Spinning Top at the Heart of the Playground

A huge wooden spinning top, tilted mid-spin, balances its red point on a gold disc in a round plaza of tiled mosaic. Its body is carved with suns, spirals and green leaves, with a diamond lattice near the tip and rows of rounded scales in red, teal, yellow and cream across the shoulder. Tiny people live on it. A little theatre with dancers in tutus sits in the upper ring, a garden grows along its edge, ladders climb the side, and star-shaped mushrooms and feathers sprout from the top. A crowd watches from the plaza. Around it, rainbow-banded tracks loop past pinwheels, ball pits, a slide, a cable car, stripy market stalls and a stream of marbles. The bands of the track and the scale rows give clear colour lines for the pieces.