A review of Peter Bellerby's book The Globemakers

对彼得·贝尔利著作《全球制造者》的评论

In 2008, Peter Bellerby, who lived in London, wanted to give his father a model globe for his eightieth birthday. What seemed simple enough to start with triggered an almost obsessive, decade-long journey, marked by a series of obstacles that would have deterred anyone less determined. It ended with his establishing the world's only bespoke globemaking company.

2008年，居住在伦敦的彼得·贝尔利想为父亲八十岁生日送一个模型地球仪。起初看似简单的小事，却引发了一段近乎痴迷、持续十年的旅程，其间遭遇了种种阻碍，任何意志不坚定的人都难以坚持下去。最终，他创立了世界上唯一一家定制地球仪制作公司。

The first surprise in The Globemakers, Bellerby's account of this impulsive enterprise, is that obtaining such a globe was not simply a matter of a quick online order and a repressed sigh at the shipping costs. After all, contrary to stubbornly held popular views of our ancestors' geographical ignorance, we have known that the world is spherical since at least the 6th century BCE. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his work Phaedo likened it to a leather ball, while the accolade of producing the first recorded globe goes to the ancient Greek philosopher Crates of Mallus, who is said to have made one in around 150 BCE. Surely, Bellerby reasoned, a good-quality globe wouldn't be difficult to find.

《地球仪制造者》中，贝尔利对这一冲动性事业的首次惊喜在于，获得这样一块地球仪，并非仅仅意味着一个快速的在线订购和对运费的无奈叹息。毕竟，与人们对祖先地理无知的固执观念相反，我们至少从公元前6世纪起就已知道地球是球形的。古希腊哲学家柏拉图在其著作《费多》中将其比作一个皮革球，而最早有记录的地球仪的创造者则被归功于古希腊哲学家马鲁斯的克拉特斯，据说他大约在公元前150年制作了第一块地球仪。贝尔利认为，如此高质量的地球仪应该并不难找到。

Nearly two millennia later, however, it seemed that the art of globemaking had been largely forgotten. Bellerby came across shoddy commercial versions designed for school classrooms and genuine antiques in auction houses that would have bust his budget. Even his trips to Morocco and India, where surely the knowledge of artisan cartographers had been preserved, drew a blank.

然而，近两千年之后，制图艺术似乎已被几乎完全遗忘。贝尔利在拍卖行中发现了专为学校教室设计的廉价商业版本，以及价值不菲的古董，这些都超出了他的预算。就连他前往摩洛哥和印度的旅行——那里工匠制图师的知识本应得以保存——也一无所获。

Not one to be easily thwarted, Bellerby decided to make his own good-quality globe. In the process, almost everything that could possibly go wrong did so. Even the shape of the Earth posed a problem, as it is not quite a perfect sphere, but oblate (slightly flattened at the poles). Having decided to compromise and opt for two half-spherical pieces that could be fitted together, he was unable to discover anyone capable of casting moulds with sufficient accuracy to ensure that he would not be left with two half-spheres that were not quite the same circumference. Even after he eventually resolved this issue, extracting these from the moulds resulted in piles of cracked plaster of Paris and clouds of choking dust in the workshop he had set up at the rear of his house.

贝尔利比从不轻易被阻挡，他决定自己制作一个高质量的地球仪。然而，在这个过程中，几乎每件可能出错的事情都发生了。就连地球的形状也成了问题，因为地球并非完全的球体，而是略带扁平的椭球体（在两极处稍有扁平）。他最终决定妥协，选择用两个半球状的部件拼合起来，却找不到能精确铸造模具的人，以确保两个半球的周长不会相差。即便后来他解决了这个问题，从模具中取出这些半球时，他的工作室里堆满了龟裂的石膏和弥漫着呛人的灰尘。

This series of abortive experiments taught Bellerby a lot about the challenges of making globes, which he communicates here to the reader. Finding just the right way to prise the globes from the mould - a high-end air compressor finally did the trick - and locating the right paper and inks with which to make the gores (the sections of flat sheet mapping that are pasted onto the spherical globe) without the ink seeping out to create a mushy, unreadable mess took months and an alarming chunk out of his bank balance. Bellerby's frustration at the painstaking process of attaching the gores to the globe surface - after having found a glue with precisely the right adhesive qualities - is palpable. Right at the end of the process, he learnt that the paper had stretched slightly and so the final one overlapped the first by a centimetre (which may not seem a great deal, but when that represents 2 per cent of the Earth's diameter, it's equivalent to obliterating the Himalayas or wiping out Chile).

