GLOBEMAKING
The advent of colour printing may have sounded the death knell for the delicate art of hand-painted globemaking, but now one man is bringing it back
P eterBellerby has tried many jobs on for size. He’s managed a bowling alley, worked in television rights, and briefly tried his hand at violin making. But his latest has stuck. The 58-year-old is now one of the last traditional globemakers in the world. ‘Google Maps can get you from A to B, but it’s not going to inspire you to go anywhere,’ he says. ‘The globe provides that inspiration.’
Stepping into his studio in North London, there’s no shortage of travel inspiration. Globes of all sizes sit in varying stages of completion: some are blank orbs, some with half a map and others receiving their finishing touches. In near silence, his team are painting, gluing and measuring, the world at their fingertips.
‘This is our Churchill globe,’ Peter says of a floor-standing sphere so large that spinning it is a two-handed task. He gently turns the globe, sending the world’s oceans and continents into a blue blur. At around 127cm (50 inches) in diameter, the giant globe mimics one presented to Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt by the US Army’s Chief of Staff during the Second World War. Like many of the globes here at Bellerby & Co Globemakers, it can be spun in all directions – up and down, left and right – so, god-like, you can pull any country up to where the North Pole would normally be.
Whether as big as the Churchill or small enough to furnish a desk, Peter’s globes are bespoke. In fact he says his company is the only fully bespoke globemaker in the world. He can add illustrations of animals native to each country or the names of current world leaders. Some customers have asked for their pets to be painted on; others have wanted sea monsters. You can even reject the Earth altogether and opt for a globe of the moon, with depictions of those who have landed there – alongside the space shuttles that transported them.
His team of 25 now makes 500-600 globes a year, up from 350-400 in 2018. Shipping them – ironically – all over the globe, he has created pieces for Hollywood films like Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, as well as having stock in Harrods. His workshop was even visited by Morgan Freeman for a TV series. But Peter never set out to become a globemaker. In 2008 he decided he wanted to give his father a globe for his 80th birthday – not one of those bright, plastic models you can find in a geography class, but one to treasure. ‘I felt embarrassed
