Scott King’s Britlain’s SAXNOT (2017) mug from his recent exhibition Welcome to Saxnot (Studio Voltaire, 2017-18), is all too appropriate an inclusion for my ongoing series capturing commemorative mugs of Great Britain.
The exhibition proposes the idea of the town of Saxnot, to be built based upon the utopian ideals of fictional character Billy Butlin and his desire to create a town that brought back the forgotten ‘goodness’ of Britain in the past. The town plan is based primarily on the model of British 1970’s holiday camps: a controlled, pared-down and carefully regimented experience of pleasure and fun.
Welcome to Saxnot is conceived as a shop, where one can purchase the various commemorative items that are sold by the town, objects branded under the name ‘Britlin’s’, inspired by the very man who provoked this new imagination for a fictional New Britain.
invisible bricks 