See our stunning dip pool mural for Hong Kong based cruise ship
A new flagship cruise liner, “World Dream” entered into service from Hong Kong in November 2017; designed especially with the Asian cruise market in mind and operated by Dream Cruises. The ship offers an exciting array of facilities and iconic brand experiences for guests, eager to sample the opulence and high-living such a liner affords, with a range of destinations to and from the Orient. The brand is well-documented for its authentic Asian hospitality with the highest levels of service and spacious comfort for its guests. Every facility on board is bespoke and unique, and Sadler Green are proud to have contributed our expertise on helping to create a bespoke tile mural for the Vitality Dip Pool installed in the Crystal Life Asian Spa situated on deck 5 in the fore of the ship.
The project involved working in partnership with SMC Art Consultancy, who oversaw the complete design concept through to realisation of such a beautiful tiled mural. As part of the creative brief, the Consultancy set out to pay particular focus to artists and craftsmen who used traditional methods but were translating their designs through modern approaches.
One such craftsman involved in this project was Robert Dawson; a long-time associate and collaborator with Sadler Green, who created a subversive Willow Design mural using his model of “aesthetic sabotage”. He is well known for producing china plates which are imaginative riffs on the willow-ware pattern and this process is revealed in the finished product installed on World Dream.
Willow ware is globally iconic because of the legend behind the illustration: A legend of lovers transformed into swallows associated with the Willow pattern is English, not Chinese. Dawson’s mural depicts the usual traditional scene found on the Willow ware. Its classic components are a weeping willow, pagoda-like structures, three men on a quaint bridge, and a pair of swallows. The usual colour scheme is blue on white, though there are variants.
The story was imaginatively invented in order to promote sales of the original Chinoiserie pattern Minton plates, which had started to be produced at Spode in Stoke-on-Trent during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. The design incorporates particular distinctive features of earlier Chinese willow scenes which were already known and imitated by Spode prior to Minton’s engraved versions for Spode and other factories within the local area.
This imagery is distorted yet eminently recognisable in the Dip Pool mural, yet the vibrancy of the Dawson’s blue and white movement comes through in the completed mural. It provides a stunning backdrop to a high-specification pool room within the luxurious spa of the Dream World as seen in the official brochure photographs for the World Dream cruise itinerary.
