The day MR PORTER visits Bellerby & Co Globemakers’ north London workshop, the weather is particularly dreary, even by the city’s standards. A trudge along Stoke Newington’s streets reveals that the cheery rows of independent cafes are practically deserted. Not even the promise of a steaming oat milk latte can tempt people to venture outside. Around the corner, though, in a deserted mews and up the stairs in the globemaker’s studio, you’d forgive the busy artisans inside for mistaking it for a midsummer’s day. “It’s perfect for what we do,” says founder Mr Peter Bellerby, as we enter the sun-streaked workshop. “There’s so much natural light during the day.”

Mr Peter Bellerby and his globemaking operation moved into the space in 2011, although calling it an operation at that point was probably a stretch. “There was just me and one part-time painter,” he says, after we’ve surveyed his growing army of cartographers, painters and woodworkers all silently engrossed in their work.

Above us, the rafters are strung with freshly daubed map fragments and every surface – floor to ceiling – is home to a globe. A few, the largest Churchill models, are approximately the size of a small car. The other desktop varieties look dainty in comparison. “Any globe you see here has failed its quality control,” says Mr Bellerby, gesturing to an assortment of what appear to the untrained eye to be pristine examples. “We’re very fussy.”

Fussiness, after all, is why we’re standing here. A decade or so ago, as his father’s 80th birthday approached, Mr Bellerby embarked on a mission to find the right gift for him. “I’d bought enough ties, socks, shirts, whiskies, cigars,” he says. “They’re all great presents, but I wanted to get him an amazing present that I knew he had never owned before.” Settling on a globe was the easy part. Sourcing one proved a much harder task.

For starters, the globes Mr Bellerby found weren’t accurate. “Commercial globemakers are making things in big batches,” he says. “They’ll make 10,000 at once. They might take 20 or 30 years to sell. And there will be things that are 20 or 30 years out of date on that map or globe because of that time lag.” The vintage market drew a blank as well, so Mr Bellerby took matters into his own hands. “I thought I would have a go at making one,” he says. Armed with some of the tools he’d picked up property developing, a childhood of completing odd jobs around his Suffolk home and A levels in physics and maths, he set to work. But with no blueprint or books to guide him, his projected lead time of several months quickly turned into a years-long endeavour, involving an 18-month stint perfecting the complex art of goring (applying the individual map fragments to the globe with pinpoint exactitude) and a relentless search for a perfect sphere that eventually led him to a Formula 1 mould maker.

Putting together a team that would help him make Bellerby & Co a fully operational workshop was another hurdle. “When I started doing this, you couldn’t find the word bespoke or craft or handmade anywhere,” he says. “China was coming online and everything was being made cheaper and cheaper. At the beginning, it was really difficult finding people.” Nowadays he trains everyone in-house, yet that, too, is time-consuming. “For making, it’s a six to nine-month apprenticeship,” he says. “Finding people with the patience and aptitude for the job was a challenge.” He says it is getting easier now that passionate young creatives with do-what-you-love career plans are entering the workforce having rediscovered once-lost crafts.

Mr Bellerby’s pride in his team is palpable. “It shows how much talent we have in this country – and half the people upstairs are not from Britain,” he says. “We have a wonderful mix from all over Europe. It shows how much talent we have in youth. I’m actually sometimes shocked at the precision and the attention to detail that some of my team show, which I haven’t taught them. And I’m fastidious.”

Less than a decade on, he’s fine-tuned the process and each Bellerby & Co globe takes three to four months to complete. Each is made to order, including those now in MR PORTER’s growing collection. But why spend a considerable amount of money, time and effort on something that your iPhone renders redundant? Mr Bellerby acknowledges that in our location services-enabled age, a globe’s original purpose is lost, but he believes it still fulfils a practical, if somewhat romantic, function in our lives. “I use Google Maps every single day,” he says. “It helps you get from A to B. But you are never going to leaf through Google Maps and be inspired to go somewhere. There’s too much data to be inspired. You need a globe to help you in that journey. That’s the biggest difference between Google Maps and us.”

Mr Bellerby believes that a glut of mass-produced riches has contributed to a collective yearning for fewer – and better made – things. “I think we’ve just had an overdose,” he says. “You have a house full of things. And you realise they’re not actually made that well and they don’t really mean anything to you.” It’s one of the reasons he operates a by-appointment studio policy, but also welcomes anyone with an interest in what Bellerby & Co does. “So many people who purchase our globes actually come here,” he says. “There are very few products that you commission these days and that you can be so involved in the making of. There are only so many special things, unusual things, you can get your hands on. And that, for me, is paramount.”