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Title: Leadwork - Old and Ornamental and for the most part English
Author: Lethaby, W. R. (William Richard), 1857-1931
Language: English
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LEADWORK
“_That which gives to the leadwork of the Middle Ages a particular
charm is that the means they employed and the forms they adopted
are exactly appropriate to the material. Like Carpentry or Cabinet
work, Plumbing was an art apart which borrowed neither from stone
nor wood in its design. Mediæval lead was wrought like colossal
goldsmith’s work._”--VIOLLET-LE-DUC.
LEADWORK
OLD AND ORNAMENTAL
AND FOR THE MOST PART
ENGLISH. BY W. R. LETHABY
WITH ILLVSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
1893
Macmillan & Co., London & New York.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
CONTENTS
SECT. PAGE
I. OF MATERIAL AND CRAFTSMANSHIP 1
II. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 5
III. OF LEAD COVERINGS TO BUILDINGS 17
IV. OF LEADED SPIRES AND TURRETS 20
V. OF DOMES 33
VI. OF ROOFS 36
VII. OF LEAD COFFINS 40
VIII. OF FONTS 51
IX. OF INSCRIPTIONS, ETC. 65
X. OF THE DECORATION OF LEAD 72
XI. OF LEAD ORNAMENTATION OF OTHER MATERIALS 80
XII. OF DECORATIVE OBJECTS 84
XIII. OF LEAD GLAZING 87
XIV. OF LEAD STATUES 90
XV. OF LEAD FOUNTAINS 112
XVI. OF VASES AND GATE PIERS 114
XVII. OF FINIALS AND CRESTINGS 124
XVIII. OF CISTERNS, ETC. 131
XIX. OF GUTTERS 137
XX. OF PIPES AND PIPE HEADS 139
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
1. EGYPTIAN INSCRIBED TABLET 7
2. GREEK QUIVER 8
3. BUILDER’S PLUMMET 9
4, 5. GREEK WEIGHTS 10
6, 7. GREEK WEIGHTS 11
8, 9. CISTS FROM THE KIRCHERIAN MUSEUM 12
10. ROMAN JEWELLED CUP 14
11. SPIRE, BARNSTAPLE 26
12. ANOTHER SPIRE 27
13. TURRET, BARNARD’S INN HALL 29
14. CALAIS BELFRY 32
15. ORNAMENTS FROM COFFINS, CONSTANTINOPLE 41
16, 17. CISTS, BRITISH MUSEUM 42
18, 19. ROMAN COFFINS, BRITISH MUSEUM 44
20. ROMAN COFFIN, BRITISH MUSEUM 45
21. THIRTEENTH CENTURY COFFIN, TEMPLE CHURCH 46
22, 23. THIRTEENTH CENTURY COFFINS, TEMPLE CHURCH 47
24. COFFIN, WINCHESTER 48
25. AT MOISSAC 49
26. VESSEL, LEWES MUSEUM 52
27. FONT, BROOKLAND, KENT 54
28. FONT, BROOKLAND 55
29. FONT, EDBURTON, SUSSEX 57
30. FONT, WALTON, SURREY 59
31. FONT, PARHAM, SUSSEX 61
32. HEART BOX OF KING RICHARD 67
33. INSCRIBED CROSS 68
34. ARMS FROM BOURGES 70
35. INCISED DECORATION, BOURGES 75
36. PAINTED DECORATION, BOURGES 76
37. FLASHINGS, BOURGES 77
38. A VALANCE 78
39, 40. LEAD GLAZING 88
41. VENTILATING QUARRY 89
42. STATUE OF MERCURY 98
43. SUN-DIAL, TEMPLE GARDENS 100
44. CYMBAL PLAYER 106
45. TERMINAL AT CASTLE HILL 107
46. TIME, TEMPLE DINSLEY 108
47. VASE, HAMPTON COURT 115
48. FROM VASE, HAMPTON COURT 116
49. VASE, CASTLE HILL 117
50. ALBERT GATE 118
51. ALBERT GATE 119
52. VASE, KNOLE 120
53. CUPID, TEMPLE DINSLEY 121
54. SPHINX, SYON HOUSE 122
55. SYON HOUSE 123
56. FINIAL AT LILLE 126
57. FINIAL AT ANGERS 126
58. ANGERS 128
59. FINIALS, BOURGES 129
60. FROM NEWCASTLE 130
61. POUNDISFORD PARK, TAUNTON 132
62. CISTERN, EXETER 133
63. CISTERN, LONDON 134
64. CISTERN, S. KENSINGTON MUSEUM 135
65. GUTTER, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 137
66. GUTTER, TAUNTON 138
67. BRAMHALL, CHESHIRE 140
68, 69. PIPE HEADS, HADDON HALL 141
70. PIPE HEAD, HADDON 142
71. BODLEIAN, OXFORD 143
72. ST. JOHN’S, OXFORD 144
73. SHERBORNE 145
74. LIVERPOOL 145
75. ASHBOURNE 146
76. HADDON 147
LEADWORK
§ I. OF MATERIAL AND CRAFTSMANSHIP.
To none of the processes of modern mechanism do more vulgar associations
cling than to “Plumbing.” It is the very serviceableness and ductility
of lead as a material that have brought about the easy and familiar
contempt with which it is treated. While few are more worthy of artistic
care no metal is more perfectly adaptable to noble use through a range
of treatments that cannot be matched by any other metal whatsoever. It
combines extreme ease of manipulation with practically endless
durability, and a suitability to any scale, from a tiny inkwell, or a
medal, to the statue of horse and rider, a Versailles fountain, or the
greatest cathedral spire.
The range of method in handling follows from the equal ease with which
it can be hammered out, cast, or cut, and all three, employed
concurrently on the same piece.
The main purpose of the pages which follow is not to set out a history
of the use of this material in various forms, although this is involved.
It is intended by pointing out the characteristics and methods of the
art of lead working in the past to show its possibilities for us, and
for the future. A picture of what has been done is the best means of
coming to a view of what may again be done. But it cannot be too
strongly asserted that the _forms_ of past art cannot be _copied_; that
certain things have been done is evidence enough to show that we cannot
do them over again. Reproduction is impossible; to attempt it is but to
make a poor diagram at the best.
Commercially produced imitations of ornamental works are infinitely
beneath the merely utilitarian object which serves its purpose and
attempts nothing more. Behind all design there must be a personality
expressing himself; but certain principles of treatment and methods of
working may be understood in some degree by a study of past work without
going all through it again. History thus makes the experience of the
past available to us, but it does not relieve us of the necessity of
ourselves having experiences. There is a great stimulus in feeling one
of a chain, and entering into the traditions of a body of art. The
workman Bezin said to Mr. Stevenson of museums, “One sees in them
little miracles of workmanship--it fires a spark.”
New design must ever be founded on a strict consideration of the exact
purpose to be fulfilled by the proposed object, of how it will serve its
purpose best, and show perfect suitability to the end in view when made
in this or that material by easy means. This, not the torturing of a
material into forms which have not before been used, is the true ground
of beauty, and this to a certain extent is enough without any
ornamentation. Ornament is quite another matter, it has no justification
in service, it can only justify itself by being beautiful.
In so far as history is involved here it has been necessary to refer to
and to figure many works, not bearing the impress of a fine living
style, but only passable exercises in the respectabilities of a sort of
conventional design learnt by rote. As a general rule it will be found
that the workers of the middle ages penetrated at once to the reason of
a thing in structure and then decorated it with an evidence of fresh
thought--a delight in growth, form, humanity, in one word Nature, the
source of all beauty and subject of all art. Each thing made is
evidently by an _artist_; it expresses reasonable workmanship and happy
thought in pleasant solution of some necessity of actual service. Many
of the later things are not thus natural and spontaneous but pedantic
and pompous, fulfilling their chief intention if they were expensive;
while to-day the chief care of design is often to _appear_ expensive
without being so in fact.
Only in our century in England would it be possible for the metals which
are so especially hers, iron, tin, and lead, to have been so degraded
that it is hardly possible to think of them as vehicles of art. It
should not be so, for each of the metals can give us characteristics
that others cannot, and the capabilities of lead have been sufficiently
proved by more than two thousand years of artistic manipulation.
The only way in which the crafts can again be made harmonious by beauty
is for men with a sense of architectural fitness and a feeling for
design to take up the actual workmanship and practise it themselves as
they would painting or sculpture, seeking the delight of being good
artists not the reputation of being successful merchants or clever
professional men. To any such, lead-working may be recommended.
§ II. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
The ease with which lead ores may be gained from the earth and then
worked, is sufficient to show that the application of lead to the
service of the arts must have been made very early.
Nowhere does it seem to have been so easily found as “in England herself
which is the classic land of lead and tin” (Abbé Cochet). These two
metals made the early fame of Britain; they brought here the Phœnician
trader and had doubtless much to do with the Roman occupation of this
distant island.
“Tin and lead,” says Harrison in his _Description of England_, “metals
which Strabo noteth in his time to be carried into Marseilles from
hence, as Diodorus also confirmeth, are very plentiful with us, the one
in Cornwall, Devonshire, and elsewhere in the north, the other in
Derbyshire, Weredale, and sundry places of this island.... There were
mines of lead sometimes also in Wales which endured so long till the
people had consumed all their wood by melting of the same.”
Tin, which was of such sovereign necessity for the composition of
bronze, was, with lead, an object of wide commerce, as we may learn from
the prophecy of Ezekiel against Tyre, whose long black ships did the
carrying trade of the world. As the Tarshish of Scripture is the
Tartessus of classic authors--an entrepôt of Phœnician trade in
Spain--it may well be of English mined metal that the prophet
speaks:--“Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all
kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy
fairs.”
The Assyrian slabs which contain the accounts of the expedition into
Syria in the ninth century B.C. include among the tribute exacted of
Tyre and of Jerusalem itself “bars of gold, silver, copper, and lead.”
Solomon used lead in the structure of the great wall of Jerusalem.
Sir H. Layard says the mountains three or four days’ journey from
Nineveh furnished iron, copper, lead, and silver in abundance, and he
found instances of its actual use at Nineveh. Place also, in his
excavations at Khorsabad, discovered a foundation inscription of Sargon
II., the great builder of the eighth century B.C. engraved on a plate of
lead. A leaden jar and a piece of pipe were found by Loftus at Mugheir.
In Egypt it was sparingly used. Sir G. Wilkinson says:--“Lead was
comparatively useless, but was sometimes used for inlaying temple
doors, coffers and furniture, small statuettes of the gods were
occasionally made in this metal, especially those of Osiris and Anubis.”
In Egypt as well as in Babylonia it was the custom to make a deposit of
several objects in the foundations, a tradition which we still follow
to-day. At Daphnae Mr. Flinders Petrie found a set of little slabs of
different stones and small plates of metal, gold, silver, copper, and
lead, all engraved with the name of Psamtik. The lead tablet is here
figured.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
The ornamental objects of lead to which the earliest date can be
assigned are those found by Dr. Schliemann in his excavations at Mycenæ
and Tiryns.[1]
[1] _See_ Dr. Schuchardt, translation 1891 (Macmillan).
The Greeks very largely used lead for many purposes. It is twice
mentioned in the Iliad, and its familiar use as a building material is
shown by Herodotus, who says that Queen Nitocris built a bridge over the
river at Babylon, of stone bound together with lead and iron; and the
story the Greek historian gives of the celebrated hanging gardens
describes how they were raised on high terraces of arches covered with
bitumen and sheets of lead.
Sufficient actual examples of Greek lead work are stored up in museums,
masonry with dowels of lead, inscribed tablets, small toys and tokens,
little vases for eye salve about as large as a thimble, boxes for
unguents, and sling bullets. These last are often inscribed so that the
warrior might know his work, often with flouts and jibes and jeers. One
in the Lewes Museum has ΕΥΓΕΙ,--“Well done”; others have “Hit Hard,” &c.
In the museums of Athens are some small figures, a Dionysiac wreath of
gilt lead leaves to be worn as a garland, a lead quiver for arrows about
fifteen inches long, also plummets and market weights, with other
objects. Mr. Cockerell found that parts of the early pediment sculptures
at Ægina were of lead, and lead is inlaid in the volute of the early
Ionic capital from the archaic temple of Ephesus now in the British
Museum.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
The plummets are interesting to us as builders’ implements; there are
two or three dozen in the British Museum, about three inches high and
one inch at the base tapering upwards: some are marked with the letter A
on one side and on the obverse a little relief, a throne-seat with an
owl. The owl was Athene’s own symbol, and appears on the coinage of
Athens in a form from which this seems copied. The Acropolis was her
throne. We will stretch our imaginations far enough to believe that the
A stands for Athens and that these are the very implements used in
setting the masonry of one of the corner stones of the world’s art--the
Parthenon.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
The market weights are remarkable in bearing devices like the types of
coins. For the most part they are square cakes and the devices simple
almost to rudeness, yet they have that impress of style and grace in the
design, with the large free handling in which is the exquisiteness of
Greek art. A sketchiness so simple and easy can be the only right
treatment for a metal so likely to receive injury in the use; to these
as in all art so considered the inevitable injuries of wear are little
loss. We can hardly suppose that such a simple industry as making lead
weights for the markets would have had artists capable of designing, and
suggesting in relief types like these, rather we may suppose that some
of the great coiners furnished the models, especially as they would be
issued by the authorities of the several towns.
We may take this first opportunity of remarking that the patterns for
all ornament _intended for casting_ should be _modelled_ like these,
never _carved_, as is now so universally the case for cast iron and the
applied enrichments of picture frames, the reason being that cast
material of this sort, so easily injured, is unsuited for giving
definition and high relief, and should accept all the limitations of
material frankly and make the most of dull suggestiveness; for in all
these the “best are but shadows” the modelling emerging from or melting
away in the ground. In two attempts the present writer has made in
modelling for lead casting wax was used in one instance, and in the
other, where very delicate relief was required made up mostly of threads
and dots, gesso was found to answer.
[Illustration: FIGS. 4 and 5.--Greek Weights.]
The ram’s head (see Fig. 4) for instance has only the frontal, the
lips, and the horn, made out, the rest the imagination sees
transparently below the field. In the words of Blake “it is everything
and nothing.” The raised rim is a good protection.
[Illustration: FIGS. 6 and 7.--Greek Weights.]
The second, a half Mina of Ægina, is yet simpler--just a pot, but a
beautiful one well placed. The third is Attic, a quarter Dimnoun with
scarabeus-like tortoise. The last is a Mina of Ægina, it bears the
well-known Greek rendering of the Dolphin and the letters ΜΝΑ ΑΓΟΡ.
“Market Mina.” The dolphin has the “bowed back” Sir Thomas Browne
pointed out as a “popular error” of painters, but the dolphin was to the
Greek mind, rather the genius of the waving sea itself than any mere
particular fish, and this is the time consecrated form, like this it
swims amongst the undulating hair of the Arethusa of Syracuse, the most
beautiful coin in the world.
The Romans used lead extensively and much in the same way as we do--for
roof coverings and water pipes, in masonry and for coffins. In Rome an
immense quantity of lead piping has been found. The pipes were formed of
strips of cast lead bent round a rod and then soldered. Most of the work
was signed by the plumber, his name and that of the owner being
impressed in the sand mould.[2]
[2] _See_ Prof. Middleton, _Ancient Rome_.
