Before settling in the US, Sir Ringo had a mold made of his hand in the peace gesture, and had a British sculptor named Guy Portelli expand it to a 9 foot tall realistic hand. Guy cast a copy in bronze. Later Sir Ringo designed a flattened cartoon or surreal version of the hand, with a bee and applied mosaics on the palm to symbolize peace and love to the bees and all things natural. The first hand has a simple oval base that is engraved with the words Peace and Love. The second one has a star shaped base, and between the five vertex of the star are the words peace and love, in a different language between each vertex.

Sir Ringo kept them as garden ornaments. When he moved permanently to Beverly Hills, he shipped over the original bronze, with a cargo bag full of parts from the original model. The pieces were mostly twisted out of shape, some rotten, broken and many missing. There were no molds.

First, I installed the bronze version on Sir Ringo’s property in Beverly Hills. Then he asked me to see what could be done with the contents of the two cargo bags. He wished to make new version of the hand and present it as a gift to the City of Beverly Hills in the name of Peace and Love.

I decided to take on this project because I felt honored, and because he proposed to cast 24 of them and see if they could be sold around the world.

I assembled the parts of the original model, involving much replacement and remodeling. I fashioned new parts such as the ring for the realism hand, and a bumble bee for the surreal hand. With my team we sculpted the two new masters, now full sized pieces, and made two professional production molds for duplication. This painstaking process took more than a year to accomplish with special help of Carlos Chavez of Kalonite Foundry.

The peace gesture was adopted from the WWII hand signal for Victory. It was called the V sign. When holding palm forward in the gesture it symbolized determination to push back, defeat the enemy and seize victory. This hand sign helped to unite the people of Britain and ultimately the allies. Later the hippies, who were the great libertines of 20th Century, adopted the V sign sign to mean peace, a total victory over all war. This became the hand sign of the generation that changed the world through peaceful demonstration and music.

Since medieval times the V sign meant Venus and all things Venereal, the two fingers forming the shape of the crotch was considered suggestively sexy. So it was the hand sign to use when you told someone to f@#!-off. This gesture has the back of the hand facing forwards .

I cast the first two hands in Stainless steel and I revealed them to the public at Sir Ringo Starrs 78th birthday party at capital records on 7/7/17. At the same time I helped Mr. Scott Ritchie (Sir Ringo’s assistant) submit the proposal to the City of Beverly Hills to place the realistic version of the hand near the lily pond on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Strangely the offer was declined as the Arts Commission of Beverly Hills did not think the piece met their criteria for art. It wasn’t until almost two years later that Scott Ritchie, with the help of Jill Collins managed to have the decision reversed by the new Mayor John Mirisch. The hand was finally accepted by the City, not as art but as a symbol of Peace and Love.

It is soon to be installed in the gardens of Beverly Hills for the world to see.