Global Warming

'The appeal of a globe is that you can hold the earth in your hand and see it stripped of the veneer of civilization," says antiques specialist George Glazer, whose gallery, opening this month on East 72nd Street, features rare 19thcentury American terrestrial and celestial globes, heliometers, tellurians, and celestial prints.

The 37-year-old dealer was an avid antiques fan and an overworked associate at a New York law firm when, in 1988, he answered a help-wanted ad in an antiques trade paper. Within weeks, he found himself apprenticing under W. Graham Arader III, the prominent rare-mapand-print dealer. Glazer studied cartography, but soon became enamored of its spherical sibling. His vast collection includes everything from a $350 educational orb made in 1900 to a $35,000 1879 clock globe. Globes, according to Glazer, are some of the last great finds in the art-and-antiques universe. "For the price of a Jackson Pollock," he says, "you could have the greatest American globe collection in the world."

SUSAN KITTENPLAN