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ORIGINAL DRAWING
(PENCIL)
(PENCIL)
All Paintings & Prints
can be supplied in
"ready to hang"
handmade and
hand-embellished
"Artist
Frames"
"The Sixties - A Brave New World. Drawings of . . . . . . .On Friday 8th October 1965 The
(B.T.) Post Office Tower was opened as the central hub of a brand new nationwide
network of microwave relay stations (the Artist was then 14 years old) by
the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson making an inaugural telephone
call to the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and then opened to the Public at 3
pm on 19th May 1966 by The Postmaster General Anthony Wedgwood Benn
and Billy Butlin, for it was Butlins, the company famous for provision
of economical holidays in the UK from the mid-thirties to the
mid-sixties, who ran the Tower's innovative restaurant. It was at the
time the UK’s tallest building. In 1966, observation galleries
were opened to the public. Visitors took a fast lift to the top and
were stunned by panoramic views over London for as far as the eye could
see. It had nearly a million and a half visitors during the first year.The
restaurant at the ‘top of the Tower’ was a thrilling dinner
experience as the floor revolved through 360º every 25 minutes.
The Postmaster General of the time, Tony Benn, said that "the Post
Office Tower symbolised 20th-century Britain". Construction of the
Tower, which started in June 1961, certainly epitomised the design
style of "The Sixties" as it did the technological skills of the era;
and, designed as it was, by a team from the Ministry of Public Building
& Works, perhaps it is a testament to the educational values and
skills produced by the UK's Art Schools and Public sector architects
and technicians. A terrorist bomb exploded on October 31st, 1971, on the 31st floor and nearly a decade later the restaurant was closed down in 1980 when B.T. decided public access to the building was no longer viable, a loss to Artists and diners alike! By the time it was closed to the public more than 4.5 million people had by then visited the Tower.During
the Artist's walks around London with his parents in his early teens on the weekends, on his own in
his late teens in the sixties and while at St. Martins School of Art in the
mid-seventies it did, as it still does today, dominate the West End -
just up the road from St. Martins" and it now forms, in reproduced
form, one page of our "Paintings of London" handmade book and, at last,
liberates a fine drawing from the Artist's personal portfolio of London
works, paintings and drawings, some, such as this one, from "back in
the day".
See it in this
Collector's Edition book
