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The Amulette

Andy Bowman, the award-winning designer at the head of Mountain Creative Design, was tasked with re-branding Highland Park; the brief was to reinforce the brand values and to focus on integrity. Having worked with Highland Park before, Andy was already a fan.

“I have very fond memories of my first stint on Highland Park; in the summer of 1995, I was asked to paint a series of watercolours that would feature in a book celebrating Orcadian poetry entitled Orkney Stories. Having been deeply in love with the Scottish Islands and their culture for some time, it was no great inconvenience to find myself wandering the rugged and beautiful landscape in search of inspiration.

By coincidence, 10 years later we were asked to revisit the brand; the branding that had served Highland Park so well for many years clearly hadn’t originated from Orkney which has a culture of Celts, Picts and Vikings. I had a fairly good idea of what we were trying to create but my knowledge of Viking art was minimal. Sitting alone in the Eunson Room at the distillery with only my diary for company, I started to sketch; five minutes later the first draft of the amulette was finished. I felt that overall it looked like a modern shape but its centre was rooted in something that definitely wasn’t modern. I struggled to justify it at first but it felt right; a perfect mix of Celtic and Scandinavian influences.

From the brief, it was clear we needed assurances that the Viking influence was well-founded. I flew to Oslo in December 2005 and, after studying in the museums of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, I felt vindicated.

In my research I learned of the many similarities between the Celtic, Gael, Pictish and Viking art styles; I was most influenced by the Urnes style; the soft, graceful curves and sophisticated line shapes belie its 1,000-year-old tradition. The style is essentially Norwegian, the homeland of the Vikings settlers that arrived in Orkney at around the same time. Most Viking – and much of Celtic – jewellery was created in silver and that was the overriding reason to change from the old golden “h”. The knotwork that features in the Amulette is common to Norway and Scotland as is the lettering style employed to create the “h” in Highland Park. The design was then taken to the renowned Orkney jeweller, Ortak, to be created in pure silver.”