Glass Tennis Balls At Wimbledon

Shopkit have just completed a lovely installation for The All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon after they contacted us with the hope that, drawing from our many years experience with different styles of suspended displays, we would be able to design a minimal display solution to suspend some glass art works in the Royal Box and Member’s Area.

The newly commissioned art works that needed suspending were two beautiful large flat glass discs whose overall shape, and that of their wandering areas of engraving depicting symbols representing different elements of Wimbledon’s rich tennis history, were inspired by tennis balls and the seams that run around them in between their felt covering.

These two large flat glass tennis balls were approximately 700mm in diameter and needed to be fitted within cutouts in wall either side of the entrance in to the Royal Box, and as both pieces were engraved on both sides they also needed to be clearly viewable from both sides of the dividing wall.   As both pieces were also quite heavy we decided that the best way to safely display them with the least amount of visible supports, was to firstly sit them in a slim satin stainless steel rectangular block welded to a thin post that raised it up from the fixing plane. The blocks were lined with rubber inserts to protect the glass artworks that were then held in place with nylon tipped grub screws.   Additional supports were then provided by side grips that were suspended from tensioned 1.5mm stainless steel cables running down both sides of the plates.

Once installed both glass tennis balls looked amazing as the daylight flooded in from above Centre Court, illuminating the art works as a whole and picking out the intricate details of the engravings.   If you would like more information about the system created to suspend these glass tennis balls at Wimbledon shown here or if you have a future custom project that you think we might be able to help you with – please do call our Design Team on 01923 818282, email us on: sales@shopkit.com.