ounce of varnish, with which grind your ochre, but the red lead grind
with oil; temper them both together; lay your ground with this upon the
lead, and when it is almost dry, lay your gold; let it be thoroughly dry
before you polish it.”
For another ground--“Take varnish of linseed oil, red lead, white lead
and turpentine; boil in a pipkin and grind together on a stone.”
“Or take sheets of tinfoil, and grind them in common gold size; with
this wipe your pewter or lead over; lay on your leaf gold and press it
with cotton; it is a fine gilding, and has a beautiful lustre.”
Dutch metal was also used on a ground of varnish and red lead, as in
second recipe; or gilt leaves of tinfoil on white lead ground in linseed
oil, this last took a polish “as if it had been gilded in fire.” Dutch
metal should be lacquered on the surface. A cheap substitute for gilding
could doubtless be made for large surfaces by laying tinfoil lacquered
gold colour. Or for statues the surface of the lead might be made bright
and lacquered.
The external gilding on the Ste. Chapelle in Paris was done in leaf gold
on two coats of varnish.
Smaller decorative objects of lead in the middle ages were often
entirely gilt or parcel gilt in patterns; for instance, in an inventory
of 1553 we find an altar cross “of lead florysshed withe golde foyle.”
The effect of silver is obtained by “tinning” with solder, and when this
is intended to form patterns on the surface of the lead the method is
thus described by Burges. The surface is coated with lamp black mixed
with size; the pattern is either transferred on it or drawn direct and
then marked round with a point; all the part to be tinned has the
surface removed by a “shave hook” so as to leave the pattern quite
bright, a little sweet oil is rubbed over this and the solder is applied
and spread in the usual way of soldering with a “copper bit.” This is
more conveniently done in the shop, but the spire at Chalons was
decorated in this way long after the lead covering was finished. A
specimen of this work prepared by Burges may be seen in the
Architectural Museum, Westminster.
Transparent colour was often applied over this tinning, which, shining
through, gave it lustre; or the tinning alternated with the colour as in
chevrons of tin and blue and red. We may suppose that this sort of work
was done in England, for some leaded spires shown in the paintings at
St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, were coloured vermilion and gold, or
green and white, in chevrons following the leading.
Stow also tells us that at the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem,
Clerkenwell, rebuilt after a fire in 1381, there was a steeple decorated
in this way which remained to his day and was then destroyed. “The great
bell tower, a most curious piece of workmanship, graven, gilt, and
enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all others
that I have seen.”
Rain-pipe heads at Knole have patterns formed in this way by bright tin
applied to the surface. There are also heads of water pipes at the
Bodleian and at St. John’s College, Oxford (see Figs. 71 and 72),
treated all over with patterns of chequers and zig-zags. Those at St.
John’s have cast coats of arms in wreaths brightly emblazoned in gold
and colours. The collars to the pipes are painted with patterns, as also
are some pipes at Framlingham, Suffolk.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Incised Decoration, Bourges.]
Sometimes the pattern was incised on the lead in deep broad lines, and
these, when filled with black mastic, traced the pattern without any
tinning. An example of this method is found in a ridge and finial
sketched at Bourges--the hearts and scallop shell were badges of Jacques
Cœur. Other portions of the lead work at this house are decorated by
patterns in lamp-black painted on the lead. See the ridge and examples
of flashings drawn in Figures 36 and 37. A ridge designed for St.
Vincent’s Church at Rouen, of which a drawing is preserved, is a
beautiful instance of this treatment; it is divided into lengths in
which branches with leaves and flowers alternate with a stiffer pattern.