[Illustration: FIGS. 8 and 9.--From the Kircherian Museum.]
There are many beautiful cistae or circular boxes in the museums of
Naples and Rome. These are decorated with little medallions, shells,
beaded rods, &c., stock patterns which were impressed in the sand mould
in such fresh combinations as the thought of the workmen suggested,
just as a cook makes pie crust, which is the subject of nearly the only
spontaneous decorative art now remaining to us. Figs. 8 and 9 are from
the Kircherian Museum.
Of the Roman leadwork in the British Museum the specimens are mostly
coffins, and a number of ingots of lead. These “pigs” have been found in
Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Norfolk, Hants,
Somerset, and Sussex. Of these there are ten in the British Museum
bearing names of emperors and dates which, put into our era, are--A.D.
49, Claudius; 59, Nero; 76, Vespasian; 81, Domitian; 117, Hadrian.
These pigs are about 4½ by 18 inches; and even they are not without
design, for some of them have the well-known classic label to receive
the name.
A beautiful object, remarkable as an instance of lead used in an article
of price, is a vase some 5 inches high. This is evidently a wine cup
from the figures and emblems which decorate it--Bacchus, Silenus, thyrsi
bound with cords, and four genii of the Seasons carrying appropriate
symbols, one being a garland, another a sheaf of corn; around the middle
is a belt set with glass jewels of varied colour, dull reds, greens, and
blue, and below this is a wreath of vine (Fig. 10).
Compare a very richly decorated vessel in the engravings of the Museo
Borbonico.
Lead water pipes of Roman make are frequently found in England; at Bath
there is a water channel 1 foot 9 inches by 7 inches, of lead nearly one
inch in thickness, and sheets of it 10 feet long lined the basin of the
great bath, 30 lbs. in weight to the foot. In the refuse of the Mendip
mines Roman lamps and other articles of lead have been found.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Roman Jewelled Cup.]
During the Byzantine era lead was much used. In a curious relief found
at Tunis “the founder seems to have used up all the old models in his
studio. Here a Good Shepherd, Peacocks, and stags drinking from the four
mystical rivers, palms and vines, are found side by side with Silenus, a
Victory, a Nymph, an Athlete, and scenes of the chase.”[3] In Saxon
England lead was a staple commodity for export and used in great
quantities at home. English merchants of lead and tin are mentioned as
attending the French fairs from the time of Dagobert. During the middle
ages it was largely applied to many purposes and manipulated by the
various methods and decorated with the ornaments, particulars of some of
which follow. England was still the best esteemed source of supply.
About 1680 M. Felibien wrote a book on the crafts connected with
architecture, in which he says that “The greatest part of the lead we
use in France comes from England in large ingots called ‘Salmons,’ a
little lead also comes from Germany, but it is dry and not so sweet as
the English.”
[3] Pératé, _L’Archéologie Chrétienne_.
Up to the 15th century sheet lead was cast only, but a coffin of the
Duke of Bedford (Joan of Arc’s) at Rouen is already laminated.
Lead is an easy medium for the forgery of antiques, and some of the
objects so produced are quite pretty. In the museum at Taunton there is
a small lead bottle which seems to be a forgery.
The Plumbers’ Company in London appears to have been in existence early
in the fourteenth century. In 1365 (39 Edward III.) ordinances were
granted to the Company which had then been in existence some years. In
1588 (31 Elizabeth) arms and crest were granted; and in 1611 (9 James
I.) a charter was given renewing all powers and privileges.
Throughout the middle ages lead was more extensively used in England
than elsewhere--our cathedral roofs, for instance, were all of lead,
whereas abroad they are often of corrugated or flat tiles, stone or
slate. The methods of conducting water from the roof by stone gutters
and gargoyles was much further developed in France than here, where lead
always came to hand. Lead pipes with ornamental heads were first
introduced here in England for this purpose, and they reached a
development without parallel abroad. During the eighteenth century there
was, as we shall see, a large industry in lead statues, and the
plumber’s art continued to the opening of the present century; indeed,
cisterns decorated with the old devices may be seen as late as 1840, and
some of the old methods have not yet passed entirely out of memory. The
Exhibition of 1851 marked exactly the general eclipse of craft
tradition. England was no longer to be saved by work, but by commerce.
§ III. OF LEAD COVERINGS TO BUILDINGS.
Sheeting buildings with decorative plates of metal has been one of man’s
architectural instincts. M. Chipiez, in his essay on the origins of
Greek architecture, considers first:--“The temple, metallic or covered
with metal, which obtained in Medea, Judaea, and in Asia Minor. Greek
writers like Pausanias speak of edifices having been constructed of
brass; such was the legendary temple of Apollo at Delphi, that of Athena
Calkhioecos in Sparta, and the treasury of Myron, tyrant of Sicyon. In
the _Eneid_ the temple erected at Carthage by the Phœnician Dido is also
of brass.” From Homer to the _Arabian Nights_ and the mediæval romance
writers, a metal-cased architecture, shining with gold, has been
preeminently the architecture of the poets.
It would almost seem as if in the Merovingian age Western Europe passed
through the phase of a metal-cased architecture, but in this case it was
lead that formed the external vestment--an architecture of lead. “Under
the Merovingian kings,” says M. Viollet-le-Duc, “they covered entire
edifices, churches, or palaces, in lead. St. Eloi is said to have so
covered the church of St. Paul des Champs with sheets of lead
artistically wrought.”
In England Bede mentions a parallel instance. Finian the successor of
St. Aidan in the See of Lindisfarne built a church after the manner of
the Scots of hewn oak with a thatched roof; afterwards “Eadbert also
bishop of that place (638) took off the thatch and covered it both roof
and walls with lead.”
The exaggerated lead roofs of the early mediæval churches in England
were in nowise dictated by utilitarian considerations. The creeping of
the lead on steep surfaces, the many burnings, and the great expense in
large churches which would take literally acres of lead, made
maintenance a burden, but they liked this metal casing, and that was
enough.
This is still more evident in the mediæval delight in the tall leaded
spires, not in their aspect as mere roof coverings, but intrinsically as
metal shrines, looking on them with their decorations as vast pieces of
goldsmith’s tabernacle work. The steep pitch of the roof of the main
building when applied to a square tower quite naturally produced leaded
spires. These already appear in the drawing made of Canterbury Cathedral
about the year 1160. That these metal-sheeted spires were the best
loved form, and that stone was adopted at last but as a truce with fire
is proved by the spires of lead which appear in the wall paintings
(those that were at St. Stephen’s for instance), in the MSS., and by the
splendid leaded spire of St. Paul’s which we shall speak of below. The
spire so treated is not a mere roof, or a cheap substitute for stone,
but takes its place in metal-cased architecture, as do also the leaded
Byzantine domes of St. Sophia and St. Mark’s.
In that most splendid work of the English renaissance, the palace of
Nonsuch, which was begun by Henry VIII. in 1538, the structure was what
we call half-timber, the panels were filled with coloured and gilt
reliefs by Italian modellers, and the timber framing is described by
Pepys, who visited it in 1665, as sheeted with lead. This casing we may
be sure was covered with delicate Italian arabesques. His words are,
“One great thing is that most of the house is covered, I mean the posts
and quarters in the walls, with lead and gilded.”
§ IV. OF LEADED SPIRES AND TURRETS.
Our own old St. Paul’s, the once highest steeple in the world, which
rose 500 feet and more into the clouds, from whence it at last drew the
lightning to its destruction, was the proudest example of these lead
spires which for beauty at least equalled the finest examples in stone.
When the second church, begun at the end of the eleventh century, was
but just completed; “the quire was not thought beautiful enough, though
in uniformity of building it suited with the church: so that resolving
to make it better they began with the steeple, which was finished in
A.D. 1221.” This was the lead-covered steeple, the only spire of the
church which stood centrally over the crossing. It was 1312 before the
modification of the old church was done, and thenceforth that part was
known as the “new work.” Within three years afterwards a great part of
the spire of timber covered with lead being weak and in danger of
falling was taken down and a new cross, with pommel large enough to
contain ten bushels of corn, well gilt was set on the top thereof by
Gilbert de Segrave the Bishop of London with great and solemn
procession, and relics of saints were placed in it.[4] The relics of
saints were thus put at the apex as a safeguard from lightning.
[4] Longmans, _Three Cathedrals_.
This lead spire, repaired in 1315, must have been the work spoken of as
finished in 1221, and it was thus the earliest lead spire of
considerable dimensions of which we have any knowledge: it was an
extraordinary development from the square lead pyramids that covered the
Norman towers at Canterbury and other places.
Stow says the height was 520 feet “whereof the stone-work is 260 feet,
and the spire was likewise 260 feet. The cross was 15 feet high by 6
feet over the arms, the inner body was of oak, the next cover was of
lead, and the uttermost was of copper red varnished. The bowl and the
eagle or cock were of copper and gilt also.” The ball at the apex was
three feet across and the weathercock four feet from bill to tail and
three feet six inches across the wings. “Certes,” says Harrison, “the
toppe of this spire where the weathercocke stode was 520 foote from the
ground of which the spire was one half.” The measurements of Wren
confirm the height of the stone tower (which alone was standing in his
day) as being 260 feet, the spire, he says, had been 40 feet diameter
at the base and rose 200 feet or more. It must have been altogether
worthy of this vast church of twenty-five compartments in the interior
vista of arch and vault, 600 feet in greatest length and 100 feet high.
In 1444 the spire narrowly escaped destruction by lightning, but the
fire was put out. “In the year 1561, the 4th of June, between the hours
of three and four of the clock in the afternoon, the great spire of the
steeple of St. Paul’s Church was fired by lightning, which brake forth
as it seemed two or three yards beneath the foot of the cross: and from
thence it went downwards the spire to the battlements, stonework, and
bells, so furiously that within the space of four hours the same steeple
with all the roofs of the church were consumed to the great sorrow and
perpetual remembrance of the beholders.”[5] It was thus destroyed a
hundred years before the great fire when the cathedral perished.
[5] Stow.
London was a city of lead spires. Stow tells us that at St. Paul’s
School close by the Cathedral was “of old time a great and high
clochiard or bell-house, four square built of stone and in the same a
most strong frame of timber with four bells the greatest that I have
ever heard. The same has a great spire covered with lead with the image
of St. Paul on the top.” It was said that Sir Thomas Partridge won it by
a throw of dice from Henry VIII., and pulled it down. Stow, who would
have thought the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, to
which we owe so much good work, much too cautious in its methods,
reports with much pleasure, “This man was afterwards hanged on Tower
Hill.” At St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Smithfield, was another of these
timber spires.
A spire said to have been even higher than this of St. Paul’s was
erected in the fourteenth century over the central tower at Lincoln. The
two western towers also had spires which were taken down to save the
cost of repair within this century. This group of three great leaded
spires crowning the Hill-city must have been one of the most wonderful
the whole world over. The central tower as it now stands is 270 feet
high 54 feet on the face; it was finished in 1311. “The spire of timber
covered with lead reaching a height of 524 feet which once surmounted it
was destroyed by a tempest in 1548.”[6]
[6] _Cathedral Guide._
The plates in Dugdale’s _Monasticon_ engraved by Hollar and others
surprise us by the number of leaded spires to the cathedrals not one of
which has survived storm and flames or the crueller hatred of beauty
which the modern mind has developed. There are those of the two west
towers of Durham, western spires at Canterbury, Peterborough, and Ely,
all three at Lincoln, and four smaller pinnacles at Norwich. Two square
pyramids shown to the west tower of Southwell, were probably the
original covering of the twelfth century. These are now “restored” and
they look as false as the word.
The great central spires at Rochester and at Hereford and the central
and two western spires at Ripon are shown of lead, as is also that of
the beautiful isolated belfry at Salisbury, which was destroyed “to
improve the view of the cathedral.” Of three of these large central
spires shown in Dugdale, Rochester and Hereford rise from square towers
with “broaches”: the first is of a curious and yet happy form, with
recessed faces, and the other is an octagon of which the cardinal faces
are wider than the alternate sides. The great spire of Ripon rose within
the stone parapet of the tower, apparently at first twelve-sided with
gables, and the spire itself twenty-four, each pair making a slight
reentering angle--a beautiful composition it must have been of light and
delicate shadow on the silver white of the old lead. This fair colour is
of great importance; several of the old spires which remain to us are as
white as if whitewashed. Modern ones, like the grimy thing at Lynn,
would be improved by being whitewashed. The old, that at Minster in Kent
for instance, tell as bright high lights in a general view of the
landscape such as that you obtain from Richborough.
The finest of the English spires now existing constructed of timber and
sheeted with lead is that of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, the highest,
oldest, and most perfect. The stone tower with octagon projections at
the angles, is 25 feet square and 65 high, standing free from the church
to which it is attached by one angle only. The flèche itself is 85 feet
from the eaves to the top of an enormous relic “pommel” some four feet
in diameter, which is thus 150 feet in the air. The four octagonal
projections carry large pinnacles 25 feet high, which at a little height
disengage themselves wholly from the great flèche, but with consummate
art all lean their axes inwards towards it as much as two feet. The
wooden framing, carefully measured by Mr. Austin,[7] shows that this
grouping of the lines was as much done from set purpose as the
inclination of the lines in the Parthenon of which we hear so much. Each
face of the leading has the rolls arranged in a double row of
herringbone, and the faces of the pinnacles have the leading slanting in
one direction only. Altogether it is a most interesting and most
beautiful work of the thirteenth century.
[7] _Spring Gardens Sketch Book_, vol. v.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Spire, Barnstaple.]
The drawing here given is of the fine old steeple at Barnstaple, which
was saved from destruction by the good advice of Sir Gilbert Scott--and
lack of funds! It is a delightfully careless and cheerful looking
object, like that at Chesterfield, warped and nodding, which outrages
the precise sensibilities of the townspeople; it was erected in 1389, as
appears from the accounts and was repaired and altered in the
seventeenth century (as shown by a date and initials, “1636 W. T.”), at
which time the spire lights were opened out. The external bells are
unusual in England. There are two other spires of village churches in
the neighbourhood at Braunton and Swymbridge. The spires at
Chesterfield, Godalming, Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, Wrighton in
Northumberland, and Harrow (1481), are among the finest that remain. Of
the destroyed church at Reculver the west towers, which are retained as
landmarks, had lead spires. In some spires in Norfolk, about Cromer, two
or three feet of the leading is omitted, thus forming an open band
through which the timbering and a bell hung here may be seen. In some of
the spires the lead is laid in vertical strips, as at Minster in Thanet,
and a sketch given from a church in Hertfordshire shows the lower part
in a way arcaded by an ingenious arrangement of the rolls. At great
Baddow Church, Essex, vertical rolls run up about two-thirds of the
spire, and the rest is plain. Generally, however, the lead work is
arranged in herring-bone with careful irregularity and change so as to
get a texture in the surface so different to the dead and dreary
accuracy we should attain to. Low square spires at Ottery St. Mary are
good examples of lead texture for those who see some beauty in the
jointing of the armour of a tortoise.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
The construction of the wood framing of the greater of these spires is a
forest of intricate interlacing timbers, the best authority for which is
the article _Flèche_ in Viollet-le-Duc, or Burges’ drawing of Amiens in
his volume of careful studies of the Gothic art of France.
