The Unfurling Fern

Commission by The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society
The new medal has been designed by Cornwall-based artist and award-winning medallist Lucy Willow. In 2018 she received the British Art Medal Society’s (BAMS) prestigious Marsh Award for the Encouragement of Medallic Art in recognition of her success supporting Falmouth University students in the BAMS annual medal competition. Lucy’s design centres on an unfurling fern, its suggestion of new beginnings, vitality and growth making it relevant to all three categories celebrated by the RCPS Medal Awards. The fern is emblematic of morphogenesis, the patterns of growth in nature as explained by bio-mathematician, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948) in his influential book On Growth and Form (1917) and echoes the golden spiral or Fibonacci Spiral, exemplified by the Nautilus shell, on which the RCPS’s current logo is based. It also links to the horticultural interests of The Poly’s founders - gardens created by the Fox family include those at Trebah, Penjerrick, and Fox Rosehill, Cornwall’s first Mediterranean-style garden.