The BFG Dream Jar Auction

Actors to astronauts design sculptures for Save the Children

London is dreaming many dreams this summer; not only is the capital the setting for the film adaptation of the world’s favourite dream catcher, Roald Dahl’s The BFG, it is the scene of 46 beautiful 2m-high Dream Jars forming a trail around the city. Artists, actors, royalty and more have bottled their dreams, and the creations are being auctioned online in aid of Save the Children and Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity via Paddle8, with the gavel being brought down on Wednesday August 31.

The question “what did you dream of as a child?” was asked of Stephen Hawking, Quentin Blake, conceptual artist Jane Morgan, Helen Mirren and Buzz Aldrin et al, and each has used Dahl-like imagination to create “splendiferous” Dream Jars; for, as another famous writer once wrote, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”.

The 7m-tall gentle dream catcher in the film – played by actor Mark Rylance – has created a “whoopsy-splunkers” jar called The Merry Go Round (first picture) from a dream that has long stayed with him; Rylance describes it as “a carousel, inside a glass house. A door opens and The Planets by Gustav Holst can be heard from inside. Old friends arrive, offering me work. When I hear the music, I jump up and shout ‘What a great idea!’”

The interpretation of each jar is joyfully different; The BFG’s director Steven Spielberg found his inspiration from dreaming about being the proverbial kid in a candy store. “I had a childhood dream of having all the sweets in the whole world…”, as his Sweet Dreams jar (second picture) demonstrates. As for the most successful Olympic Games sailor in history, four-time gold medallist Ben Ainslie draws on his dream of winning the legendary America’s Cup and bringing it home to Britain; his Ship of Dreams (third picture) updates the ship-in-a-bottle motif into a huge sailing boat floating on a deep blue sea.

Yet as it is the Queen in the story who helps to defeat the human-eating giants, it is only appropriate that royalty has designed a dream jar too. The Duchess of Cornwall, patron of the Roald Dahl 100 Celebrations, has designed a jar with artist Michael Howells that is simply called Read. “The power of a good story is immense. It starts a voyage of discovery into different worlds that broadens and stimulates our minds,” says the Duchess. “My dream is that every child learns to read and discovers the life-long pleasure of books.”