The most decorated of these lead spires in England--although not very
large--is at East Harling in Norfolk. It rises within the stone
battlement and has an open stage with wood pinnacles and crocketed
“flying buttresses” all covered with lead. The sides of the spire
proper, very narrow and acute, have the rolls arranged in lozenges
instead of the usual herring-bone or vertical lines, the lozenges are on
one side as wide as the face, breaking into a zig-zag above, on another
side are smaller lozenges three or four in the width changing into one
again above: at the apex is a large finial knob.[8]
[8] _See_ drawing in _Sketch Book of Architectural Association_, 1881.
Wren’s knowledge of the spire of old St. Paul’s possibly led him to try
his hand at leaded spires, and the result in some of the City churches,
particularly that one on Ludgate Hill that is such a perfect foil for
the great dome of St. Paul’s, shows his usual assured mastery. The
spire of St. Olave, Hart Street, is said to have a crystal ball at the
apex.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Barnard’s Inn Hall.]
The smaller turrets on college halls are generally covered with lead in
an ogee form. Those at Oxford have often a lozenge raised on each face,
that on Barnard’s Inn in the City is wholly enveloped in lead. A turret
on the alms-houses at Abingdon has large letters and crowns, which are
gilt, standing up free on the slanting faces. At Hampton Court there are
turret roofs, ogee with crockets and finials and little pinnacles set
round at the springing. At Nonsuch leaded turrets surmounted the great
octagons at the angles, they were probably much decorated and certainly
of considerable size, making very picturesque compositions, as we may
see in the rude views of the palace which exist.
In France and Germany there are many remarkable leaded spires, but we
can only stay to mention the steeple at Chalons-sur-Marne, the central
flèche at Amiens, and the belfry at Calais. The steeple at Chalons is a
most interesting work, large and well-designed, with faint and
fascinating remains of a gorgeous scheme of colour decoration patterning
the whole surface of the lead with figures and canopies resembling the
drawing on stained glass, the lead rolls passing across the design like
the iron glazing bars. This was carefully drawn by Burges and
illustrated in the _Builder_ for 1856, and the whole spire is
represented to scale in the Sketch Book of the Architectural Association
for 1883. This is a work of the end of the thirteenth century, and the
decoration was done in the following century. It will be well to mention
it more particularly later, but as Viollet-le-Duc says that nearly all
the lead work of the middle ages was so decorated we may conclude that
such a magnificent spire as St. Paul’s was not entirely bare of gold and
colour.
The flèche at Amiens, which rises from the roof some 100 feet of
“transparent fretwork which seems to bend to the west wind,” is well
illustrated in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionary as well as by Burges. Every
resource of the art was lavished on it, pinnacles and niches, lead
statues, tracery, great circular coronets of pierced cast work. The
sheet lead was diapered with fleurs-de-lis, and all was decorated with
designs in colour and gold. Although perfectly Gothic in form it is a
work of the sixteenth century, and the painting is in the manner of the
Renaissance.
At Calais the fine belfry represented in Fig. 14, which was completed
about 1600, is in some respects very English in character, while on the
other hand it is a northern representative of a class of bulbous spires
which are as much cupolas as spires, and were probably often intended as
fantastic domes. These, although later found all across Europe, from
Russia to Belgium, were never naturalised in England on a large scale,
our nearest approach to them being in the ogee cupolas of small turrets
and lanterns and some of Wren’s spires. In Holland they were very much
affected in the most extravagant forms, and they are now the constant
form of church spire seen in eastern Europe. They seem much at home in
such a city as Buda-Pesth, and have doubtless characteristics which
endear them to those of Mongolian blood and speech. It is an interesting
point to decide whether these forms are in origin actually
Eastern--“travelled topes” as a friend says--or whether they are the
natural outcome of a combination of spire and dome in a period of
extravagant and declining taste.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Calais Belfry.]
§ V. OF DOMES.
The Romans covered domes in lead; during the Byzantine empire they very
generally did so. Constantinople in the age of Justinian was a city of
lead domes, as it has always since remained. The domes of St. Sophia are
still covered with lead laid over the brickwork. This tradition was
carried on by the Greek master builders who erected the great mosques
for the conquerors. A large mosque has as many as twenty or thirty domes
of all sizes grouped about the central one. The bazaars, caravansaries,
and bakeries, have long level rows of cupolas. This prospect of dome
beyond dome in a succession as of billows is of marvellous beauty in a
general view of the city as seen from the sea. The lead is laid over the
brickwork, the rolls are very small, and as they have no wood core the
lines are very irregular. Some of the lead domes of Constantinople were
melon-shaped, that is having large _convex_ gores. A Turkish example of
this remains in an ogee-shaped dome at the angle of the Seraglio wall
near St. Sophia.
Most interesting works of this tradition are the “domes” or rather
domical roofs of St. Mark’s at Venice. Those eastern-looking forms which
give such fantasy to it were raised to their present form on wooden
framework in the thirteenth century. They are sheeted with plain rolls
except the bulb-formed lanterns, which are much like an umbrella in
which every gore has a salient angle, a “ridge and valley.” These five
timber-framed spire-like domes, erected for their own sake and not lying
close to the interior form of the building, in this respect resemble
northern spires. The whole group rising over the level front of St.
Mark’s is a work of the highest imaginative genius. It is not a building
with a dome but a building roofed in domes, bubbling over with domes;
and it expresses the metal shrine idea in perfection. The original
leaded domes of St. Mark’s were copied from those of the church of the
Holy Apostles at Constantinople, a church built by Justinian.
At the Renaissance the leaded dome became a popular commonplace
especially at Venice. For the most part these were covered like a roof
with ordinary rolls. By forming ribs and panels in the wooden foundation
a more elaborate but not more successful aspect is obtained. St. Paul’s
is well designed in this way. This design with the great ribs Sir
Christopher Wren considered “less gothick than sticking it full of rows
of little windows” as at St. Peter’s. It was first intended to cover
St. Paul’s dome with copper, but £500 was saved by substituting lead at
a cost of £2,500.
At the National Gallery--a very careful and refined work, one of the
last of the old scholarly dead language sort we call classic--the lead
covering is formed into raised scales and frets, very well and
successfully done of its kind.
§ VI. OF ROOFS.
The Romans used lead as a roof covering. In the West “one can hardly
(Viollet-le-Duc says) explore the ruins of a Gallo-Roman erection
without finding some sheet-lead that had been employed for gutters or
roofs.” In the East--Eusebius says of Constantine’s Basilica (the Holy
Sepulchre) at Jerusalem--“the roof with its chambers was covered with
lead to protect it from the winter rain.” In England Bede tells us of
Wilfrid having roofed his church at York with lead in the seventh
century, and it has continued without a break in its use as the most
perfect of coverings.
The methods employed in the middle ages are described by Burges and
Viollet-le-Duc. The latter well remarks that of lead covering, as well
as many other parts of the construction of buildings, we are a little
too apt to think overmuch of the perfection of our modern methods while
we are too little careful to learn the experience acquired by our
forefathers.
The old cast lead is much thicker than the modern milled lead, being as
much as twelve or thirteen pounds to the foot of surface. It is
certainly not quite even in thickness, and is subject to faults in the
casting, but it is not so liable to crack as is milled lead. The old
lead employed has also a considerable quantity of silver and arsenic in
it, which was the cause of the beautiful white oxide it obtained. Modern
lead blackens as the preparation of lead now includes its
“de-silverisation.” The acid of timber which has not lost its sap
decomposes lead; old building timber was water-seasoned as only ship
timber now is.
The chief difficulties that had to be overcome in the use of lead were
the weight of the sheets of lead to be maintained in position, and the
great dilatation of the metal under the heat of the sun, so that it had
to be at once strongly attached and free to move. The method followed
was to nail it at the top and roll the lateral edges together.
The roofing at Canterbury was of twelve-pound lead and about 2.0 between
the rolls. The thirteenth century lead of Chartres Cathedral, “covered
externally by time with a patina hard, brown, and wrinkled, and shining
in the sun,” was in sheets eight feet long, attached at the top by nails
with very large heads and held at the bottom by clips of iron that
passed down between the sheets and turned over the bottom edge of the
upper one. The rolls were formed by turning over the margins one in the
other without a wood roll; they were much smaller than the modern ones.
Our milled lead is rolled out in sheets about 16 × 6 feet and is usually
cut in half lengthways, and 4½ inches is allowed in each edge to form
the rolls which are thus 2′-3″ apart. Lead one inch thick is sixty
pounds to the square foot, so six-pounds lead is 1/10th of an inch in
thickness. We generally make the mistake of putting a longitudinal roll
along the ridge, but it is not so done in our old roofs, nor should it
be, for the running out of the rolls frets the ridge into a simple
decoration.
The lead covering of old roofs should be jealously maintained--its loss
is irreparable. If repair becomes absolutely necessary for the
protection of the building, such lead should be recast, it should never
be replaced by milled lead. The old metal is easily recast on the
ground, and this is now frequently done, but not frequently enough. It
was cast on a wood table with a projecting margin or curb all round; on
this slid up and down a cross piece notched down to give the proper
gauge to the lead which it levelled.
Where lead was applied to the vertical or steep planes of dormers or
spires the interlocking of the sheets in herring-bone was a practical as
well as an artistic expedient. Where nails had to be driven through
exposed lead, in repairs or otherwise, flaps like little shields were
laid over them soldered on the top edge. Lead, where used to incase
wood tracery, as in the open work of spires or dormers, was secured by
means of laps and rolls without solder so that it was free to expand and
contract. The modern plumber is much too apt to employ soldered joints
even in structural work.
Small openings were made like little dormers, for ventilation of the
roof timbers, by dressing a stout piece of lead up into a triangle or
half circle in front dying back on the roof with the back turned up
under the tiles or slates.
Sometimes cast ornaments were applied to a slated roof; the disc with
undulating rays on the slated apex of the north-west tower at Rouen is
an instance.
§ VII. OF LEAD COFFINS.
In the later classical period lead was much used for coffins; several of
very fine workmanship have been discovered in Syria, some of these, very
delicately ornamented are figured by Perrot, and Chipiez.[9] In the
Louvre there is a finely decorated example of the Roman period, and
large numbers of Roman lead coffins have been found both in England and
in France. There is a very beautifully decorated early Christian coffin
in the museum at Cannes, this has a border of vine and birds with
monograms of Christ--ΧΡ. ΙΧΘΥΣ.[10] Fig. 15 shows portions of
ornamentation from a remarkable series of coffins now in the museum of
Constantinople. There are some eight or ten of these and all decorated
in the most elaborate way with tendrils and medallions beautifully
modelled in very slight relief. None of the symbols are definitely
Christian, but they evidently belong to the same school as the last
named. The neighbourhood of Beyrout and the ancient Sidon was the site
of the discovery of most of these coffins of early Christian date.
[9] _History of Art_, “Phœnicia.”
[10] Illustrated by Reber.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Ornaments from early Christian Coffins,
Constantinople.]
The coffins found in England are not so much Roman as strictly
Anglo-Roman, for far more have been found here than in any other
country, such as have been found in France are near our shores as if
certainly made of our lead, and the ornamentation of the English
examples has a common likeness in the use of the scallop shell which is
not represented abroad. The comparison can best be made in a little book
by the learned archæologist Abbé Cochet of Rouen, _Les Cercueils de
Plomb_ (1871), in which the examples found in France are figured.
These English coffins and sepulchral cists are mostly in the British
Museum and at Colchester. The cists are plain circular boxes some ten
inches diameter by fourteen inches high; one of these is decorated by
simple circles and another has crossed rods of “reel and bead,” with
applied small panels of chariots and horses.
[Illustration: FIGS. 16 and 17.--Cists, British Museum.]
The coffins have been found chiefly in the London district--in the
Minories, Stepney, Stratford; at East Ham, Plumstead in Kent (this last
is now in Maidstone Museum)--at Southfleet and at Colchester and
Norwich. They are decorated by rods of “bead and reel” differently
arranged on the lids in zig-zags or lozenges, with scallop shells and
plain rings placed in the spaces. The rods and shells were evidently
separately impressed into the flat field of the sand mould and that with
the artful carelessness which shows that the designer and the workmen
were one and the same person, an artist. With these simple elements
compositions are made of quite classic distinction and grace. Mr.
Alma-Tadema apparently drew the fine leaden oleander tub in his picture
from these coffins, and it makes a perfect flower-pot.
A coffin found at Pettham in Kent was decorated by a simple cord which
passed around once transversely in the middle and then each of the
spaces thus formed on lid, sides, and ends had diagonals of cord. A
fragment of one in the museum at Cirencester is more finished and
refined, it has a saltire of the twisted bars with terminations at their
ends, and in one of the spaces is a small female head.
The coffins are made like a modern paper box with a lid lapping over the
sides. Some sketches are given from those in the British Museum. That
shown in Fig. 19 was of full length (6 ft.) but only a part of the lid
remains. The other two (Figs. 18 and 20) are less than 4 ft., one of
which is ornamented with rings and ropes and curious forms like the
letter B. Those at Colchester are like the former. These coffins are all
very white with oxide.
[Illustration: FIGS. 18 and 19.--Roman Coffins, British Museum.]
The French examples have been found at Boulogne, Beauvais, Amiens,
Angers, Rouen, and Valogne near Cherbourg, but none are like the English
in having rods of beads with scallop shells. One has only groups of
rings which, simple as it is, makes a design. Another at Rouen has a
human head in a circle at the centre with six lions’ heads in octagons.
That at Valogne has a trunk-shaped lid with flying genii and birds; and
one at Nismes has lions and griffins, and between each pair persons
planting a vine.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Roman Coffin, British Museum.]
There is just enough evidence to show that the use of leaden coffins was
continued by the English after they had superseded the Romans. St.
Guthlac, Abbot of Croyland, was, Leland says, buried in a sarcophagus of
lead. And St. Dunstan was buried at Canterbury in a lead coffin.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Thirteenth Century Coffin, Temple Church.]
Directly after the Conquest we find them in use. At Lewes there are
two coffins of De Warren (1088), and his wife the daughter of the
Conqueror (1085); they are covered with the reticulated meshes of a net,
both sides and lid as if cast from actual netted cord. At the heads are
the names WILLELM, GVNDRADA.
[Illustration: FIGS. 22 and 23.--Thirteenth Century Coffins, Temple
Church.]
St. Dunstan was re-interred in the new work, at Canterbury in 1180 in a
coffin of lead which was “not plain, but of beautiful plaited work.”
Some most remarkable coffins thus decorated were discovered in 1841 in
relaying the floor of the Temple Church in London; the style of their
design would show that they were made about the year 1200. They
contained the bodies represented above them by the cross-legged stone
effigies of knights. These coffins were drawn and published by Mr.
Edward Richardson in 1845, from whose careful drawings are made the
accompanying illustrations.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
The extreme delicacy of the ornament is most remarkable. Here again the
pattern design is made up of portions several times repeated in similar
or different combinations; the panels were either cast to the required
number and then arranged on a board from which the final mould was made;
or the parts were impressed separately in a smooth and level surface of
moulding sand, and this with all the rapid ease of self-sufficient art.
