Repair, restoration and the line between them

Two words are used interchangeably in the globe trade and they describe different acts. A repair returns a function; a restoration returns an appearance. An object can be repaired without being restored, and restored without being repaired, and the Institute's six-state condition scale treats the two entirely differently: a repaired axis leaves a globe at G-4, while a single replaced gore puts it at G-5 regardless of how well the work was done.

No trade body has published a definition of either term. What follows is the Institute's working distinction and the four questions it applies.

The distinction

Repair
An intervention on the structure that returns a function the object had lost: an axis that turns again, a stand that stands, a seam that holds. Nothing is added to the printed surface.
Restoration
An intervention on the printed surface: replacement, retouching, infill, revarnishing. It returns an appearance. It always removes evidence, and that is not a criticism — it is what it is for.

The consequence for grading is stated plainly on the condition scale, and it surprises people: G-5 Restored sits between G-4 Damaged and G-6 Remnant, and a competently restored globe may be worth more than a worn original and is still G-5. A grading scale that encodes price ceases to describe the object.

The four questions

  1. Is it reversible? A stand re-glued with a reversible adhesive can be undone. Infill toned into the surrounding print cannot. The Institute records irreversible work as such.
  2. Does it remove evidence? A replaced gore destroys the only copy of what was printed there. Revarnishing conceals crazing, lifting and earlier retouching in one stroke — see varnish and crazing.
  3. Is it detectable afterwards? Work that can be found by a later examiner is very different from work that cannot. The Institute's practice is that undetectable work must be documented, because the documentation becomes the only remaining evidence.
  4. Was it recorded? The intervention itself is rarely the problem. The silence around it is. Of the 48 globes recorded from sale catalogues in 2025, 9 showed work the listing did not mention.

Where the Institute declines to take a position

It is regularly asked whether a globe should be restored. It declines, and the reason is not diplomacy: the question is about value and use, and the Institute classifies objects rather than advising owners. What it will say is narrower and firmer — whatever is done should be written down, and what was replaced should be kept. A replaced gore in an envelope beside the globe costs nothing and returns the evidence that the replacement removed.

The Institute applies the same rule to itself in the matter of fasteners, where its position is set out in the archival page: record before you remove, and keep what you take off.

The marriage problem

The commonest irreversible act in the trade is not a repair at all. It is the pairing of a sphere with a mount it never had. Of the 2025 sample, 11 listings stated that the mount was later than the sphere and 14 gave no date for the mount at all — so in as many as half the cases the buyer cannot know. The Institute grades the two separately and reports the mount as a suffix, for example G-2 / mount replaced, precisely so that a marriage cannot be concealed inside a single figure.

The stand typology exists partly for this reason. A mount classified by how it holds the sphere can be compared against the sphere's own construction; a mount described as mahogany tripod with brass meridian names three attributes and classifies none of them.

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