Global Positions

Let's do some globe-trotting today--here are some out-of-this world items from my personal collection of globes, maps and cartography-related curios!  Above are a few of my vintage globes.

 I think Valentine's with globes or maps are the sweetest!  They are hard to find, though.

Detail of the graphics on a vintage game board called, "Game of the United States."

An older copy of Lucy Hammett's Texas Bingo game, found in a thrift store in Louisiana. Lucy Dittmar Hammett of Austin, Texas came up with the idea of Texas Bingo while playing Loteria, a Mexican picture bingo game, with her children. The illustrations on Lucy's other games such as Bug Bingo, Nature Bingo, and Texas Bingo are her own. Find out more about her games here.

A vintage lunar globe--from Etsy--made from metal, and mounted on a plastic stand.  It came with the original box and descriptive paper, too.  The Viewmaster reel, "Project Apollo," was published in 1964, and had artist's renderings of what  a lunar landing would look like--designed to excite young would-be astronauts!

I lived in Hawai'i from 1998 to 2001, so I have a number of vintage cartographic images of the islands.  This is a scan from a tourist brochure from the 1960s.

This is one of my favorite illustrated map images of Hawai'i, from a vintage tourist booklet. Each island is shown with it's official flower (the Hawai'ian names are in bold type).

 A couple summers past, I gave a "Global Positions" party for my husband's work associates.  The attendees were all Chevron employees with varied backgrounds and not everyone knew each other, so I needed a way to get people to talk.  The invitations were "passports" and each family was asked to bring a dish from their favorite country.  The party was a huge success--we had about 50 people and some really delicious food.  This was my coffee table centerpiece.  I put travel-related stuff all over the house and even hung a world map outside by the pool!