They are about 6 feet 6 inches long, and some are formed like the stone
coffins of the time with a circular end for the head. The sides as well
as the covering are decorated in the richest example by two of the same
small square patterns alternating, and in others by vertical cords at
intervals.
At Winchester there has recently been exposed a fifteenth century coffin
bearing on the lid a cross and the arms of the Bishop Courtenay. (Fig.
24.)
Later the form was made to conform more closely to the body, being
rather a wrapping than a box. That of Henry IV. (1413) at Canterbury was
of this form, as also was that found at Westminster under the tomb of
Henry VII., the latter had a small cross at the breast only.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--At Moissac.]
The heart-box of Richard Cœur de Lion is mentioned in another place.
There is a heart casket in the British Museum, circular and much like a
flower-pot; on the lid is the device of a spear-head within a garter,
and engraved outside is this inscription:--“Here lith the Harte of Sir
Henrye Sydney. Anno Domini 1586.”
A fine coffin (Fig. 25) is represented in the lead group of the
entombment at Moissac in France. This is 15th century work.
§ VIII. OF FONTS.
England is extremely rich in the possession of early fonts in lead;
these are for the most part alike in being of the twelfth or early
thirteenth century. Nearly all of them agree in being circular and have
other similarities which with many repetitions in their design would
seem to relate them to one family. As in Sussex there are in the
neighbouring villages of Edburton and Piecombe two fonts substantially
alike, and in Gloucestershire another pair, with others that have close
resemblances; they have been claimed for local manufacture, yet a strong
case could be made out for most of them coming from one common centre.
As, further, there are several specimens in Normandy entirely parallel,
the question arises whether the type arose here or there, for there can
be no doubt as to one set being indebted to the other. As England was so
especially a lead producing and exporting country, and as such a number
of these fonts remain with us broadly scattered over the country, while
there are but comparatively few in France, and those mostly in
Normandy, this, with the local coincidences pointed out, would seem to
give us the best claim.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Vessel, Lewes Museum.]
There is in the Lewes Museum a lead cistern-like object of Saxon work,
which is represented in Fig. 26. It is about 14 inches long and 8 inches
high, the sides are decorated with triangles of interlacing patterns
cast with the lead. It has two handles of iron; but as it would be much
too heavy for a movable vessel, and as the small foreign lead font in
Kensington Museum has handles also, it is probably a font. The cross in
the decoration would go to confirm this.
Some of the fonts of Norman date it cannot be doubted were made in
England. But unless we would claim the two figured by Viollet-le-Duc
and that at St. Evrault-le-Montford which is similar to ours at
Brookland described below, we can hardly claim to have made all our own.
Possibly examples were brought here, as was the case with several black
stone fonts in England.
Some of these lead fonts (that at Wareham for instance) appear to have
been cast in one piece. But for the most part they are small low
cylinders cast flat in sheet with the ornaments repeated usually more
than once in the sand mould; the casting was then bent round and
soldered. In one case, where it is not joined so as to form a cylinder,
but with the sides spreading to the top, the band of ornamentation which
was straight on the sheet runs up as it approaches the joint in a most
amusing way. The patterns consist of delicate scroll-work, arcades and
boldly modelled figures 10 or 12 inches high; a moulding strengthens the
upper and lower edges. They stand on stone pedestals.
There are altogether some twenty-eight or thirty of these fonts in
England.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Font, Brookland, Kent.]
The font at Brookland at Kent is very small, only 11 inches high, an
arcade surrounds it of two stages in twelve bays. In the upper tier are
the signs of the Zodiac with their Latin names, and below the subjects
of the labours appropriate to the months with their names in Norman
French. This scheme of imagery is well known abroad but while often
occurring in English MSS. this is one of very few examples of its
treatment in sculpture. Although the scale of the figures is small and
they are but slightly modelled, there is a great deal of character,
appropriateness, and grace, in their gesture.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Font, Brookland.]
A comparative table of the usual scenes which accompany the signs has
been given in _Archæologia_, and another, probably more accessible, in
the _Stones of Venice_. With the examples there given the scenes on the
font very closely agree. They are inscribed in capitals:--
AQUARIUS.--JANVIER. A Janus-headed figure feasting.
PISCES.--FEVRIER. Warming feet at fire.
ARIES.--MARS. Man hooded and pruning a vine.
TAURUS.--AVRIL. Young girl with lilies in her hand.
GEMINI.--MAI. Man on horse, hawk on wrist.
CANCER.--JUIN. Mowing with a scythe.
LEO.--JULIUS. Man with wide brim hat raking hay.
VIRGO.--AOUT. Cutting corn.
LIBRA.--SEPTEMBRE. Threshing corn.
SCORPIO.--OCTOBRE. Treading out wine.
SAGITTARIUS.--NOVEMBRE. Woman lighting with candles the next
scene, or feeding the pigs.
CAPRICORNUS.--DECEMBRE. Man, killing swine with axe.
The signs are thus represented:--Aquarius, man pouring water from a jug.
Pisces, two fish as usual reversed. The ram and the bull are much alike.
The twins and the crab are not remarkable, except the latter for
unlikeness. Leo is a good heraldic beast. The Virgin, much obscured.
Libra, a man with scales. Scorpio, is certainly a frog. Sagittarius, a
centaur. Capricorn is indeed a capricious creature like a cockatrice
with horns. The forequarters of a goat with fish-tail is the traditional
form for this sign handed on from the Roman Zodiac.
In the months, the Mower, the man raking, and especially the Reaper, are
well designed; the man pruning is also good, and the girl with the long
stalked lilies in her hand is charming. The four last are shown in the
sketches given. The pillars are varied, every third standing on the loop
as shown.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Font, Edburton, Sussex.]
The font at Edburton in Sussex is 21 inches in diameter and 14 inches
high; it has a wide band of foliage and at the top a row of trefoil
panels. At Piecombe, the adjoining parish, the upper row of small
trefoil arches and the narrow band of ornament are the same, but instead
of the lower panels there is a row of round-headed arches.
At Lancourt, or Llancault, and Tedenham in Gloucestershire there are
fonts in duplicate. These are much larger, 2 feet 8 inches in diameter
by 1 foot 7 inches high. An arcade of twelve arches surrounds the bowl;
each compartment has a throned figure or a panel of foliage alternately.
There are two varieties of figure and foliage, each is thrice repeated
and the little columns are twisted and decorated. These two fonts are
evidently of the twelfth century.[11] At Frampton-on-Severn is a font
with similar seated figures and foliage.
[11] For engravings see _Archæologia_, vol. xxix.
At Wareham in Dorsetshire the font is hexagonal with two standing
figures under arches in each face, twelve altogether. The sides instead
of being vertical slope outwards. The style seems central Norman not
transitional, like several of the examples.
At Dorchester, Oxfordshire, the bowl is 2 feet 1 inch diameter 14 inches
deep, it has an arcade wholly of seated figures of bishops. It is a very
beautiful work, the figures are extremely well modelled, and the whole
in good condition, the lead of great substance.
Walton-on-the-hill, Surrey, has a similar font 14 inches high,
surrounded by an arcade, and in each compartment a sitting figure. A
sketch of one arch given is necessarily rough, as the modelling, even at
first soft and sketchy, has suffered some injury in the use of 700
years.
At Wansford, Northamptonshire, is another of these with arcades and
figures.[12]
[12] _See_ Parker’s _Glossary_, vol. iii.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Font, Walton, Surrey.]
At Childrey, in Berkshire, there is also a font with twelve mitred
bishops with pastoral staffs and books.
Another at Long-Wittenham, in the same county, has the arcade at bottom
of very tiny pointed arches of some thirty bays with figures, above are
panels with discs and rosettes.[13] One at Warborough, in Oxfordshire,
is similar in style, made in the same workshop apparently. The bottom
half has a small arcade interrupted after every four arches by three
higher ones: in the twelve small niches are figures of bishops with
mitre and staff and lifted hand in benediction, the three high arches
and the space above the little ones have discs of ornament, the bishops
are repeated from one pattern; the size is 1-3 in height by 2-2
diameter.[14]
[13] See _Archæological Journal_, vol. ii.
[14] _See_ Paley’s _Fonts_.
Woolhampton, in Berkshire, has a font in which the lead is placed over
stone and pierced, leaving an arcade and figures showing against the
stone background.
The font at Parham is of later Gothic. Mr. André gives an account of it
in Vol. 32, _Sussex Archæological Society_; it is only 18 inches in
diameter, and a portion of the bottom is hidden by being sunk into the
stone block on which it stands. The decoration is made by repeats of a
label bearing + IHC NAZAR placed alternately upright and horizontally
with small shields in the interspaces which are said to bear the arms of
Andrew Peverell, knight of the shire in 1351. The style of the lettering
would seem earlier than this. IHC NAZAR was frequently engraved on the
front of knights’ helmets. This is an extremely good example of how a
fine design may be made of simplest elements.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Parham, Sussex.]
A Norman font of lead at Great Plumstead was destroyed with the church
in the fire of December, 1891. It is figured by Cotman.[15]
[15] _Arch. Remains_, vol. i., series 2.
The font at Avebury, Wiltshire, has often erroneously been stated to be
of lead; there is a resemblance in the design, but it is of stone
painted.
At Ashover, Derbyshire, the stone font has leaden statues of the
Apostles.
There is a seventeenth century lead font at Clunbridge, Gloucestershire.
A complete list as far as possible follows:--
Berkshire Childrey and Long-Wittenham,
Clewer, Woolhampton, and
Woolstone (Norman)
Derbyshire Ashover (Norman)
Dorsetshire Wareham (Norman)
Gloucestershire Frampton-on-Severn and Llancourt
(similar, Norman)
Siston and Tidenham (Norman)
Gloucester Museum (Norman)
Clunbridge (1640)
Kent Brookland (Norman), Chilham, and
Eythorne (the latter dated 1628,
a copy of a Norman original)
Lincolnshire Barnetby-le-Wolde (Norman)
Norfolk Brundal, Hastingham (Norman)
Northamptonshire Wansford
Oxfordshire Clifton, Dorchester, Warborough,
(Norman)
Somerset Pitcombe
Surrey Walton-on-the-hill (Norman)
Sussex Edburton and Piecombe (early
English)
Parham (Decorated)
Wiltshire Chirton
Two of the French fonts are figured by Viollet-le-Duc,[16] that at
Berneuil is of the twelfth century and very similar to that at Tidenham
in Gloucestershire, with alternate arches occupied by figures and
foliage.
[16] _Art. Fons._
At Lombez (Gers) is a very beautiful example, small and delicate, with
two girdles of decoration, the upper row continuous foliage and figures,
but made up of one scene, a man discharging an arrow at a lion and a
basilisk, five times repeated; the lower row has sixteen quatre-foils
with figures of four varieties repeated, these are the religious orders.
It is remarked that the decorations were evidently “stock patterns”
because the upper row is much older than the lower, which is of the late
thirteenth century.
At Visine (Somme) is one of the fifteenth century with separate cast
figures in sixteen niches.
At Bourg-Achard, in Normandy, is another lead font,[17] and one is also
in the Museum of Antiquities in Rouen, this last has a long inscription
and date, 1415. There is a cast of one of these fonts in the Trocadero
collection in Paris.
[17] Dawson Turner’s _Tour_.
At St. Evrouet-de-Monford (Orne) is another very similar to our
Brookland font with Zodiac and Seasons.
In Germany, at Mayence, there is a very fine example of the fourteenth
century. And in the South Kensington Museum is a copy of a small
circular lead font in the Berlin Museum; this is cast in one piece, it
stands on three lions’ feet and has two handles, around it is an
inscription in Lombardic letters. It was presented to Treves by Bishop
Baldani in the thirteenth century.
§ IX. OF INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.
A sheet of lead is a most inviting surface for inscriptions, as may be
seen by making a trip to the leads of some cathedral or castle and
inspecting the series of names, dates, hand-marks and foot-prints left
by generations of plumbers and visitors. So lead has been one of the
chief materials used for written documents, not merely ephemeral, and
even now it would be difficult to find anything more ready to receive
the legend, more enduring to transmit it, and so easily decorated with
the charm of art which makes an object worthy to live. Our first
illustration shows the foundation record of an Egyptian King inscribed
on lead.
It was the custom also in ancient Babylonia to insert inscriptions below
the foundation stones of the great temples and palaces. In 1854 Place
found at Khorsabad the memorial inscriptions of the great palace of the
later Sargon, father of Sennacherib, a building founded in the eighth
century before our era. There were five of these inscribed plates all of
different metals, gold, silver, antimony, copper, and lead; the four
former are in the Louvre, but the lead, which must thus have been of
some size, “was too heavy to be carried off at once”; it was dispatched
by raft, and was lost with most of the collection. The inscription,
translated by Oppert, ends with the imprecation on disturbers which it
has been the wont of great builders in all times to conjure.
“May the great Lord Assur destroy from the face of this country the name
and race of him who shall injure the works of my hands or who shall
carry off my treasure.”
At Dodona many tablets of lead have been found inscribed in Greek; these
are questions to the oracle of that shrine.
In the British Museum there are several tablets inscribed in Greek about
the area of this book and covered with text, they are for the most part
imprecations on the heads of injurious persons, and were hid as a magic
rite in Temple enclosures. They are quite little stories.
“Imprecation of Antigone against her accuser.”
“Imprecation of Prosodion against those who misled her husband Nakron.”
“Imprecations of a woman against some one who stole her bracelet.”
Pausanias mentions having seen a text of Hesiod which was inscribed on
lead leaves; and Pliny also tells us of lead books. A lead inscribed
tablet was found in the Roman remains at Lydney slightly scratched with
a stylus.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Heart Box of King Richard.]
Of the Carlovingian age there are examples of lead documents in the
British Museum; one being an edict of Charlemagne himself, in which he
assumes the style of Emperor of the West; and it bears his well-known
cypher and the date, 18th Sept., 801. Another is signed Ludovic (Louis
the Younger), 822. In the Londesborough collection there is a leaden
book-cover of Saxon work with an inscription from Ælfric’s Homilies.
For sepulchral use lead is especially fitted; it was customary in the
twelfth century to inscribe a tablet or cross and to place it in the
coffin on the breast of the dead.
In the Museum at Bruges there is a tablet with a long inscription to
Gunilda the sister of Harold.[18] Two were found at Canterbury of the
thirteenth century with lines of beautifully drawn Lombard capitals in
incised outline with lines ruled between each row.[19]
[18] _Archæologia_, xxv.
[19] _Ibid._ xlv.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--Inscribed Cross.]
In 1838 was discovered in Rouen Cathedral choir the heart casket of
Lion-hearted Richard, there were two boxes, one within the other, the
inner one, covered inside with thin silver leaf, was inscribed with the
simple words given in Fig. 32 from _Archæologia_ (xxix).
A cruciform tablet is given in Camden[20] with an inscription purporting
to record King Arthur; the form shows that it was made in the twelfth
century. In the fifteenth century Chronicle of Capgrave, under the year
1170, he writes--“In these days was Arthures body founde in the cherch
yerd at Glaskinbury in a hol hok, a crosse of led leyd to a ston and the
letteris hid betwyx the ston and the led.” He gives Giraldus, “whech red
it,” as his authority. Giraldus Cambrensis gives the inscription as “Hic
jacet sepultus inclytus Rex Arthurus cum Wennevereia uxore sua secunda
in Insula Avalonia.”[21]
[20] Folio, plate v. vol. i.
