The Globemakers

The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft

Peter Bellerby

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781639731572
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

"Beautifully conceived and skillfully executed . . . encourages the reader to linger and explore." — The Wall Street Journal

"Peter Bellerby's tale of learning how to fashion worlds—a journey through history, science, craft, and passion—spun me on my axis." —Dava Sobel, New York Times bestselling author of Longitude
The beautifully illustrated story of our globe and the globes it has inspired, told from inside the workshop of one of the world's last globemakers, with four-color photos throughout.
Many of us encounter a globe as children. We find a grown-up and ask, "Where are we?" They spin the globe and point to a minuscule dot amidst a massive expanse of sea and land. Thousands of questions follow. A profound convergence of art and science, a globe is the ultimate visualization of our place in our galaxy and universe. To be a globemaker requires a knowledge of geography, skilled engineering, drawing, and painting, and only a few people in history have ever really mastered the craft.
When Peter Bellerby set out to make a globe for his father's eightieth birthday, after failing to find a suitable one to purchase, he had no idea where the process would lead. He went on to establish Bellerby & Co, one of the only artisan globemakers in the world. The Globemakers brings us inside Bellerby's gorgeous studio to learn how he and his team of cartographers and artists bring these stunning celestial, terrestrial, and planetary objects to life. Along the way he tells stories of his adventure and the luck along the way that shaped the company.
A full-color photographic portrait of a lost art, The Globemakers is an enlightening exploration of globes, or "earth apples," as they were first known, and their ability to show us ourselves and our place in an infinite universe.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Glossary
• CHAPTER 1: How It All Began
• CHAPTER 2: The Round Earth Rolls: Understanding Our Place in the Infinite Universe
• CHAPTER 3: How to Make a Sphere
• CHAPTER 4: Making a Map of the World
• CHAPTER 5: The (Near) Impossible Task of Goring
• CHAPTER 6: The Hunt for Churchill’s Globe
• CHAPTER 7: The Meridian and Engraving: Where Are All the Foundries?
• CHAPTER 8: The Colours of the Earth: Painting the Globe
• CHAPTER 9: Spinning the Globe: Building the Base
• CHAPTER 10: Organic Growth
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• eCopyright