The Tudor Crown Inspiration in Six's Logo

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Top left: The current 3D stylized crown used in the Six logo. Bottom left: An older 2D version of the crown in the Six logo which also shows up on some merch now. Top right: The most detailed painting we have of the Tudor Crown, as shown in a 1631 portrait of Charles I. Bottom right: A replica of the Tudor Crown made in 2012. The original was melted down in 1649 after the Civil War.

Top left: The current 3D stylized crown used in the Six logo.
Bottom left: An older 2D version of the crown in the Six logo which also shows up on some merch now.
Top right: The most detailed painting we have of the Tudor Crown, as shown in a 1631 portrait of Charles I.
Bottom right: A replica of the Tudor Crown made in 2012. The original was melted down in 1649 after the Civil War.

I was wearing my Six on Broadway shirt earlier and found myself wondering about the design of the crown in the Six logo. I’ve read up on crowns a fair amount at this point for my blog, and it didn’t look like any I knew.

I examined a lot of crowns online, and briefly looked at the crown of Napoleon, but ultimately came back to the Tudor Crown. I wasn’t convinced at first, but once I found photographs of the replica Tudor Crown produced in 2012, I realized it almost certainly was the inspiration. Which, you know, makes a lot of sense for a musical set in Tudor times.

The Six crown appears to be a highly stylized and simplified version of the Tudor imperial crown. Both are “closed” crowns, which means that they contain a circlet and arches over the top. These arches tend to indicate an imperial crown worn by an emperor, rather than a king (an emperor is not only a monarch of their own country, but rules over several other territories that make up an empire as well).

The Six crown removes most of the jewels from the Tudor Crown and the cloth cap, leaving only the base gold. The remaining pearls and jewels have all been changed to gold, so you see much of the original texture of the crown, but not the colors.

Both the 3D and 2D versions of the Six crown retain the fleurs-de-lis on the Tudor crown and the top monde (orb) and cross. The 3D version replaces the crosses pattée on the circlet with a sort of outward facing spoon shape (note: a cross pattée is a cross with narrow arms toward the center intersection and broader arms at the edges). The crosses pattée may have been removed to make the whole look a little more religion neutral, or perhaps just to streamline the look overall. The 3D version also appears to stretch out the space in between the fleurs-de-lis and spoons as well, so you see a lot more space in between circlet elements than you do on the Tudor crowns or the 2d version.