national geographic

When the National Geographic Society needed an enormous new globe for the atrium of the new Museum of Exploration, they called on one of the few companies capable of crafting one by hand - Bellerby Globemakers.

For the National Geographic project, globemakers used 24 gores spanning about eight feet of paper. The gores were lightly painted before they were applied to the sphere, with careful attention on the oceans, which require many shades of blue to reflect the oceanic ridges, trenches, and rises. 

Full documentary and article here