Queen's Coronation Luncheon, Westminster School Hall with Constance Spry Flowers

Floral decorations by Constance Spry for Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Luncheon, Westminster School Hall. Spry writes in 'Party Flowers', "On coronation day a luncheon was to be given for about 350 of the Queen's guests...a suitable place had to be found, of immediate access... the hall of Westminster school was made available...this stately hall was badly damaged during the war...the walls too have been robbed by fire of panelling and are pitted and scarred. The usual access of nerves which I can never learn to discount began to mount, and then someone used the word which gave the much needed clue. The word was 'medieval', and with it came a picture of the clear blues, the trenchant reds, and gleaning golds...I went off to talk to my partner Valmar Pirie about these nebulous ideas...fortunately Sir David [Eccles] had also asked us to undertake the catering, and at the Cordon Bleu school Rosemary Hume was planning menus and methods. This combination gave us scope. I think it ought to be said here that in such decorations there is no touch of 'money is no object'; treasury officials could clearly not allow public funds to be frittered away on such frolics....we got good effect by painting thin plastic curtain material in graduated shades of gold paint. A gift from the people of San Remo included rich red roses, red carnations, gladioli, and strelitzias with their handsome leaves...from Wisley came a contribution of late azaleas and rhododendrons in many shades, running from pinks into orange and flame [and] the Ministry of Works arranged for a tapestry to be hung on the end wall of the hall. On coronation day when the guests began to pour in from the Abbey, the beauty and colour of the scene far exceeded anything we had imagined...the room gleamed and glimmered like a jewel-encrusted tapestry, the whole effect heightened by the presence of a small group of Arabs in cream woollen robes with black cords round their traditional head-dresses."

Image from a Constance Spry Photograph Album, Ref: 2019.265.6