Bronté is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the first performance of J M Barrie's play Peter Pan, at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Based on his 1902 novel, The Little White Bird, which included five chapters on Peter Pan, the play was the forerunner to the classic children's story, Peter and Wendy, published in 1911.
Bronté Porcelain has worked closely with Great Ormond Street Hospital (to whom Barrie gave the rights to his story in 1929) to produce a very special tribute to Peter Pan. As with every Bronté project, research has taken many months and the design for each character has been based upon pose, costume and character. This has involved collating quotes from the original book and applying them to each piece. The finished set is a stunning artistic impression of one of the greatest children's stories ever written.
Peter Pan, Wendy and Captain Hook are produced as candle extiguishers. Peter is dressed in his leaf costume carrying a silver dagger and has tiny Tinkerbell resting on his shoulder. Wendy is based upon the little girl, Margaret Henley, and wears an Edwardian nightdress. Finally, Captain Hook, who saw himself as Charles II, is modelled as the flamboyant King with the addition of his famous hook made of silver.
The display case, made entirely from bone china, is based upon first editions of Barrie's Peter Pan books. The Little White Bird is closed with the open Peter and Wendy resting on top. Its outer cover is a masterpiece of design and sculpture and includes four fairies struggling to keep the book upright. These fairies are based upon fairies surrounding the sculpture of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. The detail on the open pages relates to the text and includes key illustrations in semi-relief: Jolly Roger pirate ship, handmade flowers, Wendy house, Red gum trees, Neverland Bay and the Redskin's Camp. The opening words of the book are sculpted in relief and additional text is scripted in Bronte's copy of Barrie's handwriting on the facing page.
The six-sided inkwell and quill has each of the names of the five Llewellen Davies' boys, upon whom Barrie based his character of Peter Pan. The names are: George, Jack, Peter, Michael and Nico. The sixth side is Peter Pan.
