John Russell (1745-1806) was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1782, and a full Academician in 1788. Born in Guildford, Surrey, he was apprenticed to Francis Cotes, the founder of the Royal Academy. Russell gained success and a certain amount of fame as a portraitist in pastel, earning himself the title of "Painter to the King". However, his overriding passion, it would appear, was the moon. The lunar globe here offered is the result of thirty years of close observation of the moon and its phases, starting presumably not long before 1764 when he produced his first drawing of the lunar surface. The major reason for such a long period of extended examination can be attributed to the lunar chracteristic known as libration. In effect, and as Dekker points out, "the Moon is a restless creature, always wobbling and showing a slightly different face all the time". Thus no two full moons look quite the same, and to someone of Russell's highly developed artistic sensibility, the constantly shifting play of light over the widely varied surface of the moon must have been a source of endless fascination and contemplation. Indeed, when speaking of the finished product, he declared that not only was it his desire to represent the craters and mountains of the lunar surface as faithfully as possible, but also to express the "feelings" he had when he first observed "the gibbous Moon through a Telescope".
The history of lunar mapping is well documented by Dekker, but Russell's is the oldest extant example of a lunar globe. Precedents include propositions by the astronomers Hevelius and Mayer, at separate times, to construct such a globe, but it would appear that neither saw the light of day. Christopher Wren is known to have constructed a relief globe of the moon in 1661, but this has now been lost. However, Russell's work was truly remarkable not only for the quality of the engraving on the gores, but the method for mounting the globe which was invented by Russell himself. The Selonographia mentioned on the cartouche on the sphere was the name given to the globe within its complex mounting. This consisted of a series of brass bands and circles fixed around the sphere, with a small earth ball and numerous gearing systems. This arrangement serves to represent - as the cartouche suggests - all possible aspects of the moon and its librations in relation to the earth and to the axes of the moon. Russell published a pamphlet to explain the use of the whole instrument, entitled Description of the Selenographia in which he mentions that relief versions of the globe are available. Dekker states that it would appear that at least one example was indeed made, but none have so far been found.