tOMOrrOW's AnsWers tODAY - AkzoNobel

18
46-year-old former television executive and nightclub owner
became interested in cartography because he’d sought high and
low for a globe for his father’s birthday to no avail. With none to
be found, he decided it couldn’t be too difficult to make one
himself. “Ever the optimist, I thought I could master the art of
globe making very quickly,” he says. “How wrong I was. It took
me 18 months just to master the basics of how to make perfectly
spherical orbs. I also underestimated the costs involved. It’s a
painstaking, labor-intensive business. Even a small globe takes
at least 15 hours to make. Despite it all, maps truly are the stuff
of legend. I’m completely hooked.”
Last October, an exhibition of Bellerby’s work was held at
the Royal Geographical Society in London, and since then, the
telephone hasn’t stopped ringing. He’s also had articles about
his work published in leading publications such as London’s
House & Garden magazine and the FT’s How to Spend It. The
commissions can come from anywhere in the world and vary
from the extremely modest to the most extravagant bespoke
designs. When we chatted, he had just come back from
delivering a large globe by hand to a lady who commissioned it
to be painted in her husband’s company colors. Bellerby was
also particularly proud of an egg-shaped elliptical globe produced
for a fundraising event last year, which was auctioned for £11,000.
Can he account for the renewed interest in globes? “I think
it has something to do with the tactile sense of having a miniature
world at your fingertips showing the big scheme of things,” he
replies. “Online and GPS maps may be fantastic, but not only are
they flat, they lack the romance and the practicality of an object
that is an accurate representation of a round planet and an objet
d’art in its own right.
“It’s nonsense to believe globes have to look fuddy-duddy
and old-fashioned,” he goes on. “Many of our commissions
involve leading-edge contemporary design. Whatever the
customer wants, we can make. They just have to be comfortable
with the final product so that that they can touch,
feel and spin it under their fingertips.”
It’s almost like having your own
incarnation of the cosmos
in the comfort of your
living room.
Top: Globemaking is a painstaking process which leaves
no margin for error.
Photography: Jake Curtis.
Above: Each globe is expertly crafted using traditional and
modern globemaking techniques.
Photography: Tanja Schimpl.
Look beyond: bellerbyandco.com