A photograph for posterity by follower Patrick Crowley. The William Mitchell abstract reliefs are today being removed from Barker’s Pool House on Burgess Street.
Installed in May 1972 the ten panels were commissioned as part of the office and supermarket development. They were constructed in the latter period of Mitchell’s first phase of practising in Britain, following his work as design consultant with London County Council.
“A minor example from a cycle of works produced in Faircrete, a new form of concrete developed at the John Laing Research and Development headquarters.”
It has an Egyptian appearance, a characteristic of his work, first evident in an office building entrance mural for London’s Barbican, in the early sixties.
William Mitchell (born 1925) subsequently left Britain, returning in the 1990s to work with Mohammed Al Fayed of Harrods.
Ironically, he died in January with the fate of his Sheffield work still undecided. It will now be restored and incorporated somewhere in the Heart of the City II development.
sheffielder.net 