BathEmpire

BathEmpire Day

Posted on 03. Jun, 2013 by BathEmpireDavid in Our News

A well-known street artist is paving the way for a bathroom company to mark its reinvention of a once celebrated national day.

John McKeown is customising a bath with his interpretation of a Union Flag to commemorate BathEmpire.com making Empire Day its own.

The Coventry-based online bathroom retailer commandeered May 24 when it discovered the date's past link to its own name.

Empire Day was first celebrated in 1902 on May 24, the birthday of Queen Victoria, and 56 years after last being recognised has now been adopted as BathEmpire Day.

The company approached John, a locally-based artist, with the idea of painting one of its baths in the iconic red, white and blue symbol – and in keeping with the day's history, has selected a Victorian slipper bath to be his blank canvas.

The one-off bath will feature on the company's stands at public exhibitions around the country before being auctioned for charity in 12 months.

BathEmpire intends to work with a different artist to create a new Union Flag bath each year around May 24.

Chris Li, founder and CEO of BathEmpire.com, said: "We've come such a long way since BathEmpire.com was launched in 2009 that we wanted to do something lasting to celebrate us being a leading online bathroom retailer.

"The fact that there was once an Empire Day presented a fun opportunity for us to adopt it as BathEmpire Day and we then came up with the idea of inviting a local artist to paint their interpretation of a Union Flag on the outside of one of our free-standing baths.

"John started work on his design on our first BathEmpire Day on May 24 and we can't wait to unveil it at the shows we will be attending throughout the rest of this year and into next.

"We will then decide with John the local charity to benefit from the proceeds of the bath being sold. Our intention is to work with a new artist each year to come up with a different Union Flag design for a bath."

John is founder of Coventry-based Bring Colour, which produces customised artwork as well as delivering workshops in schools and youth clubs.

He said: "It's a fabulous project with two local companies working together to produce something positive and with the prospect of giving something back to the community.

"We as a company try to make something positive out of the negative connotations that can be attached to graffiti and street art through our workshops with young people and this is an extension of that.

"The Union Flag is very structured and linear and I have come up with a design that gives it a bit more freedom and fluidity. It's great to be able to take something that is recognisable and put my influence on the design.

"I've never painted a bath before and it might present some challenges from not being a flat surface and being so smooth. I'll be using brushes and spray paint to layer the design and will top it off with a final lacquer. It should look great when it's finished."