Victoria Carpets has created a 5m x 4m mosaic of Charles III using thousands of pieces of carpet to mark his forthcoming coronation.
The Royal Warrant holder’s marketing team took inspiration from a portrait released for his 60th birthday, and set about recreating the image using 3,095 3cm x 3cm pieces of Victoria’s carpets. This includes the carpet used for the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011, with earned it its Royal Warrant. This is used create the red of the King’s ceremonial uniform of the Welsh Guards in their portrait.
Debbie Turvey, Victoria Carpets head of marketing took inspiration from a similar styled piece by Turkish artist Deniz Sagdic she had seen on Instagram, and asked Rebecca Cash digital communications assistant and Frances Brewer, marketing executive if they thought it would be possible to achieve a similar effect using squares of carpet.
Rebecca and Frances worked out that by pixelating an image of the king, they could convert the pixels to carpet colours, and then match them to actual carpet squares. Then over four weeks the project took shape, leaving the final piece to be assembled in the Kidderminster warehouse as that was the only place large enough to house it.
‘We’re very proud of our royal connection here at Victoria, and when we started this project, we had no idea it would turn out so well. Full credit to Rebecca and Frances for making it happen and taking an initial concept and turning it into a giant carpet mosaic. We’ve been overwhelmed at seeing people’s reaction to it, from walking past us as we stuck tiny pieces of carpet onto a much larger backing carpet, to finally seeing the finished effect. We now can’t wait to share it with a wider audience,’ says Turvey
‘We’re not sure how best to display the finished mosaic, but it ideally needs a large space to show it off to its optimum effect, as it is best viewed from a bit of a distance,’ says Cash.
Image: James Greenoff Photography