[21] Capgrave, in Rolls Series.
Now William of Malmesbury, who died about 1145, says distinctly that the
tomb of Arthur had never been found, so this dates the fabrication of
this cross by the monks of Glastonbury always so especially greedy of
relics, as within a year or two of this time when Giraldus saw it (“quam
nos quoque vidimus”). The inscription on the lead cross engraved by
Camden agrees word for word with the exception of “with Guenevere his
second wife.” Must we not suppose that Giraldus here improved even upon
the monks, and added this poetic touch himself?
Few of these absolution crosses have been found abroad; one discovered
in Perigord was inscribed on the arms LVX . PAX . REX . LEX.
Wall tablets in churches are represented by one at Burford in
Shropshire, the monument of Lady Corbett, 1516. Her effigy is incised
under a canopy much like the brasses of the same time, and it suggests
simple decorative possibilities, such as filling cavities with mastics
of several colours, parcel gilding, damascening in brass wire, or inlay
of metal on metal.
In Saltash Church, Cornwall, a lead tablet records that “This Chapple
was repaired in the Mairty of Matthew Veale, Gent. Anno 1689.”
Inscriptions may be either cast with raised letters, engraved like the
early ones, or punched. Ornamental borders might also be made up of
punched lines, loops and dots.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Arms from Bourges.]
Of Coat Arms there was an instance at Jacques Cœur’s house in Bourges,
which is quite a lead mine. The Angel shield bearer alone remains, with
signs of the erasure of the arms. In London, about Copthall Buildings,
in the City, are several tablets with the arms of the “Armorers
Brasiers,” as also a large number of shields of cast lead with dates and
initials or names of the City wards. The insurance companies also used
shields of stamped lead.
In Vere Street, Clare Market, over the angle of what is at present a
baker’s shop, there is a panel with two negroes’ heads in relief, and
the legend “S. W. M. 1715.”
We began with a foundation inscription, we will conclude with one
twenty-six centuries later. This is a large cast plate of lead 3.6 by
2.4 and an inch thick, now preserved in the Guildhall Museum, which was
laid in the foundation of old Blackfriars, then Pitt Bridge:--
“On the last day of October in the year 1760 and in the beginning of the
most auspicious reign of George III., Sir Thomas Chitty, Knight, Lord
Mayor, laid the first stone of this bridge undertaken by the Common
Council of London (in the height of an extensive war) for the public
accommodation and ornament of the city (Robert Milne being the
architect) and that there may remain to posterity a monument of this
city’s affection to the man who by the strength of his genius, the
steadiness of his mind, and a kind of happy contagion of his probity and
spirit, under the divine favour and fortunate auspices of George II.,
recovered, augmented and secured the British Empire in Asia, Africa, and
America, and restored the ancient reputation and influence of his
country amongst the nations of Europe.
“The Citizens of London have unanimously voted this bridge to be
inscribed with the name of William Pitt.”
§ X. OF THE DECORATION OF LEAD.
One of the most usual methods of decorating lead was to gild it; whole
domes were gilt in this way. The dome of St. Sophia at Constantinople
seems to have been so treated, and the great arc of gold dominating such
an Eastern city must have been a most impressive sight. Many of the late
domes are partly gilt, as at the Invalides in Paris. The roof of the
ancient basilica at Tours is said to have been like “a mountain of
gold.”
Old recipe books of the last century give instructions for gilding lead.
The following are examples:--
“Take two pounds of yellow ochre, half a pound of red lead, and one
ounce of varnish, with which grind your ochre, but the red lead grind
with oil; temper them both together; lay your ground with this upon the
lead, and when it is almost dry, lay your gold; let it be thoroughly dry
before you polish it.”
For another ground--“Take varnish of linseed oil, red lead, white lead
and turpentine; boil in a pipkin and grind together on a stone.”
“Or take sheets of tinfoil, and grind them in common gold size; with
this wipe your pewter or lead over; lay on your leaf gold and press it
with cotton; it is a fine gilding, and has a beautiful lustre.”
Dutch metal was also used on a ground of varnish and red lead, as in
second recipe; or gilt leaves of tinfoil on white lead ground in linseed
oil, this last took a polish “as if it had been gilded in fire.” Dutch
metal should be lacquered on the surface. A cheap substitute for gilding
could doubtless be made for large surfaces by laying tinfoil lacquered
gold colour. Or for statues the surface of the lead might be made bright
and lacquered.
The external gilding on the Ste. Chapelle in Paris was done in leaf gold
on two coats of varnish.
Smaller decorative objects of lead in the middle ages were often
entirely gilt or parcel gilt in patterns; for instance, in an inventory
of 1553 we find an altar cross “of lead florysshed withe golde foyle.”
The effect of silver is obtained by “tinning” with solder, and when this
is intended to form patterns on the surface of the lead the method is
thus described by Burges. The surface is coated with lamp black mixed
with size; the pattern is either transferred on it or drawn direct and
then marked round with a point; all the part to be tinned has the
surface removed by a “shave hook” so as to leave the pattern quite
bright, a little sweet oil is rubbed over this and the solder is applied
and spread in the usual way of soldering with a “copper bit.” This is
more conveniently done in the shop, but the spire at Chalons was
decorated in this way long after the lead covering was finished. A
specimen of this work prepared by Burges may be seen in the
Architectural Museum, Westminster.
Transparent colour was often applied over this tinning, which, shining
through, gave it lustre; or the tinning alternated with the colour as in
chevrons of tin and blue and red. We may suppose that this sort of work
was done in England, for some leaded spires shown in the paintings at
St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, were coloured vermilion and gold, or
green and white, in chevrons following the leading.
Stow also tells us that at the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem,
Clerkenwell, rebuilt after a fire in 1381, there was a steeple decorated
in this way which remained to his day and was then destroyed. “The great
bell tower, a most curious piece of workmanship, graven, gilt, and
enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all others
that I have seen.”
Rain-pipe heads at Knole have patterns formed in this way by bright tin
applied to the surface. There are also heads of water pipes at the
Bodleian and at St. John’s College, Oxford (see Figs. 71 and 72),
treated all over with patterns of chequers and zig-zags. Those at St.
John’s have cast coats of arms in wreaths brightly emblazoned in gold
and colours. The collars to the pipes are painted with patterns, as also
are some pipes at Framlingham, Suffolk.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Incised Decoration, Bourges.]
Sometimes the pattern was incised on the lead in deep broad lines, and
these, when filled with black mastic, traced the pattern without any
tinning. An example of this method is found in a ridge and finial
sketched at Bourges--the hearts and scallop shell were badges of Jacques
Cœur. Other portions of the lead work at this house are decorated by
patterns in lamp-black painted on the lead. See the ridge and examples
of flashings drawn in Figures 36 and 37. A ridge designed for St.
Vincent’s Church at Rouen, of which a drawing is preserved, is a
beautiful instance of this treatment; it is divided into lengths in
which branches with leaves and flowers alternate with a stiffer pattern.
The spire before spoken of, at Chalons-sur-Marne, furnishes the finest
example of these methods used in combination. See drawings in _Builder_,
1856, and in the sketch book of the Architectural Association for 1883,
both by Burges. This decoration is of the fourteenth century and is thus
described by Viollet-le-Duc:--“The sheets of lead were engraved in
outlines and filled in with black material, of which traces may yet be
seen. Painting and gilding illuminated the spaces between these black
lines, and we must observe that nearly all the leadwork of the middle
ages was thus decorated by paintings applied to the metal by means of an
energetic mordant. The plumber’s art of the middle ages is wrought out
like colossal goldsmith’s work, and we have found striking
correspondence between the two arts as well in the methods of
application as in the forms admitted: gilding and applied colour here
replace enamel.” The design is of tabernacle work with figures and the
whole was clearly intended to recall a shrine of goldsmith’s work. Large
engraved patterns filled with black used alone on the silvery lead
become great _niellos_, exactly parallel to the method of treating
silver.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Painted Decoration, Bourges.]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Flashings, Bourges.]
The flèche called “the golden” at Amiens retains traces of arabesque
patterns on grounds of bright blue and vermilion.
Repoussé by hammering, another method most appropriate to the material,
was more used in France than with us, where casting has been throughout
the chief means for obtaining relief decoration. In France the finials
were mostly formed in this way. “Recalling the best goldsmith’s work of
the epoch,” withal so easily and carelessly wrought that it is plain
that they were done at once without pattern and yet with ample
knowledge of the ultimate form desired; so a leaf cut out of a sheet is
hammered and twisted till it cups and curls itself into living grace.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--A Valance.]
In these finials applied castings were also used, and at the end of the
fifteenth century they superseded repoussé for a time. Many of the
moulds in stone and plaster, for the ornaments which were used on the
roofs and finials at Beaune are preserved. The castings were not so free
and decorative however as those done by repoussé.
Of piercing into delicate tracery the pipe-heads at Haddon give many
charming examples. At Aston Hall, Warwickshire, the curved lead roofs of
the turrets have all round the eaves a brattishing of pierced sheet in
simple scroll work, it stands up freely and gives a dainty finish: the
pattern is something like that above. In the East pierced valances of
this kind are very general; the roofs of the larger fountains at
Constantinople are usually finished in this way. Fig. 38 is from the
portico roof of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem drawn from a
photograph. Casting and piercing were also combined, the pattern being
strengthened thus by ribs and the veins, and interspaces being cut away.
In small Japanese work brass is sometimes inlaid into lead or pewter in
the form of flowers, which are further defined by surface engraving.
Engraving on sheet lead similar to the old memorial brasses has been
mentioned before, and we may go on to look at the decorative processes
in which lead was used applied to other materials.
§ XI. OF LEAD ORNAMENTATION OF OTHER MATERIALS.
Lead trappings and appendages have often been applied to stone statues.
The sceptres and bishops’ crosses of the fine fourteenth century statues
of St. Mary’s spire at Oxford are of wrought lead. The leaves of the
sceptre heads and the crosses are embossed out in two pieces and then
soldered at the edges.
Inlaying of lead in stone slabs making grisaille designs was a method
much used--a magnificent example remains in the pavement at St. Remy,
Rheims (formerly in the choir of St. Nicaise in the same town), where
foliated panels with figure subjects from Scripture are made out on the
stones; it is a work of the early fourteenth century.[22] We have in
England an example of this treatment in a tomb slab at St. Mary
Redcliffe, Bristol, and there is mention of the process in the account
by William of Malmesbury of the Saxon part of the “Ealde Chirche” at
Glastonbury. We may well suppose this was an imitation in the national
material of Roman mosaic. The floor was “inlaid with polished stone ...
moreover in the pavement may be remarked on every side stone designedly
_interlaid in triangles and squares and figured with lead_, under which
if I believe some sacred enigma to be contained I do no injustice to
religion. The antiquity and multitude of its saints have endowed the
place with so much sanctity that at night scarcely anyone presumes to
keep vigil there or during the day to spit upon its floor ... and
certainly the more magnificent the ornaments of churches are the more
they incline the brute mind to prayer and bend the stubborn to
supplication.”
[22] _See_ Viollet-le-Duc, “Dallage.”
The method is still followed in lettering on tombs and the like: the
design is engraved in the marble and holes are drilled with a bow drill
in the sunk parts, some inclined at an angle to give a better hold;
strips of lead of sufficient substance are then hammered into the
casements with a wooden mallet, and the superfluous metal removed with a
sharp chisel.
Some of the sixteenth and seventeenth century engraved brasses have
portions of the arms, etc., inlaid in lead in the brass; there are
instances of this in Westminster Abbey. Lead might also be inlaid in
cast iron with good effect, where it has not to be painted: the recesses
would be left in the casting of either cast brass or cast iron. The
stars that spangle the ceilings of churches on a blue ground are usually
of cast lead gilt. The ceiling of the well-known panel and rib kind
attributed to Holbein at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s had the
enrichments in the panels of lead. Chimney-pieces were also decorated in
the same way, and even furniture is found at times with applied badges
of gilt lead. These methods it must be understood are not all
recommended here, they are only recorded.
The delicate applied enrichments so much used in work influenced by the
practice of the Brothers Adam are in the best work of lead; cast with
extraordinary delicacy in relief figure panels, after the manner of the
antique, or fragile garlands, vases, and frets. Much of this work was
used in the internal decoration at Somerset House. The accounts under
1780 show payments to Edward Watson--for lead pateras from 2½_d._ to
10_d._ each; nineteen ornamental friezes to chimney pieces £10 17_s._
8_d._; lead frieze to the bookcases in the Royal Academy Library at
2_s._ 6_d._ per foot; 137 feet run of large lead frieze in the
exhibition room at 4_s._ Dutch bracket clocks of the eighteenth century
have pierced and gilt ornamentations of lead.
This method of applying pierced lead to wood was known in the middle
ages. In the Kensington Museum there is a delicate openwork panel, three
inches square, which with others, decorated the front of a fourteenth
century chest in the church at Newport, Essex. A beautiful little panel
of open work, which contains the subject of the Annunciation, was found
some years since in the Thames. One of the last instances of this
decorative use of lead is on the great doors of Inwood’s church, at St.
Pancras, where the panels are filled with reliefs and the margins have
the palmette border. At Christchurch, Hampshire, some of the tracery
panels at the back of the stalls have been replaced in lead.
The front door fanlights so well known in the London houses of the
eighteenth century were made by applying lead castings to a backing of
iron. Even staircase balustrades were cast in panels of lattice work of
hard lead and fixed between iron standards some three or four feet
apart.
§ XII. OF DECORATIVE OBJECTS.
A great number of small objects in lead are in our museums, and first we
should mention the medals and plaques of the great masters of the
Renaissance. Lead will cast with more delicacy than any other material,
and Cellini especially recommended it for proofs. The proofs of the
great work of the medallists,--the modelling just a film, fading into
the background--presentments and allegories of the Malatestas and
Gonzagas by Pisanello and Sperandio, are certainly the most precious
things ever formed in lead. There are a great number of these medals and
decorative plaques in the British Museum and at Kensington.
For coins in lead see Gaetani and Fiscorni. For tokens and pilgrim
badges, of which a great number have been found in the Seine, see
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, Vol. VI. and XVIII. Some of these remind us of
the lead figures that, according to “Quentin Durward,” Louis XI. wore in
his hat. At the Guildhall there is a collection of hundreds of these
small objects found in the Thames; most are of great delicacy, many very
beautiful. There are, in the British Museum, little Greek objects, rings
and toys, armlets of a snake pattern, and pierced ornaments for applying
to other objects.
Other objects in the Kensington Museum are:--A small tankard only two
and a half inches diameter but modelled with figures in low relief, it
is German of the sixteenth or seventeenth century; a pair of little
inkstands the circular drums modelled with foliage and projecting top
and bottom rims, also German; and a square canister with panel of St.
George on each face.
