Victorian Pleasure Gardens History Boards

Cremorne Gardens was among the largest and most notorious of the many pleasure palaces that dotted London throughout the mid to late Victorian era. The Victorian Pleasure Gardens History Boards at Cremorne are a testament to the original park's history.

A series of boards commemorating the extraordinary history of the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens

For more than three decades after it's opening in 1845, the park provided an extraordinary array of entertainments and events to the newly wealthy middle classes. They created an range of entertainments going from coffee by the river to a full-scale recreation of the battle of Sebastapol. The gardens eventually closed in 1877, due to local opposition to some the more disreputable aspects on display. Dubious pleasures such as bare knuckle boxing, gambling and prostitution. The idea of creating pleasure gardens history boards was the brainchild of a local resident.

Design

A local historian approached me with an idea to create three boards commemorating the history of the gardens. She planned to locate the boards in a gallery in the modern day Cremorne Gardens, a small public park on the banks of the Thames. This park is the last remaining tiny vestige of the original pleasure palace gardens.

She had already completed the designs but they were nowhere near the standard required for artwork. What she had produced were low resolution scamps created in Photoshop which worked as a starting point.

Artwork

I re-created the boards from scratch, using a 12 column grid to align the somewhat chaotic elements. Grids provide a versatile structure for any changes and additions. My client was working with a number of local museums and other historians. Given the collaborative nature of the project, there were ongoing changes throughout the process.

Creating large boards on a small computer monitor means that you have no idea if they will work. Not once mounted on a wall in real size (the final artwork was 2A0).

Once the initial draft had been completed, myself and the designer went to the gardens. We were armed with a printout of one of the boards, tiled into A4 sheets. Then we spent an hour or so creating a full sized mock-up, taping the sheets onto the wall one by one.

This proved that the boards worked at full size in terms of layout and legibility.

Production

By the end we made a number of revisions and sent various versions to the banner company who would produce the final artwork. As a precaution I asked the banner company to sent me a photo of the final artwork as it came off the press. Normally I would prefer to be present as the artwork is created but that is often just not possible.

As is so often the case, the printers used one of the previous (outdated) versions of the artwork by mistake. However, this showed up on the photo and we notified the company to rectify this.