“Celebrating art, introducing the law to young people.”
The mission of the Rolls Building Art & Education Trust.
London Panorama, by Nick Hugh McCann
The public spaces in the Rolls Building house an extensive and varied collection of artwork and artefacts. The collection is curated by the Rolls Building Arts & Educational Trust, which was established in 2011 with responsibility for commissioning, collecting, and acquiring on long-term loan appropriate exhibits for display in the new building. The Trust is a registered charity, and the Trustees are Judges, lawyers, and others connected with the legal world who have a shared interest in art. The Trust has a strong educational purpose. In particular, it organises an Educational Programme, specifically aimed at A-level students from schools with a high percentage of disadvantaged pupils, through which students learn about the Courts and the justice system by meeting Judges and barristers and through participation in a mock trial.
The educational aspect is reflected in the collection, much of which provides direct insight into the law. Nick Hugh McCann’s large-scale Panorama of London, located in the Ground Floor entrance hall, contains “hidden” references to a number of real cases. The canvas is inspired by the famous Rhinebeck Panorama of early 19th Century London, but brings the scene up-to-date with the inclusion of modern aspects of the city. Other exhibits with direct legal connections are His Honour Nick Chambers QC’s humorous ‘Missed Moments In Legal History’, presenting imagined alternative possible outcomes to some famous cases, including Carlill v Carbolic Smokeball Co and Donoghue v Stevenson; and the silver Admiralty Oar. An oar has symbolised of Admiralty authority since Tudor times, although today’s oar, displayed outside the Admiralty Court, probably dates from the 17th Century.
The history, work, and judicial personalities of the Commercial Court are specifically represented in two displays on the Third Floor.
The first is a collection of memorabilia from the career of T.E. Scrutton, one of the most famous of all Commercial Court Judges and author of ‘Scrutton On Charterparties’, one of the major books of English commercial law. Among the items on display are the royal Letters Patent & Seals by which Scrutton was appointed King’s Counsel in 1901 and to the High Court Bench in 1910, and a first edition of his famous work.
The second is a gallery which was created to commemorate the Court’s 125th Anniversary in 2020 - 2021. This tells the story of the Court’s creation and its development through its first century and a quarter, with facsimiles of the Notice as to Commercial Causes and the Cause List from the Court’s very first day (1st March 1895, when Mr Justice Mathew heard 32 summonses in a morning), and other illustrations of significant locations and events in the Court’s history. It also includes photographs and brief pen-portraits of some of the Court’s Judges, including Scrutton and his great professional rival J.A. Hamilton.
The Scrutton memorabilia
Part of the Commercial Court Gallery
The shipping connections of the Commercial Court and the Admiralty are represented by the design drawings for The ‘Livadia’, an innovative but wildly impractical vessel which was commissioned as a yacht for the Russian Royal Family, but ended up as a coal barge. Other displays include a series of striking photographic images by Neil Roland; Christopher Green’s large-scale ink on paper representation of London Bridge; and Sophie Arkette’s installation ‘Lex In Vitro’, a response to the lego-ethical issues surrounding stem-cell research. Four ‘Ballroom Drawings’, which were commissioned to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Prince’s Drawing School, are on long-term loan. The official opening of the Rolls Building by Her Majesty the Queen on 7th December 2011 is commemorated by a vellum scroll, prepared by calligrapher Tim Noad and signed by Her Majesty and a number of Her senior Judges.
The ‘Livadia’ in 1881: a view of the bizarrely-shaped vessel’s stern.
The ‘Livadia’ as a coal barge in Sevastopol Harbour in 1883.