Show Globe - Design and Colors

Design and Colors

Next to their origins, the greatest debate about show globes is what, if anything, the colors of the liquids symbolized. Red and blue may have indicated arterial and venous blood. One belief was that if the globe was filled with red liquid there was a plague in town, but if it was filled with green all was well. Pharmacists could create vibrant colors with chemicals in their shops, often following a recipe book.

Most globes were plain glass, but sometimes they were punty cut or etched glass. Some had multiple stoppers, each stopper smaller than the one below, tapering to a small finial at the top. They could be freestanding or wall-mounted. If they were freestanding, they hung from a brass chain; the most elaborate had multiple tiers, each chamber containing a different color of water. It was not so much the pharmacists who were responsible for the evolution of show globes to works of arts, but American glass manufacturers. Pharmaceutical catalogs during the 1870s advertised numerous styles of show globes with each glass manufacturer developing his own design. A US patent was granted in 1869 to Henry Whitney of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a show globe with a colored glass body with a neck and base of transparent uncolored glass. The purpose of this design was to eliminate the need to use colored liquids, which could leave a residue inside the bottle. Though oil could be used to illuminate the colored glass panes in windows, gas lighting in the early 19th century led to the general use of show globes. They could be lit from the interior or placed in front of a gas jet. In the US, globes were usually illuminated by a light placed behind them.