In a London workshop, artisans craft bespoke globes
LONDON: In 2008, Peter Bellerby set out to buy his father a high quality handmade globe as an 80th birthday present. When he could not find one, the Briton decided to make it himself — and, in the process, catapulted himself into a new profession.
Just over a decade later, his company Bellerby and Co claims to be the finest globemaker in the world, selling tailor-made products to an array of international buyers.
They include heads of state and big companies as well as everyday people wanting to mark a special occasion.
“There’s no one really making bespoke globes like this, with the involvement we have with customers,” Bellerby said, during a tour of his 4,000-square-foot (370-square-metre) manufacturing studio on a quiet London backstreet.
It was littered with half-finished globes as his team of two dozen illustrators, painters, cartographers, constructors, engravers and woodworkers toiled beneath strips of paper drying on washing lines overhead. “It’s not a career you ever think about,” the 54-year-old said. “I’m really proud of where we’ve got to.”
The scale of the operation contrasts with its humble beginnings when Bellerby, an ex-property developer among other former professions, began making just a handful of globes
Now the business turns out around 600 globes annually — some destined to sit in grand mansions and aboard yachts
each year in a small shop around the corner.
Now the business turns out around 600 globes annually — some destined to sit in grand mansions and aboard yachts. They range in size and price, with the smallest starting at £1,200 ($1,500) and the biggest costing around £79,000.
Bellerby spent much of the first year or two of the venture perfecting how to make his globes, largely by trial and error, before passing on the knowhow. Trainees will toil for around a year learning the craft before being trusted to work on finishing products.
The creative process starts by sourcing composite or resin spheres, which form the basis of the globes, from another company — the only stage not done in-house.
Illustrators and cartographers work with clients — over months, sometimes years — to decide what will appear on its surface, with requests for everything from animals to ocean liners on the maps.
Wide-format printers, using ink guaranteed for 80 to 200 years, are used to relay the basic geographical outlines chosen onto special paper, whose properties allow it to be dunked in water and then stretched.
Once printed, the paper is cut into precise shapes called gores, then painted by hand using watercolours.
After the paper is delicately applied to the globe, it undergoes further rounds of watercolour painting before it is finally sealed with either a gloss or a matte finish.
The completed globe is next paired with a base, traditionally a wooden axis on a table but now increasingly an alternative to this with roller bearings, which allow the whole globe to rotate and be more accessible.