[Bellerby globes]
[Bellerby artist painting globe]
[Paintbrush coloring the coast of Argentina]
[Bellerby workers creating globes]
[Artist painting oval-shaped globe]
[Artist laying wash with brush]
[Peter Bellerby spinning large 50-inch globe]
Peter Bellerby (interview): “Google Earth is amazing. Quite how we managed to do anything before that, before it came along. I don’t know. I mean, I use it on a daily basis. It’s an incredible device to enable you to live life and function. But you don’t go to Google Earth to get inspired by things. You don’t traipse down the streets on Google Earth looking at the images that you get there because it’s very raw footage. It’s not aesthetic. A globe is very much something that connects you to the planet that we live on.”
[Three globes created by Bellerby]
[Artist painting globe]
[Artist painting Nepal]
[Globes]
[Globe being spun]
[Ptolemy globe]
[Gores hanging tilts down to artist painting]
[Shoulder of artist painting]
[Brush being cleaned in water]
Peter Bellerby (interview): “Every country has a different viewpoint on the Earth, so cartography is very much a nationalistic thing. The UN is most certainly not the overarching governing body of what countries exist in the world.”
[Continent of Africa on a Bellerby globe]
[Middle East]
[China showing Taiwan]
Peter Bellerby (interview): “For China we definitely have to mark Taiwan as Chinese Taipei in order for it just to get through customs. In other territories, 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 want us to. So, we have to get things like that right.”
[Eddy Da Silva (right) and another Bellerby globemaker painting the globe with glue]
[Worker painting glue on the globe]
[Gores on table]
[Da Silva dipping gore in water to soak and removing water]
[Da Silva applying gore to the globe]
[Worker sticking gore to the globe]
Eddy Da Silva (interview): “The nature of the sphere is extremely challenging. One because it’s handcrafted itself and that creates a few challenges in warps and undulations on the surface. So, when you’ve got lines, such as the latitudes to think about and aligning countries and text, that adds a whole new concept of complexity. Whereas with wallpapering you’ve got that flat surface where you’re aligning, pretty much bang on, every time.”
[Joshua Nall in Whipple Museum’s permanent globe exhibition]
Joshua Nall (interview): “So why a globe and not a map? I mean, there are a couple of things that you can say about that. The first is that perhaps whereas a map might be quite a mundane, practical item that is produced to be used, to be drawn on, to be looked at, a globe is often a much more prestigious, valuable item. So perhaps its representational power is greater because it will sit there as an item potentially of prestige, of display to represent, perhaps, the learning, the erudition, the political interests of its owner.”
[Globes on display at the museum]
Joshua Nall (interview): “Perhaps, sadly, I think globe usage probably is declining. Perhaps particularly in the school setting where digital technologies are taking over and are perhaps more affordable, they’re more accessible, that’s a good thing. But globes themselves, we see I think, fewer and fewer of them in school spaces. 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 that, there’s always been globes made as items of prestige. But I think that’s probably a bigger role. I would argue that they could and should still have a role for teaching us about the nature of the globe.”
[Globe from 1679 showing California as an island]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.