The Celestial Globe at Vogue World Milano
The Making of the Celestial Globe
Photographed while still being made for the event — its plaster sphere visible beneath gores not yet painted, others already hand-coloured, the constellations finished and gilded in gold leaf.
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A Celestial Globe for Vogue World
For Vogue World Milano 2026, London-based globe maker Leonardo Frigo presented Globus Caelestis, a monumental handmade celestial globe measuring 108 cm in diameter.
Depicting the 88 modern constellations, the work combines traditional globe-making techniques with copper-plate printing, hand watercolour and individually applied gold leaf.
Created in Leonardo's London atelier and rooted in the tradition of Venetian cosmography, the globe was presented during Vogue World's celebration of craftsmanship in Milan.
In the Studio
Building the Globe
Vogue World Milano · Live
Watch the Event
The Atelier Process
Made by Hand
01
The Copper Plate
Each constellation is drawn and engraved onto its own copper plate.
02
Inking the Plate
The plate is inked and wiped back by hand before every impression.
03
Printing
Fine Italian paper is run through the press, gore by gore.
04
Drying the Gores
Freshly printed sheets are hung to dry before colouring begins.
Globus Caelestis
The Artwork
- 108 cm diameter
- Celestial Globe
- London, 2026
The eighty-eight modern constellations are drawn and engraved onto copper plates, then printed section by section onto fine Italian paper as a set of gores and polar calottes. Each sheet is coloured entirely by hand with watercolour, and every star is individually gilded in gold leaf before the gores are laid over the sphere and finished in the atelier.
Explore Celestial Globes →22 September 2026
Vogue World Milano
Globus Caelestis entered the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II as part of Vogue World Milano's celebration of Italian craftsmanship, carried through the same glass-vaulted arcade that has framed Milanese fashion for over a century. Presented beneath its dome, the globe stood as a study in slowness — a single sphere built star by star, gore by gore, set against the pace of a runway.
Venice · London · Milan
A Contemporary Venetian Tradition
Leonardo Frigo is an Italian artist and globe maker working from London. His practice draws on the historic globe-making of Venice, and in particular on Vincenzo Coronelli, whose workshop defined the art of the printed celestial and terrestrial sphere in the seventeenth century.
Each globe leaving the atelier passes through the same sequence of disciplines — drawing, engraving, printing, painting, gilding and construction — carried out by hand, in the tradition of the workshops that first brought the heavens onto paper and sphere.
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Bespoke Commissions
Monumental Globes
The atelier undertakes a limited number of bespoke globe commissions each year, from 35 cm collector's pieces to monumental works measuring more than one metre in diameter.
Each commission is conceived individually, allowing geography, colour, inscriptions, illustrations and personal histories to become part of the finished work.
Considering a commission?