|
|
News March 2021:
Bambi Artwork Restored
Photo: Bob Padron
The Belsize Village Bambi (often mis-attributed to Banksy) artwork on Belsize Terrace has finally been restored! Belsize Village Business Association’s (BVBA) volunteer project foreman and local resident Richard Lagani restored the artwork originally created by street artist Bambi in 2010. Since then the artwork had become mired with mould that had overtaken it and the original perspex had been badly damaged. Richard Lagani removed the mould and replaced the perspex with a new one. The new border paint will be changed to ivory and the spacers replaced with white ones in due course.
Mr Lagani was assisted by Bob Stephenson-Padron, co-coordinator of the BVBA, and was advised by a local art conservationist. The idea of the restoration project sparked last summer when Lady Shireen Fraser asked Bob if the business association could restore the artwork. And indeed they have done so. The project was funded by a member of the BVBA and Richard Lagani, who is originally from Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
A historical note from Belsize Village’s historian and filmmaker David S Percy:
“A version of this Bansky-style life-size stencil first appeared in Primrose Hill in July 2010. The version of June Beechey on a wall in Belsize Village had a panel of perspex placed over it to prevent anyone attempting to paint over it.
It turns out that in fact the street artist Bambi was the creator of the original picture featuring Mrs Beechey, and a stencil was made of the image with the words added 'Make Tea, Not War'.
Mrs June Beechey had a shop in Regent’s Park Road for 50 years and she sadly died in December 2019. The Beechey’s shop in Primrose Hill had been established by Richard Welch in 1870. After her husband died in 1998 she ran the shop until her retirement in 2010. Slowly fading, a copy of the stencil has remained in Belsize Village for many years.”
o
|
|
|
