Lion designs

When  Richard Hall, chairman of Zenith International, contacted me about their wish to sponsor me, we discussed designs and names for the lion. The company are specialist consultants to the food and drink industries worldwide, and  they were keen to get the global idea across. A product they often market is water. The name of the lion also had to be relevant to the company name.

When I thought about ” Zenith” I  thought about the sun…. The sun in it’s zenith.  So as the sun, the world and water washed about in my head,   I also thought about bubbles. Bubbles in fizzy drinks and bubbles in water.

If I used glass nuggets and marbles I could get a sort of “bubbley” effect. So I submitted some designs to the company.

This  was one of them.   Lots of suns in a bubbley sky. A world hemisphere on each flank.  They liked the globes and the colour scheme , but they were not keen on the nuggets as they like my tile shapes.

I tried to persuade them to go with circles,  So I made a  sample in circular ceramic and glass as well as one with rectangular tiles. I am glad I did this, as it was now apparent which one was going to work best.

Here is the circular sample:

But  we agreed on the other one  (bottom of page):

Richard  chose a good  name for the lion. One that further  insipired the design – but that’s for another time.