Celebrating British Sensibility, Too

 Photo by David Parker

This wonderful boat was part of the flotilla that accompanied HRH Queen Elizabeth down the Thames as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebration.
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English Landscape Sculpted

Image courtesy of Cowley Manor © Amy Murrell

This summer, make your way to Cowley Manor, a country house hotel in the Cotswolds, where eight graduate students from the Royal College of Art have temporarily installed their site-specific sculptures.

Strolling the grounds, you might see an eight-foot-tall wire tornado frozen mid-swirl on one of the lower lakes, or the word H-E-Y spelled out like a truncated version of the Hollywood sign at the foot of a grassy meadow. The latter, conceived by Wonwoo Lee, has won the juror’s prize and will permanently remain at Cowley Manor. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for Cradeaux Alexander’s amusing installation of “garden plaques with a twist” throughout the grounds. In front of a wooded trail is a sign declaring “A Path of Unusual Morals” and adjacent to a nearby shrub, “A Bush of Great Character.”

The RCA/Coutts sculpture exhibition will be on view until September 3rd and is open to hotel and restaurant guests as well as picnic goers.

The Queen Portraits (2004)

This short video, taken from a documentary, offers a fun look at the Queen during a photo shoot at the Palace in 2004.

In 2004 Chris Levine was commissioned by the Island of Jersey to create a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The portrait was to commemorate 800 years of allegiance to the crown by the Island. A body of work was shot at Buckingham Palace over two sittings and the title works Equanimity and Lightness of Being have been widely acclaimed worldwide.

EQUANIMITY, the first holographic portrait of Her Majesty The Queen, was displayed at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, in 2004.

Jersey Heritage Trust commissioned light artist Chris Levine to create a portrait of Her Majesty to celebrate 800 years of loyalty to the English Crown. Having originally seen his work in a British Council Touring exhibition, the Jersey Museum decided that Chris’s work was so original that they commissioned him for this historic celebration. Jonathan Carter, Director of Jersey Heritage Trust, said: “We think Chris’s work exemplifies the 21st century and the links between Jersey and the Crown. It is a tribute to Chris that he has created such a fascinating piece of contemporary art.”

To create the over-life-size three-dimensional portrait, Chris Levine took over 10,000 images and 3D data-sets of Her Majesty during two sittings at Buckingham Palace. The final hologram is mounted in glass and illuminated by a strip of blue LEDs. The work shows The Queen wearing the Diamond Diadem, created for George IV and worn by Her Majesty for the procession to her Coronation in 1953.

EQUANIMITY was displayed at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from 17 July until 3 October 2004 with the exhibition George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste (until 9 January 2005).

The Jersey Museum, St Helier, Jersey exhibited  EQUANIMITY from 23 June until 2006, when the work went on permanent display at the historic Mont Orgueil.

ROYAL COLLECTION, BUCKINGHAM PALACE / Press Release

Guardian TV Interview

There Will Always Be An England

Since 1824, Cadbury has been an English chocolate producer and has grown into one of Britain's best-known brands and businesses. Kraft Food's potential takeover of Cadbury has been met with spirited unhappiness.

Keep Calm & Consider Alternatives

If the original Keep Calm and Carry On message doesn't suit you, here are but a few alternatives to consider:

For more info on any Keep Calm and Carry On parody featured above, just click on the image. See the previous blog entry for the story of the design sensation and original WWII poster saved from obscurity.

Keep Calm & Carry On

Keep calm and carry on is a great message and a very timely one for us at this exact point in history. It's also a great poster design. The baronial graphic of the crown and the clear Gill font in caps further expresses the simple focus of the message. Well, sure, we can be optimistic with such a thoughtful and charming mantra and a pleasing graphic design to view. I'm feeling better about the world already.

The timelessness of the message and the beautiful simplicity of the graphic elements do not reveal the artist who designed the poster. Now available throughout Great Britain on t-shirts, tote bags, tea towels and door mats, to name just a few, what little is known about it is that it was created as part of a British Ministry of Information propaganda campaign in August of 1939 to alleviate fear of a possible German invasion.

A series of three posters were created under the crown of King George VI, yet only the first two were widely released, appearing on billboards, train stations and shops throughout England. The third design, Keep Calm, was held in reserve, and, thankfully, never needed for its intended use.

Somehow, somewhere, a copy of the unused poster was saved for about 60 years. It resurfaced in a box of old books purchased at auction in 2000 by booksellers Stuart and Mary Manley of Barter Books in Northumberland. They hung the poster in their shop and started to research its origins. Frequent requests to purchase it led them to reproduce the poster and offer it for sale. Some 40,000 copies have been sold through them.

In spite of its wartime origins, the message of resilience is welcome. The archives of British history and design gained a document almost unknown and the rest of us gain the benefits.

Special thanks to Jon Henley for his article Keep Calm and Carry On in the Guardian on March 18, 2009 and Mary Manley's blog entry on March 4, 2009.

British Design Classics by Mail

Royal Mail of Britain has introduced a set of stamps celebrating ten British Design Classics. We weren't surprised to see the English things we love as the Mini, the Routemaster and the red telephone kiosk, K2, among the juried selections. And we were glad to learn our fashion staple, the Mini Skirt, was invented by our fab fave, the very mod designer Mary Quant, who named the skirt after her favorite car. It's a set of stamps we could easily rename Our English Favorites.

We were gratified to see the Concorde, whose design was an English/French collaboration; the Underground map by Harry Beck which resembles beautiful circuitry; the Polypropylene chair we've all sat upon; the Anglepoise lamp which inspired the task lights that illuminate our worktable; and the easily identifiable orange book jacket from Penguin Books.

For more information on this collection of British Design Classics and other philatelic matters click over to Royal Mail.

All images courtesy of RoyalMail.com.