The spire before spoken of, at Chalons-sur-Marne, furnishes the finest
example of these methods used in combination. See drawings in _Builder_,
1856, and in the sketch book of the Architectural Association for 1883,
both by Burges. This decoration is of the fourteenth century and is thus
described by Viollet-le-Duc:--“The sheets of lead were engraved in
outlines and filled in with black material, of which traces may yet be
seen. Painting and gilding illuminated the spaces between these black
lines, and we must observe that nearly all the leadwork of the middle
ages was thus decorated by paintings applied to the metal by means of an
energetic mordant. The plumber’s art of the middle ages is wrought out
like colossal goldsmith’s work, and we have found striking
correspondence between the two arts as well in the methods of
application as in the forms admitted: gilding and applied colour here
replace enamel.” The design is of tabernacle work with figures and the
whole was clearly intended to recall a shrine of goldsmith’s work. Large
engraved patterns filled with black used alone on the silvery lead
become great _niellos_, exactly parallel to the method of treating
silver.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Painted Decoration, Bourges.]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Flashings, Bourges.]
The flèche called “the golden” at Amiens retains traces of arabesque
patterns on grounds of bright blue and vermilion.
Repoussé by hammering, another method most appropriate to the material,
was more used in France than with us, where casting has been throughout
the chief means for obtaining relief decoration. In France the finials
were mostly formed in this way. “Recalling the best goldsmith’s work of
the epoch,” withal so easily and carelessly wrought that it is plain
that they were done at once without pattern and yet with ample
knowledge of the ultimate form desired; so a leaf cut out of a sheet is
hammered and twisted till it cups and curls itself into living grace.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--A Valance.]
In these finials applied castings were also used, and at the end of the
fifteenth century they superseded repoussé for a time. Many of the
moulds in stone and plaster, for the ornaments which were used on the
roofs and finials at Beaune are preserved. The castings were not so free
and decorative however as those done by repoussé.
Of piercing into delicate tracery the pipe-heads at Haddon give many
charming examples. At Aston Hall, Warwickshire, the curved lead roofs of
the turrets have all round the eaves a brattishing of pierced sheet in
simple scroll work, it stands up freely and gives a dainty finish: the
pattern is something like that above. In the East pierced valances of
this kind are very general; the roofs of the larger fountains at
Constantinople are usually finished in this way. Fig. 38 is from the
portico roof of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem drawn from a
photograph. Casting and piercing were also combined, the pattern being
strengthened thus by ribs and the veins, and interspaces being cut away.
In small Japanese work brass is sometimes inlaid into lead or pewter in
the form of flowers, which are further defined by surface engraving.
Engraving on sheet lead similar to the old memorial brasses has been
mentioned before, and we may go on to look at the decorative processes
in which lead was used applied to other materials.
§ XI. OF LEAD ORNAMENTATION OF OTHER MATERIALS.
Lead trappings and appendages have often been applied to stone statues.
The sceptres and bishops’ crosses of the fine fourteenth century statues
of St. Mary’s spire at Oxford are of wrought lead. The leaves of the
sceptre heads and the crosses are embossed out in two pieces and then
soldered at the edges.
Inlaying of lead in stone slabs making grisaille designs was a method
much used--a magnificent example remains in the pavement at St. Remy,
Rheims (formerly in the choir of St. Nicaise in the same town), where
foliated panels with figure subjects from Scripture are made out on the
stones; it is a work of the early fourteenth century.[22] We have in
England an example of this treatment in a tomb slab at St. Mary
Redcliffe, Bristol, and there is mention of the process in the account
by William of Malmesbury of the Saxon part of the “Ealde Chirche” at
Glastonbury. We may well suppose this was an imitation in the national
material of Roman mosaic. The floor was “inlaid with polished stone ...
moreover in the pavement may be remarked on every side stone designedly
_interlaid in triangles and squares and figured with lead_, under which
if I believe some sacred enigma to be contained I do no injustice to
religion. The antiquity and multitude of its saints have endowed the
place with so much sanctity that at night scarcely anyone presumes to
keep vigil there or during the day to spit upon its floor ... and
certainly the more magnificent the ornaments of churches are the more
they incline the brute mind to prayer and bend the stubborn to
supplication.”
[22] _See_ Viollet-le-Duc, “Dallage.”
The method is still followed in lettering on tombs and the like: the
design is engraved in the marble and holes are drilled with a bow drill
in the sunk parts, some inclined at an angle to give a better hold;
strips of lead of sufficient substance are then hammered into the
casements with a wooden mallet, and the superfluous metal removed with a
sharp chisel.
