In 1944, the designer Oliver Messel was released from his war duties in camouflage to work on the film Caesar and Cleopatra, adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play. Messel was responsible for the costumes and the interior design of the sets, bringing all his imagination and ingenuity to creating Roman and Egyptian costumes and interiors in the context of the mid 1940s. The film was the most expensive British film to date, costing over £1m, and brought a welcome sense of extravagance and colour into a drab post-war world. Surprisingly, given his sense of colour, he never worked on another colour film.

Wartime shortages of materials was no problem for Messel, who knew that in theatre and on film, an accurate depiction of reality was not required. He had always been creative in his use of unexpected materials, and to make this wreath needed no 'real' gold metal or chased decoration. The leaves are moulded leather with wire stems which are fixed onto a wire circlet bound with brown paper tape, the whole painted to simulate laurel. A laurel wreath was the sign of the victor in the classical world.

Unlike the wreaths worn by Claude Rains in the film, which were secured by ties at the back, in this example the wired base has been formed into two hooks. Possibly it is a prototype which was not adopted.

Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain's leading theatre designer from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, working in every aspect of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic designs informed by period styles, were perfectly in tune with his times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, Messel's style had become unfashionable, having no sympathy with the new 'kitchen sink' school of theatre. He increasingly concentrated on non-theatrical painting and designing and eventually retired to the Caribbean, where he began a new career designing and building highly idiosyncratic luxury villas.