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.
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In these finials applied castings were also used, and at the end of the fifteenth century they superseded repoussé for a time.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.