Behind The Design: London Icons
King’s Guard
A tourist attraction in their own right - they are known for their distinctive uniforms which include scarlet tunics, bearskin caps and white gloves. The King’s Guards stay on duty "at their post" for two hours. Every 10 minutes, he comes to attention and marches 15 paces across the area of the post.
Orders for sentry duty read out before each two-hour 'tour of duty', make it clear that sentries 'may not eat, sleep, smoke, stand easy, sit or lie down'.
…we think they deserve a nice cup of tea after all that standing — and don’t we have the mug for it now!
All our designs are sketched with translation to sponges in mind. Sometimes the designs don’t lend themselves too well to sponging and are reworked. See the original stretches…
London Buses
London buses: a symbol of the city. These mobile landmarks whizz through the city's bustling streets - wave to the friendly driver, enjoy the very British journey and now come home to a cup of tea in a very apt mug.
Our design team sketched these bright red double-deckers from all sorts of different angles, before decided on a full-frontal front-facing bus to take centre stage on the front of our new mug. See the sketches…
Telephone Boxes
The red telephone box is a British design icon that is synonymous around the world. Did you know… next year will mark 100 years since the first telephone box was created!
