Jonathan Anderson Artists Button
Jonathan Anderson
Pigeon, 2023
Dimensions 55 x 70mm
Single button, in an edition of 250
The buttons have been hand sewn onto an A5 cards. Each card is numbered, dated and signed by the artist and presented in a bespoke box designed by A Practice for Everyday Life.
Jonathan Anderson has reimagined his iconic pigeon clutch bag for JW Anderson in the form of a button. Each miniature pigeon is hand-crafted in jesmonite – an environmentally friendly material made from acrylic resin. They are then individually airbrushed in vibrant colours reminiscent of graffiti. Anderson’s lively pigeon is a subversive and original image of urban life, straddling the line between art, design and fashion.
For Anderson, pigeons are potent symbols of the metropolitan landscape. He says: ‘Fashion has this great way of allowing us to escape reality. Pigeons are so inherently unglamorous, it’s funny to turn it into a functional object like a clutch bag that’s typically seen as quite glamorous.’ The clutch bag also has art historical resonance with Lucian Freud’s work on paper, Boy with a Pigeon (1944) in which an adolescent boy in a blue suit and spotty bowtie holds a pigeon to his chest.
Jonathan Anderson is Creative Director of LOEWE and founder of his eponymous label, JW Anderson. In 2016 Anderson founded the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize for artisans from around the world.
Please note due to the handmade nature of this item, please expect some variation in colour and/or finish to those pictured.
About the Artists Buttons project
Ten leading artists, Ai Weiwei, Jonathan Anderson, Rana Begum, Edmund de Waal, Antony Gormley, Callum Innes, Jennifer Lee, Cornelia Parker, Vicken Parsons & Caroline Walker, have been creating limited edition sets of buttons in support of Kettle’s Yard.
The project draws inspiration from the exhibition, ‘Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery’, recently at Kettle’s Yard and from 14 July 2023 – 7 January 2024 at the Holburne Museum in Bath. In 1938, Lucie Rie fled her home in Vienna for London to escape the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. During the war, unable to get a licence to make pots, Rie turned to making ceramic buttons for the fashion industry, experimenting on a miniature scale with new forms and coloured glazes.
Read more about the Artist Buttons project on the Kettle’s Yard blog
Please note purchases of Artists Buttons per customer must not exceed £8,500. Any order exceeding £8,500 will not be processed.
