Crown Jewels is an evocative installation that Tony Cragg composed using plastic waste all characterized by white and arranged, as in a sort of mosaic, to give shape to a majestic imperial crown. Although the objects of the composition, even though they are rejected even rather damaged, are singularly legible, their presence is however altered in a much broader image, that of the crown, which the viewer reconstructs through a process of reading and association, passing from understanding. of the single object / material to that of a more complex figure. The work, also considering the period in which it was made, the beginning of the 1980s, certainly brings a reflection on the national identity and on the political and social situation of the Thatcher era, which is also found in other works of the English artist, such as Britain Seen from the North, Union Jack and Riot Policeman.

Tony Cragg has been using his particular technique of the fly-maker since the 1970s, but in 1980 two innovations take over: the compositions of plastic objects begin to give shape to real images and no longer abstract and, the figurations, for easier reading, from the floor, where the artist had placed them until then, they move to the wall. In this passage from the horizontality of the floor to the verticality of the wall, there is a new conquest: lying on the floor, the figure would inevitably have been subjected to perspective deformations due to the change in the viewer's point of view, while his conformation could stand out more clearly, letting all its iconic power come out. For the work Crown Jewels, the figure of the crown was made by the artist freehand, drawing from a real image of the Imperial Crown used as a reference and shown on a large sheet of transparent polythene placed on the floor. This sheet, on which the silhouettes of the various objects that create the composition have been traced, constitutes the basis from which to set up the work on the exhibition wall.