W. R. Lethaby

“ In France and Germany there are many remarkable leaded spires, but we can only stay to mention the steeple at Chalons-sur-Marne, the central flèche at Amiens, and the belfry at Calais. The steeple at Chalons is a most interesting work, large and well-designed, with faint and fascinating remains of a gorgeous scheme of colour decoration patterning the whole surface of the lead with figures and canopies resembling the drawing on stained glass, the lead rolls passing across the design like the iron glazing bars. ”

“ New design must ever be founded on a strict consideration of the exact purpose to be fulfilled by the proposed object, of how it will serve its purpose best, and show perfect suitability to the end in view when made in this or that material by easy means. This, not the torturing of a material into forms which have not before been used, is the true ground of beauty, and this to a certain extent is enough without any ornamentation. Ornament is quite another matter, it has no justification in service, it can only justify itself by being beautiful. ”

“ In so far as history is involved here it has been necessary to refer to and to figure many works, not bearing the impress of a fine living style, but only passable exercises in the respectabilities of a sort of conventional design learnt by rote. As a general rule it will be found that the workers of the middle ages penetrated at once to the reason of a thing in structure and then decorated it with an evidence of fresh thought—a delight in growth, form, humanity, in one word Nature, the source of all beauty and subject of all art. ”

“ It is the very serviceableness and ductility of lead as a material that have brought about the easy and familiar contempt with which it is treated. While few are more worthy of artistic care no metal is more perfectly adaptable to noble use through a range of treatments that cannot be matched by any other metal whatsoever. It combines extreme ease of manipulation with practically endless durability, and a suitability to any scale, from a tiny inkwell, or a medal, to the statue of horse and rider, a Versailles fountain, or the greatest cathedral spire. ”

“ How charming it must be to walk in one’s own garden, and sit on a bench in the open air with a fountain and a leaden statue and a rolling-stone and an arbour. Have a care though of sore throat and the agoe. ”

“ Only in our century in England would it be possible for the metals which are so especially hers, iron, tin, and lead, to have been so degraded that it is hardly possible to think of them as vehicles of art. It should not be so, for each of the metals can give us characteristics that others cannot, and the capabilities of lead have been sufficiently proved by more than two thousand years of artistic manipulation. ”

“ Lead working as an art for the expression of beauty through material, with this ancestry of nearly two thousand years of beautiful workmanship behind it here in England, has in the present century been entirely killed out. Only one simple present use of lead can be mentioned as having the characteristic of an art—the expression of personal thought by the worker to give pleasure. This is nothing but the lining of stairs and floor spaces with sheet lead nailed with rows of copper nails, some examples of which are done with a certain taste. ”

“ The only way in which the crafts can again be made harmonious by beauty is for men with a sense of architectural fitness and a feeling for design to take up the actual workmanship and practise it themselves as they would painting or sculpture, seeking the delight of being good artists not the reputation of being successful merchants or clever professional men. To any such, lead-working may be recommended. ”

“ Behind all design there must be a personality expressing himself; but certain principles of treatment and methods of working may be understood in some degree by a study of past work without going all through it again. History thus makes the experience of the past available to us, but it does not relieve us of the necessity of ourselves having experiences. There is a great stimulus in feeling one of a chain, and entering into the traditions of a body of art. The workman Bezin said to Mr. [3] Stevenson of museums, “One sees in them little miracles of workmanship—it fires a spark.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The market weights are remarkable in bearing devices like the types of coins. For the most part they are square cakes and the devices simple almost to rudeness, yet they have that impress of style and grace in the design, with the large free handling in which is the exquisiteness of Greek art. A sketchiness so simple and easy can be the only right treatment for a metal so likely to receive injury in the use ”

“ This tradition was carried on by the Greek master builders who erected the great mosques for the conquerors. A large mosque has as many as twenty or thirty domes of all sizes grouped about the central one. The bazaars, caravansaries, and bakeries, have long level rows of cupolas. This prospect of dome beyond dome in a succession as of billows is of marvellous beauty in a general view of the city as seen from the sea. The lead is laid over the brickwork, the rolls are very small, and as they have no wood core the lines are very irregular. ”

“ When sculptors learn again that their art is to shape many materials in various ways for diverse uses, and that a statue is not necessarily of whitest marble or to be exhibited on the 1st of May, then we may get back the delight of sculpture in the garden. ”

“ The flèche at Amiens, which rises from the roof some 100 feet of “transparent fretwork which seems to bend to the west wind,” is well illustrated in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionary as well as by Burges. Every resource of the art was lavished on it, pinnacles and niches, lead statues, [31] tracery, great circular coronets of pierced cast work. The sheet lead was diapered with fleurs-de-lis, and all was decorated with designs in colour and gold. Although perfectly Gothic in form it is a work of the sixteenth century, and the painting is in the manner of the Renaissance. ”

