A popular and innovative window dresser from the heyday of Bermuda’s department stores thrived as an eye-catching artist with a flair for using found materials.

Will Collieson’s displays enjoyed a global following, and he was regularly featured in the Bermuda National Gallery, where he also designed shows.

Mr Collieson said that his childhood penchant for collecting evolved into a technique for incorporating found objects in art, from bones and driftwood washed up by hurricanes to an old wooden shutter discovered inside the wall of a Hamilton store.

The son of a civil engineer in England, Mr Collieson initially caused upset in his family with his decision to attend art school.

At age 23, he spotted an advertisemt for a window-dresser at HA & E Smith’s, the classic Hamilton department store, and went for an interview at its London office.

Sir Henry Vesey, the head of the company from 1934 to 1993, gave Mr Collieson the job.

Mr Collieson’s first stint on the island ended with him returning to Britain after a few years to work for Richard Branson designing album covers for Virgin Records.

Despite the offer of a promotion, he missed Bermuda, and returned to Smith’s.

The young window dresser unleashed his creativity on the job, and made a name for himself as a distinctive local artist specialising in three-dimensional works.

Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War, with a grandfather, Frank, killed in the First World War, Mr Collieson came to use war themes in many of his creations.

“I was born in Wallasey near Liverpool in 1946,” he told The Royal Gazette in a 2011 interview.

“There was a time when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was watching television. A BBC documentary came on that was about the evacuation at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“I saw these pictures and I was so gut-wrenched by it that I was traumatised. My father explained what had happened. I was scared to watch television for a while. I just couldn’t understand how human beings could do that.”

He added: “My mother reassured me that this will never happen again. Of course, we now know that wasn’t true.”

Mr Collieson, a graduate of the Wallasey School of Art, enjoyed a prolific career spanning decades, much of it from his gallery on York Street in St George’s.

He enjoyed wordplay in the titles of his works, and reviewers took note of his playful and irreverent streak, with Andrew Trimingham praising him as “endlessly inventive in his complex searches for the offbeat and effective”.

Mr Collieson also designed the bull statue at Bull’s Head in Hamilton as well as the sails sculpture outside Waterloo House on Pitts Bay Road.

As the director of displays in Smith’s, a role he held for more than 40 years, Mr Collieson said he liked to “do something different, not the obvious”, adding an unconventional twist to familiar themes.

Stephen Davidson, the chairman of the board for Bermuda Press (Holdings) Ltd, recalled him from childhood.

“As a young person, it was natural to gravitate up to Will's workshop up in the loft at Smith’s, which was an always-changing hothouse of creativity and goodwill.”

He added: “Despite limited budgets, he was able to consistently create retail displays throughout that rambling store that were world-class, on par with London or Paris.

“I still have pieces of some of them on my wall all these years later that I salvaged from the Dumpster.”

Graham Foster, a prominent Bermudian painter and sculptor, recalled Mr Collieson as a natural innovator.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Will’s work, especially his evocative, imaginative and surreal sculptures created from found objects, often imbued with a subtle humour.

“If you wanted to buy one, or do a swap, you had to move fast, as he would constantly be getting some new inspiration, often disassembling them to create new sculptures.”

He added: “He made a big impact on the Bermuda art scene, and he’ll be missed, but will live on through his unique artwork.”

Charles Zuill, an artist and a founding trustee of the Bermuda National Gallery, exhibited works alongside Mr Collieson’s at the National Arts Club in New York, the Bermuda Society of Arts and in a show at the St George’s marina.

“I used to go to Hamilton just to see his windows at H.A. & E. Smith’s,” Mr Zuill said. “They were works of art. He was incredibly inventive — and because of that, I would end up buying things at Smith’s.”

Mr Collieson was a keen long-distance runner, and Mr Zuill remembered coming out from volunteering at the Bermuda National Gallery in Hamilton on a brightly moonlit night.

“Will lived in St George’s and he set off and ran home,” he said.

“On another occasion he was running through Flatts and saw an old piece of plywood in the gutter, which he picked up, deciding he could do something with it.

“He had been influenced by the American artist Jasper Johns, who painted the American flag. Will uncovered stripes on the plywood and drilled 50 holes into it. He put it on show at the Bermuda Society of Arts and apparently a couple of US tourists were incensed by it, considering it a desecration of the flag.

“I thought, if it’s that powerful, I will buy it — which I did. I donated it to the National Gallery.”

Mr Collieson is survived by his wife, Wendy, and two sons, James and Adam.

• William Henry Collieson, a leading artist whose works were exhibited locally and overseas, was born in 1946. He died on October 22, 2023, aged 77