Christopher Turrell on the work

The Crowned Heads of Europe draws inspiration from the intricate ornament of royal crowns and medieval lace, using these historic decorative languages to explore ideas of power and systems of rule. Familiar motifs are broken apart, layered and reassembled into complex patterns, their richly coloured surfaces evoking structures of authority that were once powerful but have become ancient and redundant.

Hand-built in stoneware ceramic, the piece develops its depth through an equally layered approach to surface decoration. Turrell combines monoprinting, hand painting and transfer designs with coloured decorating slips, building pattern upon pattern across the ceramic form. The process allows imagery to overlap, fragment and interrupt itself, mirroring the way the work dismantles and reinterprets its historical references.

Ornamental beauty and political symbolism therefore sit side by side: the visual richness associated with crowns and ceremonial decoration remains seductive, while its fragmentation invites a different reading of the traditions and systems those objects once represented.