Some of the sixteenth and seventeenth century engraved brasses have
portions of the arms, etc., inlaid in lead in the brass; there are
instances of this in Westminster Abbey. Lead might also be inlaid in
cast iron with good effect, where it has not to be painted: the recesses
would be left in the casting of either cast brass or cast iron. The
stars that spangle the ceilings of churches on a blue ground are usually
of cast lead gilt. The ceiling of the well-known panel and rib kind
attributed to Holbein at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s had the
enrichments in the panels of lead. Chimney-pieces were also decorated in
the same way, and even furniture is found at times with applied badges
of gilt lead. These methods it must be understood are not all
recommended here, they are only recorded.
The delicate applied enrichments so much used in work influenced by the
practice of the Brothers Adam are in the best work of lead; cast with
extraordinary delicacy in relief figure panels, after the manner of the
antique, or fragile garlands, vases, and frets. Much of this work was
used in the internal decoration at Somerset House. The accounts under
1780 show payments to Edward Watson--for lead pateras from 2½_d._ to
10_d._ each; nineteen ornamental friezes to chimney pieces £10 17_s._
8_d._; lead frieze to the bookcases in the Royal Academy Library at
2_s._ 6_d._ per foot; 137 feet run of large lead frieze in the
exhibition room at 4_s._ Dutch bracket clocks of the eighteenth century
have pierced and gilt ornamentations of lead.
This method of applying pierced lead to wood was known in the middle
ages. In the Kensington Museum there is a delicate openwork panel, three
inches square, which with others, decorated the front of a fourteenth
century chest in the church at Newport, Essex. A beautiful little panel
of open work, which contains the subject of the Annunciation, was found
some years since in the Thames. One of the last instances of this
decorative use of lead is on the great doors of Inwood’s church, at St.
Pancras, where the panels are filled with reliefs and the margins have
the palmette border. At Christchurch, Hampshire, some of the tracery
panels at the back of the stalls have been replaced in lead.
The front door fanlights so well known in the London houses of the
eighteenth century were made by applying lead castings to a backing of
iron. Even staircase balustrades were cast in panels of lattice work of
hard lead and fixed between iron standards some three or four feet
apart.
§ XII. OF DECORATIVE OBJECTS.
A great number of small objects in lead are in our museums, and first we
should mention the medals and plaques of the great masters of the
Renaissance. Lead will cast with more delicacy than any other material,
and Cellini especially recommended it for proofs. The proofs of the
great work of the medallists,--the modelling just a film, fading into
the background--presentments and allegories of the Malatestas and
Gonzagas by Pisanello and Sperandio, are certainly the most precious
things ever formed in lead. There are a great number of these medals and
decorative plaques in the British Museum and at Kensington.
For coins in lead see Gaetani and Fiscorni. For tokens and pilgrim
badges, of which a great number have been found in the Seine, see
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, Vol. VI. and XVIII. Some of these remind us of
the lead figures that, according to “Quentin Durward,” Louis XI. wore in
his hat. At the Guildhall there is a collection of hundreds of these
small objects found in the Thames; most are of great delicacy, many very
beautiful. There are, in the British Museum, little Greek objects, rings
and toys, armlets of a snake pattern, and pierced ornaments for applying
to other objects.
Other objects in the Kensington Museum are:--A small tankard only two
and a half inches diameter but modelled with figures in low relief, it
is German of the sixteenth or seventeenth century; a pair of little
inkstands the circular drums modelled with foliage and projecting top
and bottom rims, also German; and a square canister with panel of St.
George on each face.
Another is a beautiful little Gothic box of the fourteenth century. It
is hexagonal, with three feet, a flat hinged cover has a sitting lion
which forms the knob, a slight relief of the Annunciation under a
canopy, and two shields of arms. Round the sides are delicate bands of
foliage and Gothic lettering; it is three and a half inches high, and of
cast lead. There are other portions of little Gothic boxes in the
British Museum. At Gloucester Museum there is a square box of late
fifteenth century work, the sides formed of four cast panels of lead,
soldered at the angles. The panels all repeat the same relief of the
dead Christ and the Virgin, right and left are the other two Marys, and
the background bears the cross, crown, spears, dice, and all the
implements of the Passion.[23] Small canisters, and candlesticks the
stems of which are formed of a little lead figure, were made quite
recently.
