The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
‘I designed the new £20 banknote’
It will be one of the most visible pieces of artwork in the country, yet few people will ever think about the years of painstaking work that went into creating the new £20 banknote. The polymer note features the likeness of artist JMW Turner and will be released into general circulation on Feb 20. For Debbie Marriott, the Bank of England’s chief banknote designer, this will be the culmination of a four-year project to replace the old paper £20, featuring the economist Adam Smith.
Most designers and artists are lucky to have their work exhibited anywhere, but Mrs Marriot’s design is expected to be reproduced more than a billion times over the lifespan of the note, which is forecast to be more than 10 years.
Mrs Marriott works in a unique team at the Bank that contains a mixture of artists, designers and scientists, who must all work together to create a robust and recognisable design.
But some elements of the design are out of her control, including who adorns the back of the note. The public were asked to nominate potential candidates for the new £20 and the 200,000 responses nses were used to create a shortlist. st. The final decision was made by an n expert panel that included Mark Carney, ney, the Bank’s outgoing Governor.
Turner’s rivals for the e back of the new £20 were another her painter, William Hogarth, the designer esigner Josiah Wedgwood, the sculptor or Barbara Hepworth and the comic ic Charlie Chaplin, but Mrs Marriott ott said she was delighted with the outcome.
“When we were waiting ing for the decision to be made, e, there were a lot of us in the design esign team who were rooting for Turner,” she admitted. “He’s such a great character to o work with and I’m actually a painter myself so I am a massive e fan. For me, it was a great choice. hoice. above, Debbie Marriott, below, and the new banknote, right
“Once he was selected we did a lot of research to try to incorporate much of Turner’s life and works in the design.” While the note follows a similar style to the other polymer notes – the Winston Churchill £5 and the Jane Austen £10 – the team at the Bank has added extra security features to protect against counterfeits – and they too reference Turner’s life. The new £5 and £10 banknotes included clear security windows and the latest £20 note no has added a second window in th the bottom corner. Its shape is based on those at Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire, Monmouthsh the subject of several Turner w watercolours. On the reverse th there is a small purple foil patch th that contains the letter T. Its design is i based on a staircase at Tate Br Britain in London, which houses the c country’s biggest collection of Turner’s Turne work. Other art galleries gal are alluded to. The main window w on the banknote features fea an aerial view of the fo fountains in Trafalgar Square, Sq outside the National Gallery. This building was wa the home of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) during Turner’s life lif and today hosts many of his paintings.
Margate played a major part in Turner’s life and the note features several references to the Kent seaside town. Mrs Marriott said the note included an image of the modern-day Turner Contemporary art gallery building in Margate in the shiny foil.
She added: “We also have the use of a lighthouse, which is in Margate. It wasn’t there when Turner was around, as it was built in the Fifties, but it is symbolic of the seascapes and lighthouses that feature in many of his works.”
Perhaps the most difficult part of the design was incorporating imagery from Turner’s iconic painting The Fighting Temeraire on a predominantly purple banknote.
In an 1818 lecture, Turner said “light is therefore colour”, referencing his use of light, shade, colour and tone. This quote is featured on the note, and Mrs Marriott had to heed his words in the design process.
“The colour of banknotes is very important, so this was a challenge on the £20 as we were trying to include The Fighting Temeraire, which is a very colourful painting in terms of the brightness of the sun setting and Turner’s use of oranges and reds,” she said. “We had to capture the feeling of that painting but also reproduce it on a banknote that is purple.
“We did that by portraying the ship in the ghostly colours of pale blues and purples, and we emphasised the colours of the sunset behind Turner’s portrait to get a balance of both.”
Mrs Marriott has worked at the Bank since 1990 and said the Elizabeth Fry £5, released in 2002, had been her favourite note until the new £20. She said the production process had evolved significantly since she started working on notes.
The image of Turner himself was taken from a self-portrait painted in his mid-20s. However, making this image suitable for printing on a small banknote took the team of designers around two months.
“The most important thing for us is to get a high-quality image,” she said. “For Winston Churchill and the new Alan Turing £50 note, we have used photographs as reference points.
“Here, with Turner’s portrait we have tried to capture the essence of the oil painting. We were fluid with his hair and his collar and jacket – the lines are freer and longer – but the face is tighter and more true to the form.”
Her team’s next project is already well under way. The new £50 note featuring Turing, the mathematician best known for devising codebreaking machines during the Second World War, is due next year.
“The £50 won’t be produced in the same quantity but it has to go through the same process, so we are proofing it and trialling it at the moment,” she said.
Before then, though, there will be the reward of seeing millions of new £20s being used in everyday life. “We are very lucky we had such masterpieces to incorporate into the design,” she said. “It’s a really beautiful looking note and I hope that the public like it.”
A new piece of polymer money is released next week. Adam Williams meets the artist behind it
So-called “ethical” pension pots have outperformed their vanilla counterparts over the past five years, according to Telegraph Money analysis. Despite this, only a handful of savers are benefiting.
This week the Government and Bank of England governor Mark Carney announced new laws to compel pension funds to tell savers the carbon footprint of their retirement pots in a move hailed as a “world first”.
It is hoped this will encourage savers to shift money away from fossil-fuel-producing companies to put pressure on firms to cut emissions.
Research by this newspaper covering 18 million pension accounts showed savers did not have to sacrifice returns for choosing the “ethical” option. It has returned more than the “default” fund at all three of the big providers surveyed. However, not all funds labelled as “ethical” avoid investments in fossil fuels.
Aviva, which has four million customers, said its ethical fund had returned 80pc over five years, whereas its default fund returned just 51pc. A saver with £10,000 would have £18,010 after five years in the former and just £15,100 in the latter.
The People’s Pension’s ethical option returned 75pc over the past five years, compared to 55pc in its default. The figures for Nest were 66.8pc and 52.9pc. They have 4.9 million and 8.8 million customers respectively.
However, most savers miss out on these better returns. The People’s Pension said just 2pc of its savers chose its ethical fund, while Nest said it was less than 1pc. Aviva did not say how many chose its ethical option.