Chapter III: Part 3

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

At Knole are a pair of circular pots figured on page 120. Circular baskets of open interlacing work and other forms were also made.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

§ 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.

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.

At Windsor Castle some pipe heads bear the date 1589, the Tudor rose, and the letters E. R.

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.

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.

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.

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.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.’S

BOOKS FOR TECHNICAL CLASSES.

=DRAWING AND DESIGN.= A Class Text-book for Beginners. By E. R.
TAYLOR. Head Master of the Birmingham Municipal School of Art.
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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)