[23] See _Antiquary_, Feb., 1893.
§ XIII. OF LEAD GLAZING.
This subject, in which lead is only secondary, has been treated so often
by others in connection with glass that little more need be said here.
Already, when Theophilus wrote his treatise on the arts, some time from
the tenth to the twelfth century, leaded glazing of coloured glass was
practised much as we do it now, and he describes how the leads were cast
with the two grooves for the glass and how it was put together on a
table. Coloured glass windows were placed in the Basilica at Lyons in
the fifth century, as described in the letters of Sidonius. From the
thirteenth century there are crowds of examples of glazing wholly of
white glass in which patterns are made by the arrangement of the leads.
In the cathedrals of north France, especially Bayeux, Coutances, Mantes,
and through Brittany, most elaborate patterns of this kind fill the
windows; not only diapers but interlacing bands, over and under in
effect, and this in plain white glass. This method does not seem to have
been followed here, where for the most part, unless in colour
arrangements, the leading for church windows was in plain lozenges and
parallelograms.
Later, however, in houses, pattern glazing, sometimes of an elaborate
kind, is found, especially in the north of England, at Moreton Hall in
Cheshire, at Bramhall, and at Levens in Westmorland. In some parts the
glass may not be more than a circle or diamond of an inch across.
These patterns have been amply treated in other places, and we may
consider those that have a diapered pattern all over the light to belong
rather to the glass than the lead. There are others, however, in which
the lead lines are made still more important by being arranged in a
single intricate panel to each light, the centre usually being charged
with an heraldic device. Two simple examples are given in Figs. 39 and
40.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
There is one point to speak of in regard to the fretted patterns not
usually noticed. The frets are sometimes leaded up so that the glass
does not lie in one plane, but there is an intentional change, so that
the faces of glass reflect the light differently in a uniform manner all
over the window, the forward panes being some ⅓ or ¼ inch in front
of the plane of the inner ones and between them others are placed
obliquely. This is best known in Holland, but a similar practice was
followed at Levens in Westmorland.
Lozenges of lead pierced for ventilation, either one or several
together, are sometimes found; they are cast with a delicate pattern, or
cut in a lattice. Some of the best are in the museum of Fountains Abbey,
others are at Ely and at Haddon. Fig. 41 is from a Surrey cottage.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
§ XIV. OF LEAD STATUES.
The making of lead statues was frequent up to the end of the 18th
century, and then more frequent than at any other time, to cease at once
on the introduction of the Italian plaster model shops, which in the
eyes of the connoisseurs of the time brought with them a time of purer
taste, the taste whose god was the Apollo of the Belvidere.
These statues of lead were known to the ancients. There was one of
Mamurius at Rome.[24]
[24] Fosbroke, _Ency. Antiq._
In the middle ages there were not only small cast lead figures like
those around the font at Ashover and a figure from a crucifix now in the
library of Wells Cathedral which is about 12 inches high, of 15th
century work, but figures full size and more were also made; this was
especially the case in France; these, however, were generally repoussé.
In the garden of the Cluny Museum in Paris is a fine figure of St. John
Evangelist, fully eight feet high; it is of early 14th century work,
and looks as if it had stood at the central pier of a doorway.
At Moissac, in the south of France, is a most remarkable work of lead, a
tomb, above which is a lead sarcophagus and several figures representing
the entombment of Christ, who is being laid in the open coffin. It is
15th century work; the figures, six in all, are full of character and
vigour like the wooden statuary of the time. It appears from a
photograph to be cast in separate portions.
The figures formed by repoussé usually serve as finials on the roof, or
stand in niches of the flèche. In the great flèche at Amiens there are
six figures as large as life, with other smaller figures of angels which
hold emblems of the Passion. M. Viollet-le-Duc says these figures were
nearly always _embouties_ that is to say hammered out on a wooden model
in portions, and soldered together. The artist had to be careful that
the model should be thin and “dry” so the thickness of the lead should
not make it too coarse in the forms. Burges cites an account of 1514 of
a payment to John Pothyn, sculptor, for having carved a prophet in
walnut wood to serve as a mould and pattern to the lead-workers.
