Universal Globe Collection

Universal Globe Collection by Zoffoli​

Unique signature blue dust map color in the Universal Globe Collection

The Universal Globe Collection is a series of globes designed by a company that manufactured Italian globe bar cabinets that had opened in 1960 in Calenzano, Florence 11 years after Zoffoli. The Italian bar globe manufacturing company successfully produced bar globes until 1989 when it closed, unfortunately, at which time Tres Esse-Firenze, another Italian manufacturer, purchased its designs and materials. Sadly, Tre Esse followed suit and closed in 2012. However, Zoffoli was able to purchase its designs, drawings, molds and other materials and is now keeping both the Tres Esse-Firenze and, as a consequence, the Universal Globe bar globes and brands alive for the world to enjoy.

Zoffoli is now the sole remaining manufacturer of bar globe furniture in Italy.

Rust color map as featured in the Universal Globe Collection

The Universal Globe Collection brings to life the geographical knowledge and comprehension of the 17th & 18th centuries. These Italian globe bar cabinets bring to mind the sketches of Dutch cartographers who used as their sources the reports of transoceanic navigators such as Barents, Le Maire, Tasman and Roggeveen. Other sources of the same time period from different regions contributed vague geographic representations of remote areas such as the majority of Tartaria, the sub-polar zone of North America and the Australian eastern coasts – the Arctic and Antarctic were simply enveloped by a fuzzy blanket of “unknown land.”

The prevalence of Latin place names was preserved – this gave the cartography a universal imprint. The drawings reproduce the ornamental and mythological motifs of the era. The sailing ships represent those which, following many years of skepticism and constraints placed upon science, portrayed the actual roundness of the world and led to the geographical three dimensional perspective that only an earth globe can offer the human eye.