Leadwork Part 8

-- 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 cla.s.sic 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 repousse, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.--Vase, Hampton Court.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.--From Vase, Hampton Court.]

There are several vases at Wimpole near Cambridge, at Wilton, and at Wrest. Little square flower boxes with cast or repousse 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 49.--Vase, Castle Hill.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50.--Albert Gate.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51.--Albert Gate.]

Garden seats were also made entirely of lead. There are six lead seats at Castle Hill, North Devon; they are large square boxes with heavy "cla.s.sic" 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52.--Vase on Gate Pier, Knole.]

At Castle Hill are also several greyhounds; they are particularly lively and well modelled and suitable for their purpose as guards to the gates.

Gate piers are most inviting pedestals for leaden imagery. At Albert Gate, Hyde Park, there are two beautiful lead stags--another pair of them are at Loughton in Ess.e.x; 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 Actaeon, the date 1726. The little Cupids that stand out of the ivy that covers the piers at Temple Dinsley are sketched in Fig. 53.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53.--Temple Dinsley.]

Perhaps the finest gate pier groups are those to the Flower Pot Gate at Hampton Court, where Cupids uphold a basket of flowers. These able pieces of work are not generally known for lead, because, like so many figures and vases, they have been painted and sanded to imitate stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 54.--Syon House.]

In 1744 the then member for Southampton presented two lions for the Bar Gate in that town. These not very beautiful creatures still remain.

Syon House, on the Thames, has besides the great lion, a lesser lion set over Adam's "lace gateway," weighing a ton and half, it is unfortunately newly _painted and sanded_ to look like stone, and as the tail sticks out in a way utterly impossible for anything but metal it makes it entirely absurd. There is a plague of paint over old leadwork, which should be gilt or let alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 55.--Syon House.]

On the park wall facing the road there are fine sphinxes, about five feet long, in every way different to the lion, well designed exercises in the "cla.s.sic 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 repousse 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 56.--Finial at Lille.]

The early French examples of finials without a figure were formed of foliage in repousse 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 57.--Finial at Angers.]

Later, cast ornaments became general; on the Hotel Dieu at Beaune is a wonderful series of these finials made up of portions partly repousse 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 a.n.a.lysed 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 Hotel 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 sw.a.n.g 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--aeolian flutes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 58.--Angers.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 59.--Finials, Bourges.]

At Bourges on the Hotels Jacques Cur 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 ma.n.u.scripts to see how the mediaeval 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 60.--From Newcastle.]

Crestings, sometimes large and most ornamental, were formed along the ridges of French buildings, especially in the early Renaissance.[30]

These ornamental ridges, especially in this exaggerated form, are not English.

[30] _See_ De la Queriere or Viollet-le-Duc (_Art._ "Crete").

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 _Archaeologia_ 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.