It took a long time to make one that was perfectly balanced and approx. 2 years before Bellerby produced a globe that I could sell. (Photo by Stuart Freedman)

When is the last time you looked at a map? No, we’re not talking GPS-powered imagery and guidelines but a physical entity. Like a globe. Like the collectibles Peter Bellerby and his company painstakingly churn out. In fact, they are one of the only two workshops in the world still in the business of handcrafting globes.  And in the business of preserving a dying craft.

After a two year search for a globe for my father’s 80th birthday present I was faced with a choice of a modern political globe (albeit frequently available with a generous dose of sepia colouring), very fragile expensive antique models, which you can’t really use on a daily basis or trying to make my own.

So the original plan, hatched in a pub in Kings Cross was to make just two, one for Dad, one for me. It would probably take three, maybe four months and cost a few thousand pounds. After all how difficult can it be to make a ball and put a map on it? My last venture was setting up and managing a place called Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, which within a year of opening had become one of the most interesting venues in London turning over more than £100,000 per week, so perhaps I was a little over confident. Blatantly obsessed with spheres either way!

So firstly I had to license a map. From a reputable source. It had incorrect capitals, most of the names in the Middle East were either rubbish or incorrectly spelled or positioned. Don’t let me start on the Aral Sea. That took at least 6 hours a day for about a year. In the end we changed everything. At the start I had to learn Adobe illustrator, which is not so difficult. It’s about as intuitive as the interweb and the email web are to my parents.

Then, find a friend to write the programme to morph a rectangular map into ‘gores’- the triangular shapes that fit onto a sphere. Offer him a globe as a bribe. Easy. Even better his job was far from taxing so a month, two at most. Three days later he was re-assigned to Lahore (with a bodyguard and ouzi as company). Over a year to complete.