Patrick Comerford
I probably ought not to walk around London with my head in the air without making sure my feet are firmly planted on the ground and that I am watching what lies before me. That probably explains why had a bad tumble and fell crossing Oxford Street and ended up in A&E in University College Hospital four months ago (7 February 2025).
But, walking along Oxford Street with my head in the air, yet again, last week, I noticed for the first time Michael Rizzello’s bronze sculpture, ‘Dancer With Ribbon’, a bronze sculpture inspired by the former ballerina and ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ judge Dame Darcey Bussell.
Michael Rizzello created this sinuous statue in 1997, when Darcey Bussell was well into her career. The bronze likeness perched above the entrance to Next at 116-122 Oxford Street was commissioned in 1996 when the former Bourne & Hollingsworth building was being redeveloped into the Plaza, a shopping and food outlet.
The building was designed by Slater and Moberly, an architectural partnership in London formed in the 1920s by John Alan Slater (1885-1963) and Arthur Hamilton Moberly (1886-1952). When Reginald Harold Uren (1906-1988) joined the practice in 1936, it was renamed Slater, Moberly and Uren, and it later became Slater, Uren and Pike.
Michael Gaspard Rizzello (1926-2004) was a sculptor and coin designer. Movement was a frequent element in his work – a difficult task in bronze – and it is famously seen in his statue of Lloyd George in Cardiff, where he shows the Welsh politician punching the air in a characteristic gesture.
Rizzello was born in London on 2 April 1926 of Italian parents, but never wanted to be a tailor like his father. He attended the London Oratory School and then enlisted in the army from 1944 to 1948.
He had a good baritone voice and almost became a professional singer. He had to choose between music and drawing, and chose to attend the Royal College of Art, where he won both the Drawing Prize and the Travelling Scholarship in Sculpture.
He studied sculpture in Rome for two years and was awarded the Prix de Rome 1951 for Sculpture at the British School at Rome. He began his career making wax heads for Madame Tussauds.
Rizzello had an unprecedented term of two five-year periods as President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. His public work includes Dancer with Ribbon in Oxford Street and David Lloyd George in Cardiff. His portrait busts include Nelson Mandela and a bronze portrait of Lady Astor in the Palace of Westminster. He also designed coins and medals, including the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross and the £2 coin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, both in 1995.
Rizzello was made an OBE in 1977. He died in London on 28 September 2004.
Rizzello’s vital, swirling image of Darcey Bussell has survived the recent development of the building as a flagship store for Next. The Bourne and Hollingworth shop was built 100 years ago in 1925 to designs by Slater and Moberly, but the interior has been totally rebuilt many times since.
The three green panels behind Darcey Bussell still carry the letters ‘B’ ‘&’ ‘H’. The building was named after the founders of the department store, the brothers-in-law Walter William Bourne and Howard E Hollingsworth, who started the business as a drapery shop in Westbourne Grove in 1894, and moves to the Oxford Street in 1902. The shop was remodelled by Slater and Moberly, but all the interiors were lost in the subsequent redesigning and rebuilding over the past century.
As for Darcey Bussell, she retired from ballet on 18 years ago on 8 June 2007. But she is still widely regarded as one of the finest British ballerinas – and you can see her dance if you keep looking up when you’re walking along Oxford Steet.
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