Phil Cleaver, a British graphic designer, won a prize in the 2024 Global Zodiac Design Competition organized by the Beijing Overseas Cultural Exchange Center for his work well incorporating ancient representations of the Chinese dragon.
To display his understanding of this year's Chinese zodiac animal, the Chinese dragon, also known as "loong" according to its pronunciation in Chinese, Cleaver combined different symbolic objects in his work: an antique Chinese dragon-shaped pipe placed across an open book, with the book resting against a backboard that is adorned with motifs from old dragon stamps.
"The loong itself is an antique pipe, beautiful in its detail and proportion, and it sits on a book that is a story of a dragon. The book is a very old symbol of knowledge ... the book reflects the knowledge and wisdom of the loong," the professor of the School of Art and Design at the Middlesex University in London told Xinhua in a written interview.
