Model, diorama

This diorama depicts William the Conqueror supervising the construction of the White Tower (the Tower of London) in 1072. The Clerk of Works is holding drawings showing the final design; the workmen are carrying loads up ladders to the higher parts of the building. The horses have been modelled, using plasticine on metal armatures.

In 1930 the London Museum was preparing to lend exhibits to the International Trade Exhibition at Antwerp. The Museum’s keeper, Mortimer Wheeler, had a series of scenes showing life in Britain through the ages modelled for the event. The cost was covered by a donation from one of the museum’s most important benefactors , Ernest Makower. In the end seven scenes were made altogether by the much-respected artist Tom Ivester Lloyd, of which this is the only surviving one.

Ivester Lloyd was self-taught, and his favourite subjects were horses and hounds. He wrote and illustrated books about them, but his finest skills were reserved for diorama making. The Antwerp dioramas were created in a staggeringly short period of nine weeks before being shipped to Belgium. They were returned to the London Museum via another exposition in Buenos Aires, and resided in special niches created for them in a lower floor gallery in Lancaster House. After the war, they were sent out again on at least two occasions, to Berlin and to Japan, under the auspices of the Department of Overseas Trade.

Another set of Ivester Lloyd dioramas showing disappearing rural trades has been preserved at Luton Museum, and one showing horse ploughing is held by the Science Museum in London.