Spotlight Series: The Princely Parrots

Welcome to our new Spotlight Series, where we will be taking you on a journey through our past collections and taking a closer look at some of our favourite designs from the archives.

To mark the Royal Jubilee this weekend, we are beginning our series with The Princely Parrots design, taken from The Tower Menagerie collection.

As the true tale goes, widely reported in 1830, the animal warden at the Tower of London was in the process of cleaning the pens when he unwittingly raised the partition between two stalls, rather than the door of an empty stall as intended, thus allowing a Barbary lion and a Bengal tigress to meet. They set upon each other at once and a vicious battle ensued, leading to a rather tragic and unpleasant end. The Tower Menagerie collection tells a rewritten narrative of events; a story of what could have been. In Sabina’s version, the master pulley system is released, and the doors of all the animal cages are sprung open. The beasts are all unexpectedly freed to experience the joys of life beyond the Tower walls. Swooping through The Tower and out into the streets beyond, the mischievous parrots head straight for Hyde Park. As they pass, they fill their claws with riches from The Jewel House, and proceed to joyfully scatter them over the royal gardens as they fly. The Sovereign’s Sceptre gleams in the soft daylight, accompanied by Queen Victoria’s Coronation Ring.

THE PRINCELY PARROTS ILLUSTRATION IN PROGRESS