English leadwork : its art & history / Lawrence Weaver.

  • Lawrence Weaver
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English leadwork : its art & history / Lawrence Weaver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    others are the same. With the exception of these four, which it would be superfluous to illustrate, this chapter includes one or more photographs of every existing ancient lead font so far recorded. Four of the Gloucestershire fonts have an arcade of twelve, six arches being- o filled with scrollwork of a vigorous snake-like pattern, and six with seated figures. The latter are of great interest. Two figure patterns only have been employed. In both, the right hand is lifted in benediction, while the left hand holds a book, sealed in one figure, unsealed in the other—an Apocalyptic suggestion. The robes are richly ornamented, and Dr George Ormerod suggested that the figure represents the Trinitas, but a more likely interpretation is Christ enthroned. The Llancaut example has ten arcades only, and the Sandhurst font eleven (six with scrolls and five with figures). The friezes are all decorated with a delicate floral pattern. The existence of these six fonts all cast from the same mould is a pleasant example of the stock pattern in the twelfth century. They suggest that the stock pattern is not in itself (if we accept the teaching of history) an evil thing. The odious character of most of the stock patterns of the last century, particularly of those which took their inspiration from the dreary atmosphere of the fifties and the Great Exhibition, has caused a not unnatural feeling that no archi- * tectural detail is tolerable unless it is designed ad hoc. Where it is a matter of hand-wrought objects this nervousness of repetition is likely to stimulate fancy and make for variety. Where, however, casting in metal is concerned, it seems a more reasonable method to en¬ courage repetition, as it enables a greater amount of thought and effort to be expended on the original pattern than is economically possible ordinarily if only one object is made. The Norman craftsman evidently did not fear to scatter replicas of his lead font once he was satisfied, as he might well be, with the original pattern. If six examples have persisted for about eight hundred years, it is reasonable to suppose that there were originally two or three times six made from the pattern. One cannot help wondering what shrieks about stock patterns would rend an outraged architectural heaven, if twelve or more modern churches were made to-day the artistic dumping ground of one pattern of font. Among the many treasures of the Abbey Church at Dorchester, Oxfordshire, is an arcaded Norman font similar in general character to the Gloucestershire type. Fig. 3 shows the complete font, and Fig. 6 a part of it, the latter to emphasise the peculiar beauty of the fall of the robes. The arcade is in eleven bays with a different figure seated under each arch. The number suggests the faithful apostles, but as each figure is nimbed, and as the hair falls on both sides of the face in all, it seems more likely that the modeller intended to represent our Lord in different attitudes. Here we have the same motifs of books and benediction. I wo of the figures, Fig. 4.—Sandhurst, Gloucestershire.