Designer birds: Peacock

A peacock by Paul Evans

I love birds and I love design, so here I am beginning an occasional series about birds that have become style icons in some way. This includes their use for company logos and their place in art. I am starting with the peacock…

There are many peacocks in captivity at stately homes in the UK and they can be seen in the grounds of our own Cardiff Castle in the city centre. They occasionally escape or sit on the outer walls and make a racket with their loud cries.

The peacock is the wonderful show-off male of the blue peafowl (Pavo cristatus), which is the national bird of India and regional bird of the Punjab.

The original NBC peacock logo, left, and as it is today

Perhaps the most widely known peacock logo is that used by NBC. It was created in 1956 by John J Graham and was first used on a black background for effect. The idea was to publicise NBC’s colour TV content and parent company RCA’s colour TV sets. Read a lot more on Wikipedia here.

That’s one of the main selling points for the peacock in design – it’s SO colourful. Trawling the web, I found quite a few peacock logos. As usual, click on the picture to go to the source…

Thomas Swain's logo for the Peacock Players gaming casino

The logo of event planners Peacock Marketing Group

Rough sketch and a final stylised peacock logo by Karen Ammon

Colourful peacock poster by Minkee

More about shape than colour, a logo by Boothwoman for clothing company RoCoCo

Nature itself sometimes plays a trick and does away with all the colour, too…

This white peacock photographed by MapleRose looks like a ballerina...

Even a single eyed feather from a peacock’s tail can make a style statement…

Logo for Peacock Inc, a building management company, by Peter Grillot

The Cardiff-based UK bargain clothing store Peacocks has underplayed its name – the old logo perhaps had a hint of peacock eye? Or were those circles just coins in your pocket? Since a management buyout in 1997 the logo has been redesigned. Do I see a hint of blue peacock feather in that stripe under the name?

The UK Peacocks logo, old (left) and new...

The peacock was a popular motif in Art Nouveau at the turn of the 20th century. Its rainbow colours (iridescence, from Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow) shone out after the dark and dreary fashions of Queen Victoria’s widowhood.

Iridescent peacock feathers, left, are imitated in this Tiffany vase (1896-8) from the Neumann Collection in Switzerland

The peacock is also traditionally a symbol of pride, beauty, endless love and even eternal life. What’s not to like?

Two variations on a peacock theme by illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)

A peacock pectoral from Lalique

Art Nouveau style Tiffany stained-glass peacock

In Greek legend, Hera, queen of the gods, preserved the hundred eyes of faithful Argus Panoptes in the peacock’s tail after his death. Argus was an all-seeing giant set to guard the nymph Io (in the form of a white heifer) from Zeus, Hera’s promiscuous husband.

Here are some more illustrations of peacocks in art…

Peacock by Ella Tjader

Peacock by Barbara Brash (1958) from the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia

This one reminds me of a painting by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), although to my knowledge he never painted peacocks…

Symbolist peacock by Patricia Ariel

This one also reflects Klimt’s techniques, with all that two-dimensional decoration filling the space around the figure…

Peacock goddess by DeAnna Gladys Conn

To complete the picture, here’s my own photograph of a peacock butterfly, named in Latin Inachis io after the nymph Io (daughter of Inachus the river god) guarded by the many-eyed Argus mentioned earlier…

Peacock butterfly (Inachis io) at Aberglasney Gardens in summer

You may also be amused by this 1960s video of Bobby Vee singing “The Night has a Thousand Eyes” – nothing to do with peacocks, but the title always reminds me of the Argus story…