Another is a beautiful little Gothic box of the fourteenth century. It
is hexagonal, with three feet, a flat hinged cover has a sitting lion
which forms the knob, a slight relief of the Annunciation under a
canopy, and two shields of arms. Round the sides are delicate bands of
foliage and Gothic lettering; it is three and a half inches high, and of
cast lead. There are other portions of little Gothic boxes in the
British Museum. At Gloucester Museum there is a square box of late
fifteenth century work, the sides formed of four cast panels of lead,
soldered at the angles. The panels all repeat the same relief of the
dead Christ and the Virgin, right and left are the other two Marys, and
the background bears the cross, crown, spears, dice, and all the
implements of the Passion.[23] Small canisters, and candlesticks the
stems of which are formed of a little lead figure, were made quite
recently.
[23] See _Antiquary_, Feb., 1893.
§ XIII. OF LEAD GLAZING.
This subject, in which lead is only secondary, has been treated so often
by others in connection with glass that little more need be said here.
Already, when Theophilus wrote his treatise on the arts, some time from
the tenth to the twelfth century, leaded glazing of coloured glass was
practised much as we do it now, and he describes how the leads were cast
with the two grooves for the glass and how it was put together on a
table. Coloured glass windows were placed in the Basilica at Lyons in
the fifth century, as described in the letters of Sidonius. From the
thirteenth century there are crowds of examples of glazing wholly of
white glass in which patterns are made by the arrangement of the leads.
In the cathedrals of north France, especially Bayeux, Coutances, Mantes,
and through Brittany, most elaborate patterns of this kind fill the
windows; not only diapers but interlacing bands, over and under in
effect, and this in plain white glass. This method does not seem to have
been followed here, where for the most part, unless in colour
arrangements, the leading for church windows was in plain lozenges and
parallelograms.
Later, however, in houses, pattern glazing, sometimes of an elaborate
kind, is found, especially in the north of England, at Moreton Hall in
Cheshire, at Bramhall, and at Levens in Westmorland. In some parts the
glass may not be more than a circle or diamond of an inch across.
These patterns have been amply treated in other places, and we may
consider those that have a diapered pattern all over the light to belong
rather to the glass than the lead. There are others, however, in which
the lead lines are made still more important by being arranged in a
single intricate panel to each light, the centre usually being charged
with an heraldic device. Two simple examples are given in Figs. 39 and
40.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
There is one point to speak of in regard to the fretted patterns not
usually noticed. The frets are sometimes leaded up so that the glass
does not lie in one plane, but there is an intentional change, so that
the faces of glass reflect the light differently in a uniform manner all
over the window, the forward panes being some ⅓ or ¼ inch in front
of the plane of the inner ones and between them others are placed
obliquely. This is best known in Holland, but a similar practice was
followed at Levens in Westmorland.
Lozenges of lead pierced for ventilation, either one or several
together, are sometimes found; they are cast with a delicate pattern, or
cut in a lattice. Some of the best are in the museum of Fountains Abbey,
others are at Ely and at Haddon. Fig. 41 is from a Surrey cottage.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
§ XIV. OF LEAD STATUES.
The making of lead statues was frequent up to the end of the 18th
century, and then more frequent than at any other time, to cease at once
on the introduction of the Italian plaster model shops, which in the
eyes of the connoisseurs of the time brought with them a time of purer
taste, the taste whose god was the Apollo of the Belvidere.
These statues of lead were known to the ancients. There was one of
Mamurius at Rome.[24]
[24] Fosbroke, _Ency. Antiq._
In the middle ages there were not only small cast lead figures like
those around the font at Ashover and a figure from a crucifix now in the
library of Wells Cathedral which is about 12 inches high, of 15th
century work, but figures full size and more were also made; this was
especially the case in France; these, however, were generally repoussé.
In the garden of the Cluny Museum in Paris is a fine figure of St. John
Evangelist, fully eight feet high; it is of early 14th century work,
and looks as if it had stood at the central pier of a doorway.
At Moissac, in the south of France, is a most remarkable work of lead, a
tomb, above which is a lead sarcophagus and several figures representing
the entombment of Christ, who is being laid in the open coffin. It is
15th century work; the figures, six in all, are full of character and
vigour like the wooden statuary of the time. It appears from a
photograph to be cast in separate portions.
The figures formed by repoussé usually serve as finials on the roof, or
stand in niches of the flèche. In the great flèche at Amiens there are
six figures as large as life, with other smaller figures of angels which
hold emblems of the Passion. M. Viollet-le-Duc says these figures were
nearly always _embouties_ that is to say hammered out on a wooden model
in portions, and soldered together. The artist had to be careful that
the model should be thin and “dry” so the thickness of the lead should
not make it too coarse in the forms. Burges cites an account of 1514 of
a payment to John Pothyn, sculptor, for having carved a prophet in
walnut wood to serve as a mould and pattern to the lead-workers.
Sometimes the lead casing was put on with lapping joints, the skeleton
frame being iron.
There are not now in England lead statues of any size executed during
the middle ages; but magnificent figures of bronze cast by the _cire
perdu_ method remain to us. The effigy of Queen Eleanor at Westminster
cannot be matched in Europe.
The founder’s art was carried to much perfection in Germany in the 15th
and 16th centuries. Mr. Seymour Haden has in Hampshire a statue of a
city herald of lead which formerly belonged to the great clock at
Nuremburg.
Many statues of lead were set up in English towns after the earlier
Renaissance, they are our national version of the bronze of Italy, a
material which we used but little; such bronze statues as were cast here
since the middle ages seem to have been the work of foreigners. Le
Sieur, for instance, did the statue of Charles II. at Charing Cross, and
many others. The statue of Queen Anne that was to surmount Gibbs’
proposed column in the Strand was ordered in Rome.
At Bristol there is a large Neptune of lead roughly modelled; the limbs
are contorted with too much life and yet it is a decorative feature in
the centre of a wide street. On the pedestal has been engraved a little
history of the statue, an example that might be followed--“Neptune, cast
and given A.D. 1588 by a citizen of Temple parish to commemorate the
defeat of the Spanish Armada. Re-erected on its fourth site in 1872.”
This seems to be a tradition unsubstantiated by record, but the time is
not so remote that it may not as well be true, especially as the style
of the figure would seem to agree with the date named. The story says
that it was the gift of a plumber in the town, the metal being that of
the captured ships’ pumps.
At Bungay in Suffolk there used to be a large statue at the Market Cross
known as “Astræa.”
One of the most interesting portrait statues in London, the Queen Anne
at Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, is of lead. The surface ornament on
the robes is especially appropriate to the material. There is also in
Golden Square a statue of George II. which seems to be nearly a repeat
of the stone statue on Bloomsbury steeple; it suggested the statue in
Fred Walker’s picture, “The Harbour of Refuge.”
There were also many full size equestrian statues founded in this metal,
that of George I., until 1874 in Leicester Square, was one of these, and
like the last it was brought from Canons, the celebrated house of the
Duke of Chandos at Edgware, dismantled about 1747. The George I.
resembled Le Sieur’s statue at Charing Cross and was known as the Golden
Horse, for the whole was gilt, as many of the statues seem to have been
at Canons, in that garden where, according to Pope, “The trees were
clipped like statues--the statues thick as trees.”
The statue of William of Orange at Dublin is another of these, and it is
celebrated alike in political demonstrations and Catholic polemics.
Cardinal Newman wrote of it, “The very flower and cream of
Protestantism used to glory in the statue of King William on College
Green, Dublin, and though I cannot make any reference in print I
recollect well what a shriek they raised some years ago when the figure
was unhorsed. Some profane person one night applied gunpowder and blew
the king right out of his saddle, and he was found by those who took
interest in him, like Dagon, on the ground.”
Yet another equestrian statue is that of Charles the Second at
Edinburgh, set up by the magistrates of the city in Parliament Square,
in honour of the restoration of the king. A writer in the _Athenæum_ for
April 13th, 1850, speaks of it as the “finest piece of statuary in
Edinburgh,” and urges the suitability of lead for the purpose. “In
_Black’s Guide through Edinburgh_ it is spoken of as the best specimen
of bronze statuary which Edinburgh possesses; it is, however, composed
of lead. Now this leaden equestrian statue has already without sensible
deterioration stood the test of 165 years’ (in 1850) exposure to the
weather, and it still seems as fresh as if erected but yesterday.” Some
years before this, one of the interior irons having given way, a part of
the shoulder sank a little and it was taken down and repaired and
sufficiently proved to be lead. Taking the figures above, it appears
that the date of this work is 1685.
Mr. James Nasmyth also wrote to the _Athenæum_, June, 1850, “to confirm
as a practical man the perfect fitness of lead” as a substitute for
bronze, and to recommend the _cire perdu_ method of casting, at that
time discontinued in England; the process being to model the statue in
wax on a solid core, to cast in plaster the finished wax model, and then
to melt out the wax from this plaster mould, the space which it occupied
being refilled with lead. Of course only one cast can be obtained in
this way, whereas the old decorative statues spoken of later were cast
in a piece mould and reproduced again and again.
“The addition (still quoting) of about five per cent. of antimony will
give it not only greater hardness but enhance its capability to run into
the most delicate details ... it is in every sense as durable as bronze
when subject simply to atmospheric action.”
We shall see that an addition of block tin was made to the lead by the
old figure founders. Type metal, which is so much harder than lead, is
an alloy of lead and ¼ to ⅓ of antimony, or of two parts of lead to
one of tin and one of antimony.
In the courtyard of Houghton Tower, Lancashire, there is a statue of
William III. brought from the dismantled Walton-le-Dale in 1834.
The statues decorating the parapets of the large “classic” country
houses are at times of lead; there are five of these at Lyme in
Cheshire. Over the portico of the Clarendon at Oxford there are four of
these statues representing the sciences. Until recently there was a
figure of King James high up in a niche at the Bodleian.
The figures of the good little boy and girl common at charity schools
are also often of lead. The great Percy lion that surmounted old
Northumberland House at Charing Cross (destroyed twenty years ago) is
now on the river front of Syon House; it weighs about three tons, and it
was placed in its original position in 1749. The lion on the bridge at
Alnwick is also of lead, as the little boy found to his cost who climbed
out on its tail.
There are a series of lead busts in oval panels on the front of Ham
House, Petersham, Surrey, 1610 being the date of its erection.
Before passing into the garden a word on the practical details of
casting as traditionally followed may be added. The casting of lead
statues is much the same process as founding in bronze, but it is
simpler from the much lower temperature at which lead flows, and the
ease with which limbs can be cast separately and joined to the body. The
technical details may be found in a text-book of modelling and
casting--_Mouler en Plâtre, Plomb_, &c. (Lebrun, Paris, 1860). The
course followed is to cut up the model in such parts as is determined,
to mould these in loam, the cores are then cast in plaster after the
thickness that will be occupied by the lead has been first applied to
the moulds in sand (terre). The cores are then removed and dried and
baked, for in this as in all founding everything depends on the
absolute dryness of the mould. After the first mould had been added to,
for the casting of the core, a second mould would be prepared from the
original figure and the core supported in that by irons. The castings
are then made, and the portions reunited and finished on the surface.
Large works have to be sufficiently supported with internal irons. All
the mysteries of vents, and false coring when necessary, can only be
understood by practical familiarity with founding.
Modern figures for Dundee were cast from plaster; cast iron also makes
good moulds.
If the roof is the place for those earlier figures formed by repoussé,
the garden is rightly inhabited by cast lead statues. It is a material
in which the designer might well permit himself slightness, caprice, or
even triteness. A statue that would be tame in stone, or contemptible in
marble, may well be a charming decoration if only in lead, set in the
vista of a green walk against a dark yew hedge or broad-leaved fig, or
where the lilac waves its plumes above them and the syringa thrusts its
flowers under their arms and shakes its petals on the pedestal. “How
charming it must be to walk in one’s own garden, and sit on a bench in
the open air with a fountain and a leaden statue and a rolling-stone and
an arbour. Have a care though of sore throat and the _agoe_.[25]”
[25] Gray’s _Letter from Pembroke Coll._, 1769.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Mercury.]
When sculptors learn again that their art is to shape many materials in
various ways for diverse uses, and that a statue is not necessarily of
whitest marble or to be exhibited on the 1st of May, then we may get
back the delight of sculpture in the garden.
Sculptured marble, unless the art is of a high order, does not please us
out of doors by a pond or on a terrace, if it is not weathered down to a
ruin, but lead is homely and ordinary and not too good to receive the
_graffiti_ of lovers’ knots, red letter dates and initials. Here is a
sketch of a Mercury not at all too fine for further decoration of this
sort; it came from a London sale room, the surface was quite white and
exfoliated like old stone. The jaunty messenger has a garden thought
too, for it is honeycomb in his hand.
One of the best known of these garden statues was a group of Cain and
Abel that so recently gave an interest to the great grass quad of
Brasenose College, Oxford. It was given by Dr. Clarke, of All Souls,
“who bought it of some London statuary.” Hearne speaks of it as “some
silly statue”--superiority has always been the greatest enemy to beauty.
Forty or fifty years ago there was a Mercury in Tom Quad which has also
been improved away.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Sun-dial, Temple Gardens.]
Our next example fulfils a purpose. It is the sun-dial formerly in
Clement’s Inn, which was known locally as the “Blackamoor.” It is
strongly, if simply modelled, a piece of art full of character, and we
may be glad that it has been restored to us although now placed in the
gardens of the Inner Temple, instead of before the “Garden House” in
Clement’s Inn.
The negro is the full size of life and bears the stone disc of the dial
on his head with one hand, the other being free. The dial is beautifully
engraved and is signed on the edge of the gnomon _Ben Scott in the
Strand Londini Fecit_. The sides have the initials of the donor, P. I.
P., and the date, 1731. Mr. Hare in his _Walks in London_ states that it
was brought from Italy late in the seventeenth century by Holles Lord
Clare, whose name is preserved in the neighbouring Clare market. This
statement is also found in Thornbury’s _Old and New London_, and the
statue is said to be bronze, which it is not, nor do the initials and
date above agree with Mr. Hare’s statement, who goes on to remark that
“there are similar figures at Knowsley, and at Arley in Cheshire,” but
he does not say if these also were brought from Italy by Lord Clare.
No authority is given by Mr. Hare, but his statement is in the main a
transcript from John Thomas Smith, who also gives the verses quoted by
Mr. Hare, said to have been attached to the statue on one occasion with
a pitying reference to the legal atmosphere the African had to breathe.
That it was brought from Italy is seemingly local gossip added to the
account of Mr. Smith who knew well enough the English workshop, as we
shall see, where these figures were made.
Similar figures are mentioned by this writer in his gossiping
_Antiquarian Rambles in London_ in which he wrote the memories of his
own travels in the streets in the beginning of the present century, and
gives quite a history of this “despicable manufactory.” The founding of
these lead garden statues seems specially to have been an industry of
the eighteenth century; with the dreary opening of the nineteenth “a
purer taste,” so we are assured, banished these and most other charms of
an old-fashioned garden. “In Piccadilly, on the site of the houses east
of the Poulteney Hotel including that, now No. 102, stood the original
leaden figure yard, founded by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who came
to England with King William III. His effects were sold March, 1711.” As
late as 1763 a John Van Nost (supposed descendant of the former) was
following the profession of a statuary in St. Martin’s Lane, on the
left, a little farther up than where the old brick houses now stand in
1893. The original business was taken in 1739 by Mr. John Cheere, who
served his time with his brother, Sir H. Cheere, the statuary who did
several of the Abbey monuments.
