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Peter Bellerby, Globe Maker

November 1, 2024
by the gentle author

Peter Bellerby is speaking about his work next Thursday 7th November at 6pm at Sandys Row Synagogue, E1 7HW. Click here for tickets

Just a couple of years ago, Peter Bellerby of Bellerby & Co was unable find a proper globe to buy his father for an eightieth birthday present. Now Peter is to be found in his very own globe factory in Stoke Newington and hatching plans to set up another in New York – to meet the growing international demand for globes which he expects to exceed ten times his current output within five years. A man with global ambitions, you might say.

Yet Peter is quietly spoken with deferential good manners and obviously commands great respect from his handful of employees, who also share his enthusiasm and delight in these strange metaphysical baubles which serve as pertinent reminders of our true insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

A concentrated hush prevailed as Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I ascended the old staircase in the former warehouse where we discovered the globemakers at work on the top floor, painstakingly glueing the long strips of paper in the shape of slices of orange peel (or gores as they are properly known) onto the the spheres and tinting them with fine paintbrushes to achieve an immaculate result.

“I get bored easily,” Peter confessed to me, revealing the true source of his compulsion, “But making globes is really the best job you can have, because you have to get into the zone and slow your mind down.”

“Back in the old days, they were incredibly good at making globes but that had been lost,” he continued, “I had nothing to go by.” Disappointed by the degradation of his chosen art over the last century, Peter revealed that, as globes became decorative features rather than functional objects, accuracy was lost – citing an example in which overlapping gores wiped out half of Iceland. “What’s the point of that?,” he queried rhetorically, rolling his eyes in weary disdain.

“People want something that will be with them for life,” he assured me, reaching out his arms around a huge globe as if he were going to embrace it but setting it spinning instead with a beautiful motion, that turned and turned seemingly of its own volition, thanks to the advanced technology of modern bearings.

Even more remarkable are his table-top globes which sit upon a ring with bearings set into it, these spin with a satisfying whirr that evokes the music of the spheres. Through successfully pursuing his unlikely inspiration, Peter Bellerby has established himself as the world leader in the manufacture of globes and brought a new industry to the East End serving a growing export market.

To demonstrate the strength of his plaster of paris casting – yet to my great alarm – Peter placed one on the floor and leapt upon it. Once I had peeled my fingers from my eyes and observed him, balancing there playfully, I thought, “This is a man that bestrides the globe.”

Isis Linguanotto, Globepainter

John Wright, Globemaker

Chloe Dalrymple, Globemaker

Peter Bellerby, on top of the globe

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

5 Responses leave one →
  1. Marcia Howard permalink
    November 1, 2024

    Wonderful – on so many levels!

  2. November 1, 2024

    Wonderful!

  3. November 1, 2024

    Sometimes I suspect that you are creating these posts just for ME. Me, and only me. (I’m kidding of course, and think many of your readers feel the same.) But today the photos of the “pennants” of worldwide geography, dangling from a line — plus the painted swatch board — made me crow with happiness. My husband has a vast collection of globes that he has been gathering for decades.
    They are staged all throughout his den, and I am especially fond of a red-ocean globe since it
    looks perfect in his all-red den. For myself, I recall an art contest that I won as a child — the prize was a black-ocean globe, and I felt like I had “won the world”.

    Thank you, GA.

  4. November 1, 2024

    Great to see this craft continuing into the twenty-first century.
    I am reminded of one of favourite books of recent years, Still Life by Sarah Winman. Set partly in the East End, one of the main characters is a globe maker.

  5. Cherub permalink
    November 11, 2024

    A few years ago I paid a visit to the Museo Galileo in Florence. The globes there were absolutely beautiful and they had a fascinating film on how they were made. I love the photos of the globes here.

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