THE idea was spectacular enough – to recreate the sort of decadent Tudor river pageant Queen Elizabeth I would have been seen sailing among in the 16th century.
Bristol-based scenic artist Jonathan Holbrook, who is more used to working on film backdrops and television sitcom sets, was given the enviable task of finishing off Gloriana – the sumptuous boat that will lead the 1,000 vessels with our own Queen Elizabeth onboard as she celebrates her diamond jubilee.
Or that was the theory.
"It was quite a prestigious job," says the 57-year-old, from Cotham. "I made sculpted filigrees using fibreglass, to finish off the boat in a suitably decorative style."
Unfortunately Jonathan will not get to see Her Majesty ride on the barge – Health and Safety Laws, not quite as stringent in Elizabeth I's time, have not passed the boat fit for passengers, especially the Queen.
"Disappointingly Her Majesty won't get to ride in Gloriana because Health and Safety have said she can't – because they couldn't fit a life boat onboard.
"It seems a bit silly," Jonathan laughs. "There will be 1,000 boats there. I'm sure if she fell in, somebody would leap in to rescue her. Sadly Her Majesty will now sail in another boat behind Gloriana."
But the Thames pageant on June 3 will nevertheless still be a career highlight for Jonathan.
The 94-foot vessel, decorated with gold leaf and ornately carved, harks back to a time when kings and queens travelled by water in opulent style.
The design, inspired by the boats from Canaletto's famous 18th Century painting of a Thames pageant, incorporates sweet chestnut wood taken from the Duchy of Cornwall estate.
The million-pound rowbarge has been painstakingly hand-built over four years by 60 craftsmen.
The first royal barge to be built in 100 years, Gloriana will be powered on the day by 18 oarsmen, including Britain's greatest Olympian, Steve Redgrave.
"It is a great thing to have worked on," Jonathan says. "It is going to look spectacular on the day."
Jonathan began his career making scenic backdrops for repertory theatre in Nottingham and Manchester, before coming to live in Bristol 26 years ago, when he landed a job painting backdrops for the TV series Robin of Sherwood.
"It was a great job to get," he says. "Making that leap into television was always difficult, so I had a wonderful time working at HTV on the series. I quickly fell in love with Bristol, and decided to settle here."
He has gone on to make the backdrops for numerous films and TV programmes including Pirates of the Caribbean, The Golden Compass, Lark Rise to Candleford, Roald Dahl's Danny Champion of the World and The Famous Five.
"My most spectacular set was a 55ft high skull, for Jack The Giant Killer," he says. "It was carved out of polystyrene, and was so enormous it had to be lifted in to place using a crane."
Jonathan is currently working at the Bottle Yard studios in Hengrove, on the film of Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box, starring Michael Sheen and Sam Neal.
"I had to recreate part of the Wookey Hole caves, where some of the scenes have been filmed," he says. "In order to get the studio scenes merging seamlessly with the location scenes, I had to get the mock-up of the cave looking perfect.
"So I spent a lot of time underground taking castings of the real caves in order to be able to build perfect replicas in the studio."
Jonathan has also been working on another unusual project in recent weeks – a focal feature that will appear in a show garden at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show this week (opens May 22).
His mission was to make a new hand-built hut look like it had been used for three years as a writer's garden retreat. This will set the stage for author Tracy Chevalier, who is going to be the hut's writer-in-residence at Chelsea.
"When it comes to making things look old, I have lots of secret recipes that I keep in my head, which I've developed over the years," he says. "With this hut, all my experience has come together, lots of knowledge and use of waxes and stains and colours and fixatives. It's all gone just as I hoped.
"There is a light area on the floor where the writer would have paced up and down thinking about what to write. There are chair scrapes and bashes from over the years where the chair has rubbed against the wall. The leather writing surface on the desk is slightly dented and waxed.
"There's a good build-up of mist on the windows, smoke from the stove and dust on the lamp, the metalwork has faded and even the paint has gone matt-looking. It's all tricks of the trade."
No comments:
Post a Comment