The Globemakers
The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
"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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this comprehensive debut, Bellerby, founder of Bellerby & Co Globemakers, traces the genesis of his company and explores the nuances of constructing handmade world globes. In 2008, Bellerby decided he wanted to give his father a globe for his 80th birthday. Dissatisfied with the modern and expensive antique models he came across, he resolved to make a "foray into globemaking," a craft that dates back to Martin Behaim's Erdapfel ("Earth apple") of the late 15th century. Bellerby provides an up-close picture of a painstaking art, which requires painters, woodworkers, moldmakers, and cartographers, and details some of the early challenges he faced, including getting Earth's shape right (it's an "oblate spheroid," not quite a sphere). Along the way, he weaves in bits of globemaking history, hearkening back to the 18th century's "second age of exploration," during which globes were invaluable to merchants plotting trade routes, and the 19th century, when the development of photo engraving improved globemakers' accuracy. While this sometimes reads as an extended advertisement for the author's business ("We continue to strive for perfection, keep abreast of cartographical and political changes and are constantly updating our maps"), readers will be fascinated by Bellerby's reverential and sometimes existential musings ("There's nothing like a globe to make us really think about our place in the universe"), which are enriched by stunning photos of the globemaking process. It's a fascinating deep dive into an arcane art.
