Lumiere London

The 18th - 21st January saw Lumiere London (www.visitlondon.com/lumiere) come to town, billed as the UK's largest light festival. With 54 installations around central London, it was certainly something to visit, a view shared (in more ways than one) by the crowds who turned out on Sunday evening after a day of heavy rain.

This is a blog about clocks, so I will focus on the illumination of timepieces, whilst maybe throwing in a few other pictures.

Below is the west face of Westminster Abbey as you don't normally see it, with the clock bathed in some unusual colours.

The work is called The Light of the Spirit by Patrice Warrener. It also includes illumination of the north door, which has nothing to do with clocks but is just glorious.

It is not every day that you see pink neon ladders on top of the steeple of St Martin-in-the-Fields ("Echelle" by Ron Haselden).....

...or a giant rabbit (or hare?) amongst a whole illuminated garden of plants and animals in Leicester Square ("Nightlife" by Lantern Company with Jo Pocock).

Not especially lit for Lumiere, the Swiss clock in Leicester Square struck 8 o'clock as I was passing, so giving a chance to see its moving menagerie of people and cows.

The Café Royal building in Piccadilly became a giant screen during the festival, with a general theme of time and journeys ("Voyage" by Camille Gross and Leslie Epsztein). This not only saw a huge clock face projected onto the façade...

...but also lit up its real clock with a variety of colourful displays and false hands.

 And finally, I leave you with "My Light is Your Light" by Alaa Minawi, which has nothing to do with clocks (other than it is on the side of St James's church which does have a large clock), but I just liked it.