When a leap in glass bottle production came about, the glass became thinner and more transparent with less air bubbles obscuring the view. Upon reflecting his work, Yinka Shonibare enticingly declares: “All the rules can be broken and new fantasies can be created. Now living and working in London, Shonibare is esteemed for integrating his unique global heritage into an artistic voice that challenges assumptions and stereotypes concerning the constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. 1) We didn’t attach the ship part to the bottle. 1 litre plastic round bottle of something. The fanciful and playful aspect of his art, however, expresses a sense of creativity in which new ideas and imagery manage to break rules and expectations alongside boundaries and hierarchies. Putting items in bottles can be traced by to the mid 18th century. The fabrics used were inspired by Indonesian batik, mass-produced by Dutch traders and sold in West Africa. The fanciful and even mischievous tone of Shonibare’s art expresses a creative critique that is liberated from a potentially limiting and self-victimizing reflection on postcolonial theory and global politics. The concept of a ship in a bottle however, is not new…. Measure out your ship on the plastic bottle, now add half a centimetre to each side. Now, we can even buy ready made Ship in a bottle kits, for all ages. It has 80 cannon and 37 sails set as on the day of battle. We see this juxtaposition of the critical and the celebratory echoed in Nelson’s Ship, whose poetic perspective serves to treat as much as provoke its viewers. By the 20th century, with the creation of new, faster ships on the seas, so ships in bottles became more diverse in design. Take two more popsicle sticks and on one of them cut 2 cm off. He thus exposes a more nuanced global dialogue and empowering diasporic representation to the greater public. Before you glue your ship down on to the paper, make sure that the sails aren’t too tall to fit inside the bottle. Powerless Structure, Fig 101, 2011 This way, it meant we could play with the ship in water. Just like the real ship it has 80 guns and 37 sails. This meant they could slip through the neck of the bottle, secured into place on a sea of blue putty, representing the sea. Yinka Shonibare MBE Nelson's Ship in a Bottle Nelson's HMS Victory 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle' originally debuted on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square and is now permantley on display at The Nation Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Soon they became popular both in demand and in their creation. Her blog, The Rainbow Tree, explores all aspects of arts and crafts, and is aimed at children of all ages. Courtesy The National Maritime Museum Photo: Stephen White. While Shonibare’s works are sometimes critiqued for valuing aesthetic intrigue and conceptual insight at the expense of historical depth and retribution, they effectively present more obscure topics in an accessible and appealing framework. 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle' originally debuted on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square and is now permantley on display at The Nation Maritime Museum in Greenwich.The work is an incredibly detailed, scaled-down replica of HMS Victory, on which Nelson died during the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805.