Sometimes the lead casing was put on with lapping joints, the skeleton
frame being iron.
There are not now in England lead statues of any size executed during
the middle ages; but magnificent figures of bronze cast by the _cire
perdu_ method remain to us. The effigy of Queen Eleanor at Westminster
cannot be matched in Europe.
The founder’s art was carried to much perfection in Germany in the 15th
and 16th centuries. Mr. Seymour Haden has in Hampshire a statue of a
city herald of lead which formerly belonged to the great clock at
Nuremburg.
Many statues of lead were set up in English towns after the earlier
Renaissance, they are our national version of the bronze of Italy, a
material which we used but little; such bronze statues as were cast here
since the middle ages seem to have been the work of foreigners. Le
Sieur, for instance, did the statue of Charles II. at Charing Cross, and
many others. The statue of Queen Anne that was to surmount Gibbs’
proposed column in the Strand was ordered in Rome.
At Bristol there is a large Neptune of lead roughly modelled; the limbs
are contorted with too much life and yet it is a decorative feature in
the centre of a wide street. On the pedestal has been engraved a little
history of the statue, an example that might be followed--“Neptune, cast
and given A.D. 1588 by a citizen of Temple parish to commemorate the
defeat of the Spanish Armada. Re-erected on its fourth site in 1872.”
This seems to be a tradition unsubstantiated by record, but the time is
not so remote that it may not as well be true, especially as the style
of the figure would seem to agree with the date named. The story says
that it was the gift of a plumber in the town, the metal being that of
the captured ships’ pumps.
At Bungay in Suffolk there used to be a large statue at the Market Cross
known as “Astræa.”
One of the most interesting portrait statues in London, the Queen Anne
at Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, is of lead. The surface ornament on
the robes is especially appropriate to the material. There is also in
Golden Square a statue of George II. which seems to be nearly a repeat
of the stone statue on Bloomsbury steeple; it suggested the statue in
Fred Walker’s picture, “The Harbour of Refuge.”
There were also many full size equestrian statues founded in this metal,
that of George I., until 1874 in Leicester Square, was one of these, and
like the last it was brought from Canons, the celebrated house of the
Duke of Chandos at Edgware, dismantled about 1747. The George I.
resembled Le Sieur’s statue at Charing Cross and was known as the Golden
Horse, for the whole was gilt, as many of the statues seem to have been
at Canons, in that garden where, according to Pope, “The trees were
clipped like statues--the statues thick as trees.”
The statue of William of Orange at Dublin is another of these, and it is
celebrated alike in political demonstrations and Catholic polemics.
Cardinal Newman wrote of it, “The very flower and cream of
Protestantism used to glory in the statue of King William on College
Green, Dublin, and though I cannot make any reference in print I
recollect well what a shriek they raised some years ago when the figure
was unhorsed. Some profane person one night applied gunpowder and blew
the king right out of his saddle, and he was found by those who took
interest in him, like Dagon, on the ground.”
Yet another equestrian statue is that of Charles the Second at
Edinburgh, set up by the magistrates of the city in Parliament Square,
in honour of the restoration of the king. A writer in the _Athenæum_ for
April 13th, 1850, speaks of it as the “finest piece of statuary in
Edinburgh,” and urges the suitability of lead for the purpose. “In
_Black’s Guide through Edinburgh_ it is spoken of as the best specimen
of bronze statuary which Edinburgh possesses; it is, however, composed
of lead. Now this leaden equestrian statue has already without sensible
deterioration stood the test of 165 years’ (in 1850) exposure to the
weather, and it still seems as fresh as if erected but yesterday.” Some
years before this, one of the interior irons having given way, a part of
the shoulder sank a little and it was taken down and repaired and
sufficiently proved to be lead. Taking the figures above, it appears
that the date of this work is 1685.