When Leonardo Frigo was 19, he moved to Venice from Asiago, a small town in northeastern Italy, to study the art of restoration. He was especially drawn to working with marble.
“I was feeling the need to save the art,” Mr. Frigo, now 33, said during a video interview last month from his workshop in East London, where he has lived since 2016. But somewhere along the way, he stumbled on the work of Vincenzo Coronelli, a 17th-century Franciscan friar, globe maker and the official cartographer of the Republic of Venice.
Enchanted by the cartographer’s life story, Mr. Frigo began making globes in the same traditional manner, using only natural materials such as wood, plaster and jute fiber (the material used in burlap sacks). “The dream I had when I was a child about restoring objects,” he said, “now I’m thinking that my mission was to restore the craft.”
He has been doing that with guidance from “Epitome Cosmografica,” Coronelli’s 1693 illustrated handbook on globe making — a worn copy of which Mr. Frigo held reverently during the call.
And thanks to the British luxury retailer Asprey, Mr. Frigo’s work has been finding a wide audience. In April, the brand unveiled a limited-edition globe that he made to honor its 245th anniversary — the first in a series of six available on demand, starting at $66,500.
To create the 13-inch globe, Mr. Frigo uses a Coronelli technique to form two hemispheres from plaster reinforced with jute, joins them with liquid plaster, then applies a plaster layer over the whole sphere. “Once it’s perfectly smooth, I check it with the compass” to ensure it’s perfectly spherical, he said. “I leave it to dry and I can focus on the map.”
The globe features a 2026 map printed on paper that is a mix of cotton and linen and made by Manualis, a mill in Fabriano, a central Italian town with a papermaking tradition dating to the 13th century.
Mr. Frigo starts by etching the map onto copper plates and then inks them. He then places the Manualis paper on the plates and runs them through a press that squeezes them together.
“Once you lift the paper, you have the print,” he said.
He then cuts the paper into 12 gores — a term for the long, diamond-shape strips that cover a globe — each dampened and stretched to cover the sphere. Once dry and properly aligned (“the hard part,” he said), he paints the globe with watercolors and varnishes it.
While many of Mr. Frigo’s globes sit on a standard wooden base, the Asprey globe rests atop a silver base made in its London silver smithing workshop and set with blue sodalite stones from a supplier in Florence.
The collaboration began when members of Asprey’s creative team visited Mr. Frigo’s studio in December 2023. “I am an Italian in the U.K.,” he said. “It was a very good way to merge these parts together.”
John Rigas, Asprey’s chairman, agreed. Since acquiring the company in 2006, he has initiated partnerships with workshops worldwide to incorporate traditional techniques into Asprey products — from boxes featuring wood marquetry by Amazonian artisans to handbags stitched with triple-lacquered deer leather from Japan.
Mr. Frigo’s globes, which start at 10,000 pounds ($13,375), appealed to Mr. Rigas because they are made by hand, using historical techniques.
“If we associate ourselves with a national treasure,” Mr. Rigas said, “we give the artisans sustainability and viability.”
