Meet the Maker – David Lawrence

David Lawrence is a sculptor and illustrator with more than 30 years’ experience, including many coin design projects. He has created several designs for our iconic Britannia coin and played a key role in The Royal Mint’s five-year commemoration of the First World War.

David has designed all ten coins in The Royal Tudor Beasts Collection. Although he is a seasoned coinage artist, the project presented an interesting brief. He was asked to depict the heraldic beasts – loaded with the symbolic meaning that lies behind heraldry - in a natural and realistic way. Bringing mythic creatures to life for the collection proved to be a fascinating challenge and we sat down with David to discuss his approach to this unique design proposition.

What attracted you to this project?

“I find the breadth and depth of The Royal Tudor Beasts Collection extremely appealing. With ten coins and ten beasts to design, it’s a challenging brief to tackle but one that is nevertheless exciting – especially with the subject being so rich in terms of heraldry and historical significance.”

Was there anything you knew you wanted to include from the outset, or anything that inspired you in particular?

“The beasts we see on the Moat Bridge at Hampton Court Palace are very stylised, in the sense that they’re created through a Tudor frame of reference. The Tudors would draw beasts that they had never before seen, basing their interpretations off reports or word-of-mouth. Therefore, these beasts are roughly 70% fictionalised. My aim was to take inspiration from these Tudor-carved beasts and modernise them, without losing their historical or heraldic importance.”

“I was also lucky in that I received an extremely detailed briefing document from The Royal Mint that included plenty of photographs of the beasts, coupled with extensive background information sourced from Historic Royal Palaces. So, the beasts became my primary source of inspiration as they stand, in situ, on the Moat Bridge.”

How did you approach the initial design concept for the collection?

“The brief asked for a design that was a natural and realistic representation of the beast, so I primarily used that as a guideline. If I steered the design to something that was too faithful to the Tudor carvings at Hampton Court [Palace], the beasts themselves would look somewhat strange.”

Although, to make them original, I didn’t want the designs to be a wholly naturalistic representation of the beasts. I had to walk the fine line of combining these naturalistic elements of the anatomy with a stylised, heraldic depiction of the beasts to fit the overarching concept.”

Did you have a particular design process for the coins?

“I suppose everyone’s process of working is slightly different. But for me, and from a personal perspective, the process has become easier thanks to the internet providing such a rich and easily accessible source of information. So, from a research perspective you can be much more selective in terms of the images you want to find in order to draw inspiration from. I never design anything using a computer, instead opting to create my designs by hand using propelling pencils.”

“My creative process in general is a case of digesting the brief, conducting further research, and then taking a step bac to allow my subconscious to do the hard work, inevitably producing a well-rounded idea.”

What are the main challenges you have encountered so far, if any?

I suppose the great challenge that will arise as the series progresses is ensuring each beast has a sense of originality in its design. When you’re working on the concentrated canvas of a coin, the design itself can become restricted. So, with these beasts I’ve had to create a formula I can apply throughout the series in order to capture the pose for each beast sufficiently within the restricted space. Combining this restriction with the aim of encapsulating heraldic meaning in the design is quite a challenge. However it’s one I’m relishing and looking forward to working on throughout the series.