Queen Mary Art

 
 

marquetry panel
A marquetry panel of the Queen Mary composed of samples from the 56 rare woods used throughout the ship's interiors.
 

Rogano Bar windowFor ages you were rock, far below light,
Crushed, without shape, earth's unregarded bone.
Then Man in all the marvel of his might
Quarried you out and burned you from the stone.

Then, being pured to essence, you were nought
But weight and hardness, body without nerve;
Then Man in all the marvel of his thought,
Smithied you into form of leap and curve...

—from 534 by British Poet Laureate, John Masefield


In this sense of earth!—deep-buried treasure without end. Mineral matter and metal stores folded away in veins of gleaming quartz. Gold and silver, lead and copper, tawny iron ore; all yield themselves up to roaring furnaces and flow obediant to the hands of the architect; all become pawns to human will in the plan of the human mind.

—Quote by American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright

Glasgow Bar window
Glass panels created by artist Yvonne Smith
for the Rogano Restaurant of Glasgow, Scotland.

 

Dame Laura Knight's Art
The Mills Circus painting by Dame Laura Knight. This thoughtful, engaging work formerly graced one of the private dining rooms adjacent to the Grand Salon. Today, it can be appreciated in the art museum at the base of the Tourist Class stairwell on R-Deck.

 

Charles Pears' Mauretania
Arrival at Rosyth, created by Charles Pears, originally hung in the cabin class (second) smoking room at the after end of Prom deck. The scene depicts the beloved Mauretania in 1935 on her way to the breakers yard. It is also currently displayed in the R-Deck gallery.

 

 
terraced profile of Queen Mary's forward superstructure

TALIESIN OF THE SEA


American architect Frank Lloyd Wright incorporated Taliesin, into the names his two favorite homes. Taliesin is Welsh gaelic for "shining brow", a title that also describes the white terraced forward superstructure of the Queen Mary.

Every great architect is—necessarily—a great poet.

In all buildings that man has built out of earth and upon the earth, his spirit, the pattern of him, rose great or small. It lived in his buildings. It still shows there. But common to all these workmanlike endeavors in buildings great or small, another spirit lived. Let us call this spirit, common to all buildings, the great spirit, architecture...Any building is a by-product of eternal living force, a spiritual force taking forms in time and place appropriate to man. They constitute a record to be interpreted, no letter to be imitated.

—Frank Lloyd Wright

 
 

Travel bureau door detail
The Main Deck Travel Bureau door is decorated with this art deco rendition of the Queen Mary at sea.
 

Diane Rush in Clydebank Library
Everything about the Queen Mary is art to me. Half-light on a web frame below decks is as beautiful as the amber incandescence glowing from the cabin class Main Lounge. All that is worthy is gathered up in this one container of history, architecture and travel. Being on board the Queen Mary is like hearing the music of the Aurora Borealis; it is always joy and wonder.—Diane Rush
Stained-glass panel depicting the history of Clydebank,
Main District Library in Clydebank, Scotland.

 

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