Leen Helmink Antique Maps

Very little is known of Oterschaden, not even his nationality. He signed his globe gores with the epithet "Belga" indicating the Low Countries, but his globes are dedicated to the Bishop of Comminges in the south of France who held office 1580-1613. His work is related to that of Gulielmus Nicolai, working in Lyon and Avignon.

To complicate matters further, the horizon rings associated with the surviving globes by him at Greenwich (GLB0119 & GLB0120) have the wind names in German, from which Dekker (Globes at Greenwich) infers a possible Lorraine background and suggests Strasbourg as his town of residence.

Oterschaden’s cartography is not derived from the early 17th-century globes produced by the Hondius and Blaeu workshops but seems to be based on sources from 50 years earlier, and is most similar to the gores of Francois Demongenet of c.1560 (see Christie’s King Street 12 July 2017 lot 199 for a German globe in the Demongenet tradition). As with that globe, the size of this example is suggestive of it having formed part an elaborate armillary sphere or an astronomical clock. The style of engraving on the globe is representative of the late 16th- and early 17th-century globe and instrument makers of Germany and Flanders.

(Christie's)