scroll legs with 'fiddle head' terminals, 24in. diam.’