“This despicable manufactory must still be within memory, as the
attention of nine persons in ten were arrested by these garden
ornaments. The figures were cast in lead as large as life and frequently
painted with an intention to resemble nature. They consisted of Punch,
Harlequin, Columbine and other pantomimical characters; mowers whetting
their scythes; haymakers resting on their rakes; gamekeepers shooting;
and Roman soldiers with _firelocks_; but above all an African kneeling
with a sundial upon his head found the most extensive sale.
“For these imaginations in lead there were other workshops in
Piccadilly, viz., Dickenson’s, which stood on the site of the Duke of
Gloucester’s house, Manning’s at the corner of White Horse Street, and
Carpenter’s, that stood where Egmont house afterwards stood.
“All the above four figure yards were in high vogue about the year 1740.
They certainly had casts from some of the finest works of art, the
Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, &c., but these leaden
productions, although they found numerous admirers and purchasers, were
never countenanced by men of taste; for it is well known that when
application was made to the Earl of Burlington for his sanction he
always spoke of them with sovereign contempt, observing that the
uplifted arms of leaden figures, in consequence of the pliability and
weight of the material, would in course of time appear little better
than crooked billets.... There has not been a leaden figure manufactory
in London since the year 1787, when Mr. Cheere died.”
Walpole knew little of these lead-working sculptors, his only notice
occurring under “Carpentier or Charpentiere”--our Carpenter above--“a
statuary much employed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons, was for some
years principal assistant to Van Ost (our Van Nost) an artist of whom I
have found no memorials, and afterwards set up for himself. Towards the
end of his life he kept a manufactory of leaden statues in Piccadilly
and died in 1737, aged above sixty.” The original Van Nost came from
Mechlin, and married in England the widow of another Dutch sculptor.
In the account books of the building of Somerset House the following
entry, which occurs under 1778, is interesting as showing John Cheere
working on particular works, and for giving us the composition of the
metal and the price. “John Cheere, figure maker; to moulding, casting,
and finishing four large sphinxes in a strong substantial manner, lead
and block tin, at each £31.”
It is curious if Lord Burlington gave the critical dictum attributed to
him, that there were so many lead garden statues at his villa at
Chiswick, in 1892 dismantled by the Duke of Devonshire. Doubtless they
belonged to that garden described by Walpole as in the Italian taste,
where “the lavish quantity of urns and sculpture behind the garden
front should be retrenched,” a wish that time accomplishes. There was a
Bacchus, a Venus, an Achilles, a Samson, and Cain and Abel.
In the first quadrangle at Knole there are two good reproductions of the
antique, one being a crouching Venus. In the courtyard of Burton Agnes
in Yorkshire stands a Fighting Gladiator.
Studley Royal, near Ripon, is a fine example of the best effort of
park-gardening, if the phrase be allowed, for the term “landscape
gardening” is degraded to mean productions in the cemetery style, an
affair of wriggling paths, little humps, and nursery specimens, which
might best be described as _cemetery gardening_, and between which and
the manner of Kent there is no parallel. Here lakes in ordered circles
and crescents occupy the grassy flat between hanging woods, and several
groups of lead statuary stand above the water.
In the beautiful old gardens at Melbourne in Derbyshire are a large
number of lead figures, two of which are drawn in _The Formal
Garden_.[26] There are two heroic sized figures of Perseus and Andromeda
beside the great water; a Flying Mercury after Giovanni Bologna; two
slaves, which are painted black, with white drapery, carrying vases on
salvers; and several Cupids in pairs or single. Of these “the single
figures” Mr. Blomfield says “are about two feet high. One has fallen
off his tree, another is flying upward, another shooting, another
shaping his bow with a spoke shave. All of these are painted and some
covered with stone dust to imitate stone, a gratuitous insult to lead
which will turn to a delicate silver grey if left to its own devices.”
[26] Blomfield and Thomas. Macmillan, 1892.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Cymbal Player.]
In the old gardens at Rousham described by Pope are still some Cupids
riding on swans; at Holmerook Hall are statues and other objects in
lead, and at Newton Ferrars in Cornwall are two statues of Mars and
Perseus. At the Mote House, Hersham, are some garden figures.
There are also some figures of lead in the gardens of Castle Hill, Lord
Fortescue’s house in Devonshire. In the two niches of a garden temple
there is a Cymbal Player from the antique and a Venus in the manner of
William and Mary. Amongst the foliage of a wood-path is a terminal
figure of Pan, the pillar being stone and the head and shoulders only of
lead. In the gardens here are also two large couchant lions, four
sphinxes, and some greyhounds. At Nun Moncton in Yorkshire, on a terrace
by the river Ouse are several lead figures on each side of the walk,
these have gilded trappings. At Glemham in Suffolk are figures of the
Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugène at the entrance. In the garden are
two black slaves with sun-dials, and the Seasons: also hounds at the
gateway.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Terminal at Castle Hill.]
In the garden at Canons Ashby is a figure of a shepherd playing a flute.
In a garden at Exeter are four or five figures, amongst which is a
Skater and a Flower Girl, and at Whitchurch is a Quoit Thrower.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Time.]
In the niches of a large circular yew hedge at Hardwick are four
figures, three are playing on musical instruments; pipe, trumpet, and
violin, and the fourth represents Painting. There are also two other
figures in the gardens. At Temple Dinsley near Hitchin is a figure of
Time, hour-glass in hand, of which a sketch is given. The left hand
formerly held a scythe, now lost. At Shrewsbury is a Hercules.
The statues in the grounds at Blarney celebrated in the “Groves of
Blarney” were of lead:--
“There’s statues gracing this noble place in
All heathen Goddesses so fair,
Bold Neptune, Plutarch and Nicodemus
All standing naked in the open air.”
These statues were sold by auction to Sir Thomas Dene who bought the
castle, and pictures:--
“And took off in a cart
(’Twas enough to break my heart)
All the statues made of lead and pictures O!”[27]
[27] _Reliques of Father Prout_, i., 140.
The eighteenth century must have been busy in the “manufacture” of these
garden figures and ornaments, some of the gardens mentioned have as many
as twenty to thirty pieces still. A great number was doubtless absorbed
in the London public gardens and the villas up the Thames. In old
Vauxhall was a statue of Milton by Roubilliac, but it is difficult to
attribute many specimens to individuals. The negro we saw was sold by
Mr. John Cheere in St. Martin’s Lane, but likely enough the model was a
part of the stock of Van Nost, as also the fine vases at Hampton Court.
Many of these statues were destroyed to suit the “purer taste” of this
century, and a great number were exported during the American War to
become bullets, because at that time as “works of art” the lead escaped
the Customs. A large number have been accidentally crushed by the fall
of a tree or otherwise destroyed, and many not adequately supported have
flattened down out of shape.
There was a large display _à la_ Louis Quatorze, of lead casting in the
gorgeous gardens of Versailles; where in the fountains, groups of
statues, and vases, the greatest sculptors of the time worked
indifferently in marble, bronze, or _plomb doré_. François Girardon was
one of these. Born in 1628, at Troyes, he lived to the year 1715,
achieving a reputation that placed him amongst the foremost of French
artists of that time.
The immense structure entirely of lead known as the Fountain of the
Pyramid is his work. From a basin in which sport three man-sized tritons
rises a pedestal, with a circular basin much enriched by gadroons, set
on three classic zoomorphous legs; and above it three other like basins
of diminishing size, each supported from the one below around the rim;
by baby tritons for the lowest, the next with dolphins, and the last
with lobsters. In the last basin is a vase. The whole is a composition
showing great refinement of scholarship, recalling in general form the
great pine cone of bronze in the Vatican gardens, once the fountain in
the atrium of old St. Peter’s. It is exquisitely drawn and engraved by
Rouyer et Darcel[28] together with two vases also of lead from the Basin
of Neptune.
[28] _L’Art Arch. en France_, vol. ii.
Other groups, some of colossal proportions--“France Victorious,” “The
Four Seasons,” and so on--were the work of Thomas Renaudin of Moulins,
J. B. Tubi from Rome, Pierre Mazaline and Gaspard de Marcu; their
individual works, with illustrations, may be distinguished in the volume
of engraved statues of the Versailles gardens by S. Thomassin published
in Paris 1694.
Versailles certainly set the fashion, which we followed and which
influenced the gardens of the most of Europe. In Russia a Swiss gardener
arranged a labyrinth at the summer palace of Peter the Great with animal
groups from Æsop in gilt lead forming fountains. Beckford, writing from
Lisbon in 1789, describes a garden at Bemfica “which eclipses our
Clapham and Islington villas in all the attractions of leaden statues,
Chinese temples, serpentine rivers, and dusty hermitages.”
§ XV. OF LEAD FOUNTAINS.
None of the old English gardens were complete without a fountain, and no
fountain was complete without a figure. Bacon says--“For fountains ...
the ornaments of images, gilt or of marble, which are in use do well.”
Paul Hentzner writes of the sixteenth century garden of Theobalds, the
seat of Lord Treasurer Burleigh--“There was a summer house, in the lower
part of which, built semicircularly, are the twelve Roman emperors in
white marble and a table of touchstone (alabaster) the upper part is set
around with cisterns of lead into which the water is conveyed by pipes
so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer time they are very
convenient for bathing.”
At St. Fagan’s, near Cardiff, in front of the house is a remarkable lead
tank; it is octagonal, ten feet across and nearly four feet high; it is
ornamented round the sides with flowers, and shields in panels, and is
dated 1620.
At Syon House there is a fountain in which a lead figure forms the jet
d’eau.
At Wooton in Staffordshire there is a fountain basin with a lead duck so
suspended as to float on the water spouting water from its bill. The
Swan which seemed to float on the water described by Borrow in
_Lavengro_ must have been of lead. At Sprotborough in Yorkshire are some
lead toads about nine inches long, which also seem to have belonged to a
fountain.
Some of the figures mentioned before stand in the centre of basins, and
occasionally simple groups, as of Neptune in a two-horsed chariot, may
be found, but we have nothing in England to compare to the great
fountain compositions of the Versailles Gardens or to the fountain
called _Le Buffet_ in the Trianon Park, designed by Mansard, and
profusely decorated by the gilt lead sculptures of Van Clève and other
artists.
In Germany some of the earlier town fountains are of lead.
§ XVI. OF VASES AND GATE PIERS.
The vases at Hampton Court mentioned above are particularly fine in
design and well modelled; their height is about 2.3 and the little
sitting figures, slight as they are, are charming in their pose; the
folded arms and prettily arranged hair give us a suggestion of life
which most of these things supposed to be in the classic taste lack. The
inventory taken by the Commission at Hampton Court mentions “Fower large
flower potts of lead.” Similar vases are in the gardens at Windsor, also
larger and later examples with figure plaques in Flaxman’s manner. At
Castle Hill, North Devon, there are ten vases, some with mouldings and
gadroons formed in repoussé, others cast.
At Melbourne in Derbyshire there is an enormous vase some seven or eight
feet high in a very rococo style.[29] There is one at Penshurst, which
comes from Old Leicester House in London; and at Sprotborough are others
of similar design. These vases will not bear comparison with the
beautiful lead Gothic fonts before given.
[29] _The Formal Garden_, Blomfield and Thomas.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Vase, Hampton Court.]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--From Vase, Hampton Court.]
There are several vases at Wimpole near Cambridge, at Wilton, and at
Wrest. Little square flower boxes with cast or repoussé devices on the
sides were also made; Charles Lamb describes some flower pots for us
from the gardens of Blakesware in Herefordshire, a fine old house,
destroyed even when he wrote--“The owner of it had lately pulled it
down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished.
_How shall they build it up again?_” There was a beautiful fruit garden
and “ampler pleasure garden rising backwards from the house in triple
terraces, with flower pots now of palest lead save that a spot here and
there saved from the elements bespake their pristine state to have been
gilt and glittering.”
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Vase, Castle Hill.]
At Knole are a pair of circular pots figured on page 120. Circular
baskets of open interlacing work and other forms were also made.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Albert Gate.]
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Albert Gate.]
Garden seats were also made entirely of lead. There are six lead
seats at Castle Hill, North Devon; they are large square boxes with
heavy “classic” forms, the top and ends imitating the folds of drapery.
At Chiswick similar seats in every way were sculptured in stone. These
show how lead should not be used.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Vase on Gate Pier, Knole.]
At Castle Hill are also several greyhounds; they are particularly lively
and well modelled and suitable for their purpose as guards to the gates.
Gate piers are most inviting pedestals for leaden imagery. At Albert
Gate, Hyde Park, there are two beautiful lead stags--another pair of
them are at Loughton in Essex; no more appropriate English park gate
could well be thought of. At Carshalton, Surrey, where a park was
enclosed by Thomas Scawen, the great gate pillars of the entrance have
large boldly modelled statues of Diana and Actæon, the date 1726. The
little Cupids that stand out of the ivy that covers the piers at Temple
Dinsley are sketched in Fig. 53.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--Temple Dinsley.]
Perhaps the finest gate pier groups are those to the Flower Pot Gate at
Hampton Court, where Cupids uphold a basket of flowers. These able
pieces of work are not generally known for lead, because, like so many
figures and vases, they have been painted and sanded to imitate stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--Syon House.]
In 1744 the then member for Southampton presented two lions for the Bar
Gate in that town. These not very beautiful creatures still remain.
Syon House, on the Thames, has besides the great lion, a lesser lion set
over Adam’s “lace gateway,” weighing a ton and half, it is unfortunately
newly _painted and sanded_ to look like stone, and as the tail sticks
out in a way utterly impossible for anything but metal it makes it
entirely absurd. There is a plague of paint over old leadwork, which
should be gilt or let alone.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--Syon House.]
On the park wall facing the road there are fine sphinxes, about five
feet long, in every way different to the lion, well designed exercises
in the “classic taste.” Well modelled, with impressive heads, in the
dark and dinted metal, they are pleasant both in colour and texture.
They are quite “Adam’s” in character but not at all petty like some of
his work and very different to a pair of sphinxes also of lead, on the
gates of Chiswick House.
§ XVII. OF FINIALS AND CRESTINGS.
The lead finial is typically a French feature; there cannot be said to
be a single instance of a large ornamental finial of lead remaining in
England of the kind once so universal in France and of which so many
still remain there. These French finials from the 12th to the 18th
centuries have been sufficiently described, especially by M. De la
Queriere, who devotes a volume to them and the cresting of ridges; by
Viollet-le-Duc; and in De Caumont’s _Abcdaire_.
Many of these early French Gothic finials of the 12th and 13th centuries
were lead statues formed out of repoussé sheet metal and they surmounted
the culminating point of the church, at the apex of the chevet; here was
often placed an immense angel with great wings turning as vanes in the
wind. At Rouen it is the Virgin with the infant Christ which stands over
the Lady Chapel; there was formerly on the main apse a giant St. George
horsed and spearing the dragon, melted at the Revolution “they say” into
bullets. At Clermont Ferrand is the most remarkable composition, a tall
pillar on which stands a colossal Virgin facing the sunrise; round the
stem spring out great branches of foliage on which sit four
figures--King David with the harp and three others with musical
instruments--the ridge is ornamented with open work, and a length of
similar foliage reaches down the slope of the roof for some feet on
either side of the finial where are two other figures, these are full
life size, and the whole must be 20 or more feet high.
