Every seasoned traveller should have a globe in the study: a tactile heirloom with which to reflect on past adventures and plan new expeditions. You can buy mass-produced minis from as little as £9.99 at Stanfords (stanfords. co.uk), or fork out £450,000 for an 1840 globe from Jesus College, Oxford, on sale at Butchoff Antiques, in London (butchoff.com). It’s one of three 36in masterpieces made by G&J Cary: the others are at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and at the Hermitage, in St Petersburg.
Somewhat cheaper — although still reassuringly expensive — are the globes made by hand at Bellerby & Co, in London. The venture started when Peter Bellerby wanted to buy a globe for his father’s 80th birthday. Frustrated by the lack of quality available, he decided to make one himself. In his own words, the project “went crazily out of control” and he now runs one of only two companies making handmade globes.
“It’s been an incredible challenge,” he says. “ The process is fraught with problems because you’re multiplying every error by pi.”
The spheres are crafted in his Stoke Newington workshop. The smaller ones are made from resin, the larger — including the 50in Churchill globe — from plaster of Paris strengthened by hessian. The cartography, cut into canoe-shaped gores, is hand-painted with watercolours before being glued in place.
In-house artists, who have undergone a six-month apprenticeship, hand-shade the coasts and the topographical features before varnishing and mounting the globe on roller bearings — a process that takes up to six months.
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Predictably, these objects of worldly desire cost the earth. A desk globe costs £1,000, while the show-stopping Churchill, of which Bellerby plans to make one a year for the next four decades, will set you back £59,000 ( bellerbyandco.com).