“ Cast discs of ornament, badges, pendant knobs, and initials are arranged on their fronts, on the funnel-shaped portion leading to the pipe, and on the ears of the pipe and the side flaps of the head itself. The more elaborate heads have an outer casing of lead with panels pierced through it of delicate tracery work of Gothic tradition which shows bright against the shadow. ”

“ The coffins found in England are not so much Roman as strictly Anglo-Roman, for far more have been found here than in any other country, such as have been found in France are near our shores as if certainly made of our lead, and the ornamentation of the English examples has a common likeness in the use of the scallop shell which is not represented abroad. ”

“ The methods employed in the middle ages are described by Burges and Viollet-le-Duc. The latter well remarks that of lead covering, as well as many other parts of the construction of buildings, we are a little too apt to think overmuch of the perfection of our modern methods while we are too little careful to learn the experience acquired by our forefathers.
The old cast lead is much thicker than the modern milled lead, being as much as twelve or [37] thirteen pounds to the foot of surface. ”

“ We will stretch our imaginations far enough to believe that the A stands for Athens and that these are the very implements used in setting the masonry of one of the corner stones of the world’s art—the Parthenon. ”

“ At Haddon there are a great number of these pipe heads of several dates, and every one is different from the rest; some are plain and small, others great spreading things elaborately decorated. The general form of these is constructed like a box from cast sheet lead, the cornices are beaten to their shape over a pattern ”

“ The course followed is to cut up the model in such parts as is determined, to mould these in loam, the cores are then cast in plaster after the thickness that will be occupied by the lead has been first applied to the moulds in sand (terre) . The cores are then removed and dried and baked, for in this as [97] in all founding everything depends on the absolute dryness of the mould. After the first mould had been added to, for the casting of the core, a second mould would be prepared from the original figure and the core supported in that by irons. ”

“ There are a series of lead busts in oval panels on the front of Ham House, Petersham, Surrey, 1610 being the date of its erection.
Before passing into the garden a word on the practical details of casting as traditionally followed may be added. The casting of lead statues is much the same process as founding in bronze, but it is simpler from the much lower temperature at which lead flows, and the ease with which limbs can be cast separately and joined to the body. The technical details may be found in a text-book of modelling and casting—Mouler en Plâtre, Plomb, &c. ”

“ Our milled lead is rolled out in sheets about 16 × 6 feet and is usually cut in half lengthways, and 41⁄2 inches is allowed in each edge to form the rolls which are thus 2′-3′′ apart. Lead one inch thick is sixty pounds to the square foot, so six-pounds lead is 1⁄10th of an inch in thickness. We generally make the mistake of putting a longitudinal roll along the ridge, but it is not so done in our old roofs, nor should it be, for the running out of the rolls frets the ridge into a simple decoration. ”

“ The methods of conducting water from the roof by stone gutters and gargoyles was much further developed in France than here, where lead always came to hand. Lead pipes with ornamental heads were first introduced here in England for this purpose, and they reached a development without parallel abroad. During the eighteenth century there was, as we shall see, a large industry in lead statues, and the plumber’s art continued to the opening of the present century ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Romans used lead extensively and much in the same way as we do—for roof coverings and water pipes, in masonry and for coffins. In Rome an immense quantity of lead piping has been found. The pipes were formed of strips of cast lead bent round a rod and then soldered. Most of the work was signed by the plumber, his name and that of the owner being impressed in the sand mould. ”

“ The lead covering of old roofs should be jealously maintained—its loss is irreparable. If repair becomes absolutely necessary for the protection of the building, such lead should be recast, it should never be replaced by milled lead. The old metal is easily recast on the ground, and this is now frequently done, but not frequently enough. It was cast on a wood table with a projecting margin or curb all round ”

“ Throughout the middle ages lead was more extensively used in England than elsewhere—our cathedral roofs, for instance, were all of lead, whereas abroad they are often of corrugated or flat tiles, stone or slate. ”

“ 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.
[124]
§ 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. ”

“ A beautiful object, remarkable as an instance of lead used in an article of price, is a vase some 5 inches high. This is evidently a wine cup from the figures and emblems which decorate it—Bacchus, Silenus, thyrsi bound with cords, and four genii of the Seasons carrying appropriate symbols, one being a garland, another a sheaf of corn; around the middle is a belt set with glass jewels of varied colour, dull reds, greens, and blue, and below this is a wreath of vine (Fig. 10) . ”

“ Each thing made is evidently by an artist; it expresses reasonable workmanship and happy thought in pleasant solution of some necessity of actual service. Many of the later things are not thus natural and spontaneous but pedantic and pompous, fulfilling their chief intention if [4] they were expensive; while to-day the chief care of design is often to appear expensive without being so in fact. ”