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A globe in the age of Google Earth?
London globemaker Peter Bellerby thinks the human yearning to “find our place in the cosmos” has helped globes survive their original purpose—navigation—and the internet. “You don’t go onto Google Earth to get inspired,” Bellerby says in his airy studio, surrounded by dozens of globes in various languages and states of completion. “A globe is very much something that connects you to the planet that we live on.”
But beyond the existential and historical appeal, earthly matters such as cost and geopolitics hover over globemaking. Bellerby’s globes run from about 1,500 British pounds (about 1,900 USD) for the smallest to six figures for the 50-inch Churchill model, and he makes about 600 orbs a year of varying size and ornamentation.
Creating them is a complex process. Bellerby says he wrestles often with customs officials in regions with disputed borders, such as India, China, North Africa, and the Middle East. “In India, I can go to prison for six months if we don’t depict the border between India and Pakistan as the Delhi government wants us to. So, we have to get things like that right.”
Bellerby doesn’t name clients, but he says they come from more socioeconomic levels than you’d think—from families to businesses and heads of state. Private art collectors come calling. So do movie makers. And yes, some of the planet’s wealthiest people buy them.
And there is a real question about whether globes—especially handmade orbs—remain relevant as more than works of art and history for those who can afford them.
They are, after all, snapshots of the past—of the way their patrons and makers saw the world at a certain point in time.
“Sadly, I think globe usage probably is declining, perhaps particularly in the school setting where digital technologies are taking over,” Joshua Nall, Director of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge, said. “I think now they’re perhaps more becoming items of overt prestige. They’re being bought as display pieces to look beautiful, which of course they always have been.”
This article was provided by The Associated Press.