The Queen’s Baton begins its 170,000km and 288 day relay around the Commonwealth today. Its going to be a big day with news crews around the world fighting to interview the 4c crew. Find all the latest interviews, exclusive photos and news articles here.
BBC News – Designing the Queen’s Baton
BBC News – Relay Launch Highlights
In her article on Core 77 Deena DeNaro has said about 4c’s design:
“…arguably the most beautiful baton in the history of the Commonwealth Games, a timeless classic that visually and viscerally celebrates Glasgow, Scotland, and her people.”
For us, it doesn’t get much better than that…
Yesterday William and I (Robin) went through a roller-coaster of emotions, watching the baton that was conceived and then brought to life by our team and has been consuming our ‘head space’ for the last 12 months finally being put to use. I guess it feels a bit like your son or daughters first day at school, we’ve used all our experience and skill to conceive a great symbol of Glasgow, Scotland and the Queen, our model maker/craftsmen have nurtured it into the world and we are now passing it into safe hands to go forth into the next stage of its life.
It was a great occasion, you don’t get much more Scottish than Chris Hoy in kilt dress leading a full pipe band with Glasgow’s Baton!
The drinks an canapes at the Malbourgh house after party were incredible, it was great to chat to the First Minister again and other dignitaries.
But the lasting memory I’m going to take away from the day was when I struck up in conversation with the baton bearer ‘youngsters’. I got the sense that they were aware this was a big occasion in their lives and they were almost stunned into silence struggling to take it all in, making them shy. But once we’d broken the ice felt at home taking to them, after all at 4c we are all still big kids! I realised their genuine enthusiasm was the same we’ve had hard at work for the last 6months. This is something that has to be hard earned and can’t really be felt by someone who’s been helicoptered in for the day. I was so impressed with these teenagers level of composure, conversation and level of interest in design. We visited to ‘Commonwealth House’ later in the day and looking at the pictures of past games on the walls something struck home to me, when games are over and the medals have been handed out, the only tangible thing left (apart from the venues) is the creative look and feel that has been generated by the designers. So to have 3 of the main ‘Creatives’ Beth Gilmour (13) who designed Clyde, Aamir Mehmood (17) who designed the G2014 tartan and Will Mitchell design Lead of the Baton all together for a photo was for me …the best bit of all.
William Mitchell prepares for Live BBC Interview
The titanium Lattice, freshly grown using cutting edge additive manufacturing techniques.
The titanium Puzzle Arms – still need to be machined and polished to form the top of the Baton
The titanium Puzzle Collar
The Glasgow Elm wood handle – beautifully crafted by Gal Gael
Machining the Gem Stones to the correct dimensions
Polishing the lattice work, this was a long and involved process
Machining the lattice
Images from the day can be found here
General images from across the web have been collected and can be found here