At Evreux the apse had a St. Michael treading down Satan. The immense
St. Michael that surmounted the central tower at Mont St. Michel, which
could be seen many leagues out at sea, was also probably of lead.
We had in England in the twelfth century a large figure serving as a
finial to the central tower at Canterbury. This tower was built by
Lanfranc, and Gervase tells us it was surmounted by a gilt angel, this
is shown in the contemporary drawing of Canterbury; and the tower,
Professor Willis says, ever retained the name of the Angel Tower. Stow
also told us of a lead spire close by St. Paul’s with an image of St.
Paul on the top.
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Finial at Lille.]
The early French examples of finials without a figure were formed of
foliage in repoussé on a stem or pillar with swelling bands or bowl-like
forms at the point of growth: these and the foliage were beaten out of
thick sheet lead, the larger forms in two halves and soldered
together. The central stem was an iron rod covered with lead tube
slipped over it in short pieces, with hooks to hang the branching leaves
to; sometimes slender rods rise out of the foliage and droop with lilies
at their extremities.
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--Finial at Angers.]
Later, cast ornaments became general; on the Hôtel Dieu at Beaune is a
wonderful series of these finials made up of portions partly repoussé
partly cast, these have coronets of delicate open work which were cast
in strips and bent round. Where the finial joins the roof a rayed sun of
cast metal is placed. Mr. Clutton gives drawings of these.
In the Museum at Lille there are two fine finials, one of these is
carefully analysed to a large scale by Burges in his book of drawings
and the other, wholly made up of castings, is given here from a
photograph. In the Museum in the splendid old hall of the Hôtel Dieu at
Angers are two, sketches of which are given in Figs. 57 and 58. The
leaves and scrolls are cast with ribs to make them stiffer.
The later Gothic and Renaissance finials are often charmingly suggestive
in the _subject_ of their design--some have figures, a huntsman at
Bourges, a Cupid shooting arrows or a man-at-arms; some are made up with
suns or sun and moon, or moon and stars, as at Troyes; at Beaune,
cup-like forms are made of openwork for birds’ nests. Again we find a
vase of lilies or branch of drooping thistles, a pigeon, a coronet, or
personal devices and badges. Mr. Burges noted how the early poets spoke
of the _music_ of the vanes, and there can be little doubt that some of
them were intended to resound to the wind: in the _Hypnerotomachia_
(1499) a finial is shown with little bells hanging to chains which swang
against a metal bowl; Viollet-le-Duc also tells us that in certain
crestings he found a singular musical conceit in contrivances for
producing “sifflements” under the action of the wind--Æolian flutes.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Angers.]
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Finials, Bourges.]
At Bourges on the Hôtels Jacques Cœur and Cujas are some finials
consisting of little more than a lead-covered stick bearing a rod and
girouettes. Flags were properly only set up in the due heraldic
precedence of the proprietor, a Knight might fly a pennon and so on;
they were centred at times on a piece of agate to reduce the friction of
revolution. We have only to look at the views of old towns given in
manuscripts to see how the mediæval mind delighted in these flag
finials; but there are probably not half a dozen old ones now left in
England. When there are many revolving flags to the finials on one
building and these are bright with new gold, they have the delightful
property of flashing the light to a great distance. The gilt flags on
the pinnacles of the west front of Wells Cathedral twinkle
simultaneously against the setting sun.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--From Newcastle.]
Crestings, sometimes large and most ornamental, were formed along the
ridges of French buildings, especially in the early Renaissance.[30]
These ornamental ridges, especially in this exaggerated form, are not
English.
[30] _See_ De la Queriere or Viollet-le-Duc (_Art._ “Crête”).
A row of fleurs-de-lis exists at Exeter, a portion of which is in the
Architectural Museum, Westminster: and probably many other roofs had
similar crestings.
§ XVIII. OF CISTERNS, ETC.
The use of lead pipes for conducting water was introduced into England
by the Romans, the ordinary draw-off tap is another gift of theirs. The
twelfth century plan of Canterbury cathedral shows a remarkable system
of water pipes for collecting the water from the roofs and distributing
it to the several buildings and fountains. Mr. Micklethwaite has
described in _Archæologia_ a lead filtering cistern with draw-off tap
found at Westminster Abbey; and in the British Museum (Gothic Room)
there is a small circular lead cistern with delicate fifteenth century
ornament.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Poundisford Park, Taunton.]
Some old country houses preserve the original scheme for conducting the
rain water from the roofs into a lead cistern which, adorned by devices
and gilding, stood close to the front door. Poundisford Park, near
Taunton, is one of these. Lead spouting, delicately ornamented, crosses
the front and brings the water to the head of the vertical pipe, which
has turrets and loopholes--a toy castle. This and its pipe stand over a
circular fronted cistern panelled and modelled with a crest, pots of
flowers, and the date 1671. There are some of these cisterns at Exeter;
one of them, here given, is much like that at Taunton, and is dated
1696; the ribs and devices are gilt. At Bovey Tracy, in Devonshire,
there is another, as also at Sackville College, East Grinstead.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--Cistern, Exeter.]
In the London houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
ornamented lead cisterns seem to have been generally placed in the
courtyards and areas. The earliest known was illustrated and described
in the _Builder_ for August 23rd, 1862. The centre was a coat of arms
quartering the lions of England and the lilies of France, right and left
two quatrefoil panels contained the letters E.R., and below in a long
panel was the date 15--. Two upright strips formed the margins, which,
with the ends, were covered with Gothic diaper. It was drawn while in
the possession of a dealer, who obtained it in Crutched Friars.
There was quite a crusade preached against these cisterns, as the
occasion of lead poisoning, in the first half of this century, and
hundreds were destroyed, but a large number still remain; about
Bloomsbury quite a dozen may be seen down front areas. For the most part
they were decorated with panelling of ribs formed of squares and
semicircles with strips and spots of cast ornament, flowers, fruit
baskets, stags, dolphins, cherubs’ heads, and even the gods Bacchus and
Ceres; others have nothing but the fretted panel with initials and date
like Fig. 63.
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--Cistern, London.]
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--Cistern, S. Kensington Museum.]
The ribs, with the stock enrichments in new combinations, the date and
initials, were attached to a wood panel the size of the cistern front;
this was moulded in the sand and the casting made of good substance;
stout strips were soldered across the inside as ties. One of the finest
known of these is that at South Kensington Museum, of which one half of
the front is here illustrated, the other half repeats exactly, even to
the initials on the shield; the date is 1732. This is in every way well
designed and beautifully modelled. A part of one in the Guildhall Museum
is an early example of the ordinary pattern, dated 1674.
The ribs for the pattern were formed in lead--a plumber disdaining the
assistance of wood if he could avoid it--by beating strips of lead into
an iron swage block, that was cut as a matrix about four inches long;
these strips could be easily bent to the curved lines. Plain panelled
cisterns like this were made as late as 1840.
Old lead pumps are now very seldom to be found. One remains at Wick,
Christchurch, which is 6 inches in diameter, and is decorated by a
crest--a boar’s head in a wreath--and the initials “G. B.” as well as
the signature “J. JENKINS, Plummer, 1797.”
§ XIX. OF GUTTERS.
In England the gutters of important churches were generally formed
behind the stone parapet, but at Lincoln the whole is formed of lead
above a carved stone cornice. It is about two feet high and the outside
is decorated with foiled circles closer or farther apart with due
disregard for precision. In France gutters were often like this made on
the top of the stone cornice; irons turned up carry a continuous rod,
over which the lead was dressed, and as the outlets were frequent little
fall was required.[31]
[31] _See_ Viollet-le-Duc.
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--Gutter, Lincoln Cathedral.]
To some bay windows of a fine old timber house at Derby there are
little parapets formed out of lead, the front edge being cut into
notches like a tiny battlement, and short lengths of pipe form spouts
for the water. At Taunton there is a bay window with a similar
battlement of lead; this is cast with a running pattern and wavy upper
edge, to this below is soldered a similar strip reversed making a
fringe; the same pattern forms the isolated gutters at Poundisford House
above mentioned. At Montacute the spouting has a series of little
upright panels, the top moulding breaking up higher over every alternate
pair in crenelations, leaving a space filled with a boss. At Bramhall
there is a cottage to which both the spouting and the down pipe have a
running scroll of flowery ornament. Sometimes the end of a roof gutter
between two gables is stopped by an apron of lead with pattern on it,
such as a knot of cord and initials.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Gutter, Taunton.]
§ XX. OF PIPES AND PIPE HEADS.
The water was discharged from the gutters into the heads of down pipes,
or sometimes from jutting lengths of spout supported by iron props, the
nozzles cut into a form often simulating an animal’s jaws.
The down pipes are particularly English, nowhere else can the ornate
constructions of lead forming the pipe heads of Haddon and other great
houses of the sixteenth century be matched. According to Viollet-le-Duc,
here in England this arrangement was already in use in the fourteenth
century, when nowhere except in England were these lead pipes from the
roof down to the base of the wall known. He also remarks on the
advantage of these being square as they can expand if required when the
water freezes, while a circular pipe can only burst.[32] Fragments of
pierced work in Gothic patterns which formed parts of pipe heads have
been found at Fountains Abbey.
[32] Art. “Conduite,” Fig. 6.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.--Bramhall, Cheshire.]
At Haddon there are a great number of these pipe heads of several dates,
and every one is different from the rest; some are plain and small,
others great spreading things elaborately decorated. The general form of
these is constructed like a box from cast sheet lead, the cornices are
beaten to their shape over a pattern; and the top edge is cut into a
little fringe of crenellations. Cast discs of ornament, badges, pendant
knobs, and initials are arranged on their fronts, on the funnel-shaped
portion leading to the pipe, and on the ears of the pipe and the side
flaps of the head itself. The more elaborate heads have an outer casing
of lead with panels pierced through it of delicate tracery work of
Gothic tradition which shows bright against the shadow.
[Illustration: FIGS. 68 and 69.--Pipe Heads, Haddon Hall.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.--Pipe head, Haddon.]
At Windsor Castle some pipe heads bear the date 1589, the Tudor rose,
and the letters E. R.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Bodleian, Oxford.]
[Illustration: FIG. 72.--St. John’s, Oxford.]
At Knole there are also many heads having pierced work of this kind in
panels, and projecting turrets; some of these also have a decoration of
bright solder applied to the lead in patterns--these were made about
1600. At the Bodleian and St. John’s College, Oxford, there is a fine
series of pipe heads with painted patterns. At Norham Castle some pipe
heads are dated 1605. Abbot’s Hospital at Guildford has a large series
of heads later in character than those at Haddon. Here pierced work is
used as a brattishing to the top edge of the fronts; they are signed G.
A. and dated 1627. At Canons Ashby there is a pair of most rococo pipe
heads, with applied pierced castings, masks and acanthus leaves.[33]
These heads are fixed on iron cramps, or brackets; at Haddon lead
cylinders with pierced ends project and carry the heads.
[33] Figured in the _Spring Gardens Sketch Book_, vol. v., 58.
[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Sherborne.]
[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Liverpool.]
Sometimes the heads are very long, extending five or six feet like a
length of gutter; it was a favourite method to decorate them with
salient projections at intervals, like the cut-waters of a bridge, the
top edge of these is cut into little battlements which were curled over
in loops. The projections make convenient birds’ nests. The pipe is
sometimes central to these long heads but often at the end.
Entirely the reverse of these, other heads are tall in proportion, like
the examples at Shrewsbury and Ludlow or the little fiddle pattern
design given here from the Grammar School at Sherborne (Fig. 73). The
two examples 74 and 75 are from Liverpool and Ashbourn.
There are three or four original pipe heads which are well designed in
the Architectural Museum.
[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Ashbourne.]
The later ones, as in London, are often tall square funnels moulded and
bent into vase-like forms, the projection was small compared to the
width, only three or four inches sometimes. A piece of projecting pipe
is at times inserted in the front of the head to serve as an overflow.
The late pipes were circular and the heads very often followed this
form.
The material has an appropriateness for this purpose that cast iron
cannot pretend to; a simple square box of lead and round pipe is much to
be preferred to fussy things in cast iron, they will not require
painting, nor do they fill the drains with rust; and although it has
been necessary to draw the elaborate and eccentric forms, the simpler
ones form better models for our purpose.
[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Haddon.]
The earlier pipes were almost always a flat square, sometimes ornamented
up its whole length, but usually only at the collars, where the bands of
lead for attachment to the wall were placed, here and on the flaps of
the collars are often crests, flowers, or letters. The lead band was cut
long enough, so that after the nails had been driven through it into the
wall the ends were folded back over their heads. Those at Canons Ashby,
Northants, have the ends curled and cut like the scroll of a mediæval
text.
Lead working as an art for the expression of beauty through material,
with this ancestry of nearly two thousand years of beautiful workmanship
behind it here in England, has in the present century been entirely
killed out. Only one simple present use of lead can be mentioned as
having the characteristic of an art--the expression of personal thought
by the worker to give pleasure. This is nothing but the lining of stairs
and floor spaces with sheet lead nailed with rows of copper nails, some
examples of which are done with a certain taste. Pipe heads and other
objects of a somewhat ornamental kind have recently been made again, but
we must remember that ornament is not art, and these have only been
carefully, painfully, “executed” to the architect’s drawings. The
plumber’s art, as it was, for instance, when the Guild of Plumbers was
formed, a craft to be graced by the free fancy of the worker, is a field
untilled. That someone may again take up this fine old craft of
lead-working as an artist and original worker, refusing to follow
“designs” compiled by another from imperfectly understood old examples,
but expressing only himself--this has been my chief hope in preparing
the little book NOW CONCLUDED.
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Transcriber’s Note
Punctuation has been standardised. Missing periods and dashes have been
supplied where obviously required. All other original errors and
consistencies have been retained (of particular note is the ‘v’ for ‘u’
substitution in ‘ILLVSTRATIONS’ on the title page), except as follows:
Page 5: changed 2 to II
(§ II. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.)
Page 5: changed whch to which
(England herself which is the)
Page 7: added missing footnote marker
(Mycenæ and Tiryns.[1])
Page 17: changed Phoenician to Phœnician
(Carthage by the Phœnician Dido is)
Page 19: changed Sta. to St.
(domes of St. Sophia and St. Mark’s.)
Page 62: changed statutes to statues
(font has leaden statues of the)
Page 62: changed Walmsford to Wansford
(Northamptonshire Wansford)
Page 94: removed duplicate word ‘a’
(shoulder sank a little and)
Page 103: added missing paragraph break
(“All the above four figure yards)
Page 109: changed enought to enough
(’Twas enough to break my heart)
Page 109: changed Chere to Cheere
(Mr. John Cheere in St. Martin’s Lane,)
Page 111: changed Bemfila to Bemfica
(a garden at Bemfica “which eclipses)
Page 124: changed Caumonts’s to Caumont’s
(De Caumont’s _Abcdaire_.)
Ads page 1: changed Manua to Manual
(A Graduated System of Manual)
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