The Grocers’ Company

The Grocers’ Company, one of the ‘Great Twelve’ Livery Companies of the City of London, tasked us with creating a short animation to sum up its illustrious 800 year history, as well as its present day purpose and charitable aims.

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The Grocers’ Company began around 1180 when a group of merchants trading in spices, gold, and other luxury goods from Byzantium & the Mediterranean came together as “a Fraternity of Pepperers”.

By the 1370s the group was calling itself the “Company of Grocers”, named after the ‘gross’ weights in which it bought and sold goods.

Following a recent refining of their mission statement, the Grocers’ Company was looking for a way to bring it to life, seeking to communicate its purpose in a clear and creative way. The Company’s Clerk helped bring the project to fruition after seeing the work we did for the National Gallery’s bicentenary (you can watch it here), requesting something similarly characterful, engaging and combining photography with animation.

By 1562, the camel had become a key emblem for the Grocers’, and appeared, laden with cloves, as a crest augmenting the Company’s Arms.

Cloves were one of the most expensive spices, reflecting their long journey from the Spice Islands, and their extensive use in the medicines of the time.

Angelica Lena directed and developed the mixed media style, animated by the talented Matt Stewart Tribe, in which we combine photographic elements with drawn animation and colourful paper cut outs, all layered over a cream background to create a crisp and playful effect. We particularly love the simple paper cut-out shapes, which shift in colour when overlapped.

More than 300 years ago the Company’s Clerk described the Grocers’ Company as ‘a nursery of charities and a seminary of good citizens’ and The Grocers’ still use the expression today.

“Nursery” and “Seminary” are used in their original senses of places that promote, develop, or nurture something.

The script, written by Oliver Trace in collaboration with The Company, effectively condenses 800 years of history in to just 5 minutes, and stays true to one of our core goals at Sentio Space – to inform and educate. We’re pleased to have delivered a film that satisfies numerous stakeholders at the Grocers’ Company, and will serve them well, as the organisation communicate its history and future charitable purpose to new audiences.

Client: The Grocers’ Company

Script by Oliver Trace

Direction by Angelica Lena

Animation by Matt Stewart Tribe

Educational Institutions

Communicating with clarity and sensibility through online channels is now a defining feature of effective educational institutions. Animation is an increasingly popular route, as it allows diverse characters and multiple locations to be realised without the need of film crews and location scouts. Identities can be concealed when sensitivity is required. And it is at home with younger audiences.