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Black cat sculpture designed to break curse befalling table of 13 dinner guests will have seafood restaurant named after him
An artwork created using spatial canning, 3D printing and complex mathematics has been installed in the Savoy hotel in honour of an 86-year-old cat.
The South African artist Jonty Hurwitz has created an anamorphic sculpture to pay tribute to Kaspar, a fictional black cat that has become ingrained into the building's history.
Kaspar's tale began in 1898, when the diamond magnate Woolf Joel held a dinner party for 14 guests at the London hotel. One dropped out at the last minute, reducing the number of diners to 13, prompting one to predict that death would befall the first person to leave the table. Joel scoffed at the idea and left first. Weeks later he was shot dead.
Shocked by the news, the hotel invited staff to join tables of 13. This practice continued until in 1927 when the designer Basil Ionides created a 2ft-high feline sculpture to become the 14th dinner guest.
Now the cat, which features in children's books by Michael Morpurgo, will have a restaurant named after him. Kaspar's Seafood Bar and Grill will replace the River Restaurant at the Savoy, for which the Hurwitz artwork has been made.
