Garden Festival 'zone' | Water and Maritime |
Type of object | Sculpture or other artwork |
Current situation | Unknown |
Notes | Nothing is known about this sculpture, or the artist who made it. It appears, however, to have been located overlooking the river within the 'Water and Maritime' zone. |
Archives: USP Posts
USP Post Types
Three Right Angles Horizontal (George Rickey)
Type of object | Sculpture or other artwork |
Current situation | Known |
Current location, if known | Queens Park pond, Glasgow |
Notes | Retreived from Council storage and re-erected at Queens Park December 2020, with the assistance of Sculpture Placement Group. |
RNLI Lifeboat
Garden Festival 'zone' | Water and Maritime |
Sponsor, if appropriate | RNLI |
Type of object | Vehicle, boat or ship |
Current situation | Known |
Current location, if known | Porth Penrhyn, Bangor North Wales May 2022 |
Notes | The RNLI had a display at the GGF which featured a 42' Watson lifeboat. The boat, named J W Archer, had been based at Wicklow in the Irish Republic from 1956 until 1987. After retirement it was refurbished and moved to the GGF where McAllisters of Dumbarton placed her ashore. After the festival finished McAllisters removed her and she was sold by the RNLI to a private owner who moved her to Porth Penrhyn. Her current owner keeps her in original condition and she regularly visits events in the UK and Eire for RNLI fundraising purposes. |
Scotland’s Central Region (Emma Shipton)
Sponsor, if appropriate | Central Regional Council |
Type of object | Sculpture or other artwork |
Current situation | Known |
Current location, if known | The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum |
Notes | This striking, stained glass panel was made by artist Emma Shipton of Aurora Glass in Alloa. It was commissioned by the Central Regional Council for their display at the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988. The Central Regional Council was the administrative body for the Stirling, Clackmannan and Falkirk areas for more than 20 years. Some of their most prominent landmarks feature in this design. The vibrant blues of that strategic central waterway, the Forth, flow from the soft greens and heathers of central Scotland’s hills. The area’s links to the nation’s history are clear, with Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. Local industry is represented by the textile mills of the Hillfoots, by the winding gear so symbolic of the coal mines east of Stirling, and by the refinery at Grangemouth. After the exhibition at the Festival, the panel was installed at the entrance to the Council Chamber at Old Viewforth in Stirling. When this space was later refurbished by Stirling Council the panel was given into the care of The Smith. |
Dalswinton Steam Boat
Garden Festival 'zone' | The Rendezvous |
Sponsor, if appropriate | Dumfries & Galloway Council or Dumfries & Galloway College (?) |
Type of object | Vehicle, boat or ship |
Current situation | Known |
Current location, if known | Dalswinton Estate |
Notes | Assumed to be part of the Dumfries and Galloway exhibit. After an initial research and feasibility study undertaken by John Bowie (a retired marine engineer) there was a Work experience /Youth training scheme devised, also supervised by John, to build a replica of the first known steamboat, which sailed on Dalswinton Loch in 1788. It was built in a small warehouse in High St. (Maxwellton), Dumfries and then displayed at the Garden Festival. After the festival it returned to Dumfries and was in the grounds of Dumfries and Galloway College (at that time in Heathall). At some point since then it was moved to the Dalswinton Estate (just North of Dumfries) where it is exhibited as part of the estate. |
Ceremonial Entrance and Ticket Entrances
Garden Festival 'zone' | High Street |
Type of object | Pavilion, building or other structure |
Current situation | Unknown |
Notes | These are the buildings that resulted from the first prize winning designs for the Glasgow Garden Festival 1988 Architecture Competition by Ian Pickering and Alastair Macdonald, both then tutors at The Glasgow School of Art. These were concept designs for ceremonial entrance pavilions, garden cafes, toilet units, ticket entrances etc. The design took a modular approach which suggested how this approach might also be applied in various way to e.g. a knot garden, scent garden, orangerie etc. Ian Pickering went on to develop the designs into the built structures. |
Festival Railway
Garden Festival 'zone' | Multiple Zones |
Type of object | Pavilion, building or other structure |
Current situation | Unknown |
Notes | A 600mm narrow-gauge trackway around the Festival site - the route looped around the Marina, over the British Steel Harbour Bridge and featured three stations: Pavilion Station, Jubilee Station and Empire Station. |
Festival Trains



Garden Festival 'zone' | Multiple Zones |
Type of object | Vehicle, boat or ship |
Current situation | Partly known |
Current location, if known | Rusutsu Resport, Hokkaido, Japan (as of May 2022) |
Notes | Three locomotives, with carriages, were built by Severn Lamb Ltd and based loosely on the design of Caledonian Railway 4-2-2 Locomotive no 23 (which had been built in Glasgow in 1886). They travelled the Festival Railway on a 25-minute circuit, and - despite their appearance - they were driven by diesel engines. The locomotives (and, it seems, their carriages) were transferred to Japan after the Festival. At least one locomotive still runs at the Rusutsu Resort. |
Waterfall
The Four “L” Eccentric (George Rickey)
Type of object | Sculpture or other artwork |
Current situation | Unknown |
Notes | According to glasgowsculpture.com, Rickey gifted the sculpture to the city of Glasgow, following the Garden Festival, and 'after languishing in pieces at a council depot, despite the sculptor's requests to have it re-erected or returned to him, has since disappeared without trace'. |