§ 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.
Fig. 47.—Vase, Hampton Court.
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 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.”
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.
Fig. 50.—Albert Gate.
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 “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.
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 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].
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.
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.
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 “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.