Lloyds Nelson Collection

Lloyd’s Building, Lime Street, September 2005

Lloyd’s, the world’s leading specialist in insurance, commissioned Casson Mann to design a unique temporary exhibition to display their private collection of Nelson’s letters, artefacts and silverware in commemoration of the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The host space in the underwriting room of the Lloyd’s Building in the City is huge and dramatic, so the design language needs to be strong and arresting.

Our approach to this exhibition was to tell Nelson’s story more like a novel than a history book; we wanted to make his tale more personable. A single glass display case holds the collection and within this we used a mixture of formal and informal display techniques. At the beginning of the story a plate and some cutlery are laid out as proper, useable items, as though Nelson were about to sit down and eat. A little further along silverware is displayed very formally to mark the status that such objects denoted. A wooden deck extends from the case to a bench for viewing a film. This oak floor folds up into the case to support the objects. We liked the idea that a single material could refer to a captain’s table, the decking of the ship and the sea.

Client: Lloyds of London
Size: 30 square metres
Casson Mann’s role: Lead Consultant, Exhibition Designer
Team: Artwise (Curators), Graphic Thought Facility (Graphic Design)