Leadwork Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--Arms from Bourges.]

Of Coat Arms there was an instance at Jacques Cur'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 l.u.s.tre."

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 subst.i.tute 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 l.u.s.tre; 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 pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 sh.e.l.l were badges of Jacques Cur. 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 a.s.sociation 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 s.p.a.ces 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.--Painted Decoration, Bourges.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.--Flashings, Bourges.]

The fleche called "the golden" at Amiens retains traces of arabesque patterns on grounds of bright blue and vermilion.

Repousse 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.--A Valance.]

In these finials applied castings were also used, and at the end of the fifteenth century they superseded repousse 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 repousse.

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 inters.p.a.ces being cut away.

In small j.a.panese work bra.s.s 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 bra.s.ses 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 Glas...o...b..ry. 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 mult.i.tude of its saints have endowed the place with so much sanct.i.ty 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 cas.e.m.e.nts with a wooden mallet, and the superfluous metal removed with a sharp chisel.

Some of the sixteenth and seventeenth century engraved bra.s.ses have portions of the arms, etc., inlaid in lead in the bra.s.s; 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 bra.s.s 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 2_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, Ess.e.x. 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 bal.u.s.trades 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.