Chapter II: Part 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

§ 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.

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.

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.