Burberry Landscape Art Project Honours Design Heritage

The iconic beige, black, and red check pattern we associate with London’s famed Burberry label became the brand’s official signature in the 1960s. Still, the company’s heritage goes back more than 160 years, when founder Thomas Burberry equipped explorers to venture into the great outdoors.

Burberry’s passion for adventure and connection to nature has remained at the core of the brand’s DNA—from developing outerwear that protects from the elements to building on sustainable practices.

A unique landscape art project now brings Burberry’s pioneering spirit into a new artistic dimension. Created in collaboration with the brand’s creative team, Burberry Landscapes presents a series of colossal-scale earthworks that pay tribute to the company’s design heritage.

Making an appearance in two scenic locations—the Canary Islands and South Africa—the works use the land as a natural canvas, transforming it into iterations of the famous Burberry pattern.

On the island of El Hierro, Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada painted the volcanic soil in a check motif, inspired by the Canary Islands voyages of Elsie Burberry, Thomas Burberry’s daughter-in-law. Keeping the environment in mind, Rodriguez-Gerada used natural milk-based paint, a washable liquid with no lasting mark on the landscape.

The paint provided yet another advantage. “One of the things I enjoy about using this paint process is that it’s created from minerals,” Rodriguez-Gerada says. “Mixing your colours is like alchemy.”