A brief history of the Downing Street lectern

Marking the tumultuous start of a series of excited opening speeches and ashamed resignations, David Cameron’s lectern was the first of four bespoke designs that made it to the front of number 10 Downing Street over the last six years. Each lectern seems to wishfully set a tone for each ministerial leadership stint, with the wildly different designs exposing the public image that the respective Prime Ministers hope to emit. 

The furniture designs, which take about three weeks to create and cost between £2,000-£4,000 (explains Evening Standard writer Nuray Bulbul), range from the grand to the muted, and feature the Royal Coat of Arms on round or ovular plaques.

David Cameron’s ‘Blond wooden affair, with a swooping hourglass profile that summoned images of champagne flutes and corseted waistlines,’ as described by The Guardian's architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright, was followed by Theresa May’s sombre wooden stand. Its slight orange tinge and minimal design characterised the second female Prime-Minister’s move into power. The lectern appeared to be a functional alternative to her predecessors, a change in tone that unsurprisingly did not stick with the grandiosity of Boris Johnson’s move onto Downing Street.

Johnson’s broad structure appeared to be closely aligned with the lectern from the White House briefing room, in dark wood and featuring a wide, stepped base. Perhaps the biggest impression made of all the lecterns was in Liz Truss’ swirling, disjointed pale wooden form. An intriguing design has been used for the structure, as each layer to its stand appears separate from one another and sits slightly out of line in the graduating column. There’s clearly a changing tone in the linear structure that Rishi Sunak’s podium holds, taking a form similar to that of May’s, his is the first podium that hasn’t been personally designed due to the speed at which he entered office, and perhaps marks the end of an awkwardly executed series of designs.