这一连串失败的实验让贝尔利深刻体会到了制作地球仪所面临的种种挑战，他在此向读者分享了这些经验。要找到从模具中取出地球仪的正确方法——最终使用了一台高端空气压缩机才成功；同时还要挑选合适的纸张和墨水来制作“凸面”（即贴在球体表面的平面片材部分），避免墨水渗出导致糊状、难以辨认的混乱局面，这耗费了数月时间，也让他银行账户上惊人的金额被花光。当他终于找到一种粘合性能恰到好处的胶水后，却仍对将凸面粘贴到地球仪表面这个繁琐过程感到极度挫败。就在整个过程接近尾声时，他发现纸张略微拉伸，导致最后一块凸面与第一块重叠了约一厘米（这看起来似乎微不足道，但若占地球直径的2%，就相当于抹去喜马拉雅山或擦掉智利）。

Bellerby's account of the technical challenges of globe production is interspersed with a series of interludes on great globemakers of the past and cartographic history in general. Purists might wish for more map-making details, but Bellerby clearly found a kindred spirit in Martin Behaim. He was the Nuremberg entrepreneur who in 1492 created the Erdapfel, the world's oldest surviving globe, beautifully finished by a workshop of painters and other craftsmen, only to find that the explorer Christopher Columbus had stumbled upon the Americas the very same year, rendering his masterpiece instantly out of date. Something of Bellerby's unflinching ambition is reflected in the even more heroic efforts of the Italian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli, who, in the seventeenth century, created two globes for Louis XIV of France. It took him twenty years to complete the monstrous pair, whose vast bulk - each with a diameter of around four metres - can still be admired in the National Library of France in Paris.

贝尔利对地球仪制作技术难题的叙述，穿插着一系列关于过去伟大制图师以及地图史的精彩插叙。纯粹主义者或许希望书中能包含更多制图细节，但贝尔利显然在马丁·贝海姆身上找到了共鸣。这位纽伦堡商人于1492年创作了《地球仪》（Erdapfel），这是现存最古老的地球仪，由一群画家和其他工匠精心完成，然而就在同年，探险家克里斯托弗·哥伦布意外发现了美洲，使他的杰作瞬间过时。贝尔利那种毫不动摇的雄心，在意大利制图师文森佐·科罗内利更为英勇的努力中得到了体现。十七世纪时，他为法国国王路易十四制作了两幅地球仪。这副庞大的双球仪耗时二十年完成，每颗直径约四米，至今仍可在巴黎的法国国家图书馆中欣赏到。

Although a celebration of the revival of an ancient craft, Bellerby's book is also a lament for the fading away of centuries-old traditions. When he embarked on his globemaking odyssey, he struggled to find artisans with the skills to make the right moulds for the globes or foundries that could shape the meridians (the metal frames which girdle globes) in just the right way. Although he finally located the right craftsmen, some simply dropping in, serendipitously, to his workshop (by now in more suitable premises than his back room), many of these have now retired or passed away.

尽管本书是对古老技艺复兴的颂扬，但它也哀叹着数百年传统正在逐渐消逝的命运。当他开始着手制作地球仪时，他一直难以找到具备相应技艺的工匠，来制作出合适的模具，或为铸造厂打造能够精准塑造经线（即环绕地球仪的金属框架）的模具。尽管他最终找到了合适的手艺人，但其中许多人只是偶然间来到他的作坊里（如今的工作室已比以前的后屋更合适），而如今这些工匠中已有不少人退休或去世。

Bellerby's father finally did receive his eightieth birthday present, albeit two years late.Bellerby went on to found a company which now turns out over six hundred globes a year for customers who can have their own tiny village marked or more unusual requests fulfilled. His book, beautifully illustrated with photographs of the various stages of his venture and a few illustrations of historic globes and maps, is hardly a blueprint for commercial success. But it is more than enough to stir up admiration for the craftsmanship of the great mapmakers of the past and the obsessive determination of a modern successor who revived their almost moribund art.

贝尔利的父亲终于收到了他八十岁生日的礼物，尽管晚了两年。贝尔利后来创办了一家公司，每年为顾客生产超过六百个地球仪，让客户可以将自己的小村庄标记上去，或实现一些更奇特的要求。他的书配有精美的插图，展示了创业过程中的各个阶段，还包含一些历史地球仪和地图的图片，这几乎算不上商业成功的蓝图。但足以激起人们对过去伟大制图师精湛工艺的敬佩，以及一位现代继承者对濒临失传艺术的执着追求。

*cartographer: someone involved in the science or practice of drawing maps

*制图师：从事地图绘制科学或实践的人

**plaster of Paris: a quick-setting plaster consisting of a fine white powder that hardens when moistened and allowed to dry

**巴黎石膏：一种快速凝固的石膏，由细白粉末制成，遇水后硬化并干燥