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The School Emblem The School has possessed its own eye-catching and enigmatic emblem since
the early days of its existence. The emblem was designed for the School by James Herbert MacNair (1868-1955), a friend and contemporary of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and, along with Mackintosh and the two Macdonald sisters, France and Margaret, one of the celebrated "Glasgow Four". MacNair was a highly influential figure in art and architecture around the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. MacNair began his art career in Glasgow where he formed his friendship with Mackintosh, but moved to Liverpool in 1898 to become an Instructor in Design at the School of Architecture and Art at the University College, later the University of Liverpool. MacNair gained a great reputation within the artistic community in Liverpool as he had done in Glasgow, and was elected to the Liverpool Academy in 1901. The School of Architecture and Design closed down in 1905 and MacNair moved to newly opened studios elsewhere in the city, but continued to carry out many commissions for the University College. One of these commissions came from the first Committee of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine which invited him to provide a design for the new publication, Memoirs, which recorded the current work of the School. A larger original version of the design was was first used on the cover of the second Memoirs. It was adopted by the School as its Emblem and gradually evolved to the single image of the ship which is still in use today. The exact meaning of the image has eluded all who have pondered it over the years, but MacNair was known for producing works every element of which had some degree of meaning or symbolism. Brian Gilmore Maegraith, a former Dean of the School, took a keen interest in discovering the meaning of the Emblem. He theorised that the ship in the picture may be an Egyptian Vessel and that the eye on the sail is the eye of the Egyptian Falcon god Horus, who was connected with healing and protection from evil and was often represented by a single eye. The voyage of the ship may symbolise the School's mission, which is concerned with health the world over and knows no bounds.
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