Redders1892
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes is a sculpture by internationally renowned artists and creators of public artworks, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Unveiled in 1993, it was commissioned by Middlesbrough Borough Council as the first public artwork to be installed as part of a regeneration initiative for the Tees Valley region.
Situated in Middlesbrough Centre Square, outside Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), the sculpture takes the form of a giant bottle, standing nine metres high – twice the height of a giraffe. The shape of the bottle is made from a continuous, off-white swirl of steel letters. Blue letters spiral upwards from the inside.
The artists took their inspiration from the local area’s industrial heritage, its relationship with the sea and from Captain Cook, one of the area’s most famous sons. The intricate steel lettering reflects the region’s rich heritage in steel production and fabrication. It was constructed in Hebburn, helping to provide employment for steel workers in the shipyards.
For the outside of the bottle, van Bruggen selected a line of text from Captain Cook’s Journals, written during his first voyage of exploration in the Pacific in 1769: We had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole of the passage of the planet Venus over the Sun’s disk. The text on the inside comes from a poem she wrote, ‘Recalling Amsterdam’, which links the English shore to the European continent: “I like to remember seagulls in full flight gliding over the ring of canals.”
The sculpture is positioned on a slant, to appear as if it had been left stuck in the sand by a receding wave – a giant message in a bottle to local people and the wider world.
Bottle of Notes
Bottle of Notes is a sculpture by internationally renowned artists and creators of public artworks, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Unveiled in 1993, it was commissioned by Middlesbrough Borough Council as the first public artwork to be installed as part of a regeneration initiative for the Tees Valley region.
Situated in Middlesbrough Centre Square, outside Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), the sculpture takes the form of a giant bottle, standing nine metres high – twice the height of a giraffe. The shape of the bottle is made from a continuous, off-white swirl of steel letters. Blue letters spiral upwards from the inside.
The artists took their inspiration from the local area’s industrial heritage, its relationship with the sea and from Captain Cook, one of the area’s most famous sons. The intricate steel lettering reflects the region’s rich heritage in steel production and fabrication. It was constructed in Hebburn, helping to provide employment for steel workers in the shipyards.
For the outside of the bottle, van Bruggen selected a line of text from Captain Cook’s Journals, written during his first voyage of exploration in the Pacific in 1769: We had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole of the passage of the planet Venus over the Sun’s disk. The text on the inside comes from a poem she wrote, ‘Recalling Amsterdam’, which links the English shore to the European continent: “I like to remember seagulls in full flight gliding over the ring of canals.”
The sculpture is positioned on a slant, to appear as if it had been left stuck in the sand by a receding wave – a giant message in a bottle to local people and the wider world.