By Rebecca McGirr
To celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 70 year reign Belleek Pottery have designed a Platinum Jubilee Basket to be gifted to her to commemorate this special occasion.
Claire Rowe, Head of Design at Belleek Pottery Ltd, explained the inspiration behind the basket and the design process.
She said, “We had previously designed a basket for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee back in 2012 and we were approached by the Northern Ireland Executive to design one so they wanted to do wild flowers and for it to be colourful, so this time we wanted this basket to be a different so Mother of Pearl is quite a classic technique that we use in the pottery, it is quite timeless and for the flowers we took inspiration from every region of the United Kingdom having its own flowers, so on the basket there is the English rose, Scottish thistle, Welsh daffodil and traditional Belleek shamrocks to represent Northern Ireland.”
“It is quite a sophisticated piece and the oval shape of the basket dates back to the early 1900s so its nice to tie back to the heritage of the country as well.”
After Claire came up with the concept and designed the basket she presented her design to craftperson John Doogan.
She said, “John has been here for 40 years and we worked with him to develop the flowers and make sure it was nice and worked well together.”
The basket was then handpainted by master painter at Belleek Pottery Rachel Love who used Mother of Pearl Lustre, the iridescent glaze which is reminiscent of the pottery’s archive baskets, dating back to the 1870’s.
The large basket features an inscribed platinum plaque with the words, ‘HRH Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee June 2022’, a special platinum backstamp has been added to the base and a certificate of authenticity is also included.
The basket will be gifted to Her Majesty The Queen in the next couple of weeks and a duplicate will be displayed in the Enniskillen Museum as part of their upcoming exhibition and a replica version of the basket has been launched online available to purchase.
Claire said, “ In 2012, we sold a tiny replica version of the basket and it did really well, especially in the states so for this year we are doing something similar, we are doing a replica version which was launched on the 21st April which is the Queen’s birthday which is available to buy online at www.belleek.ie and in our Visitor Centre.”
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