If a Hollywood set designer were to imagine the workshop of a globe maker, he could not do much better than the vast open space where Peter Bellerby creates his handcrafted terrestrial and celestial globes: it resembles a journey around the world. Globes in various stages of making are scattered all over the studio, together with freshly painted maps hanging up to dry, handled by an army of young assistants from every corner of the world. Bellerby & Co was founded in 2008, “I was looking for a globe to give to my father for his 80th birthday, but I could only find either antique globes that were too expensive, or industrial ones used by students. So I decided to make my own,” Peter explains about how the company started.

From his rooftop London atelier, his dynamic team of artisanal globe makers master different steps of the creation process. There are the wood and metalworkers who lovingly create the bases, the cartographers who create the maps and those who place the gores onto the spheres.