Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/418

 410

NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. i. MAY 21, 1910.

he could not discover this secret " among the Learned, the Virtuosos and great Masters of Arts in Europe, 11 he went into Asia and African Turkey " to see what I could Learn fro m and pick up among the Turks and the Race of the Old Egyptians, 11 and spent in his inquiries "a pretty small Fortune." How- ever,

"PROVIDENCE, which. .. .with-holds nothing, no Blessing from the Diligent and Industrious, was pleas 'd to let me into the ADMIRABLE SECRET."

His goods were

" to be seen and sold at the Place, commonly call'd Holt's Ware, or Work-House, opposite to York- Buildings-Stairs in the Strand and near Cupels- Bridge in Lambeth. There 's also a Show of Goods on the Gable End toward the River, that will direct to the House." P. 50.

Somewhere about the middle of the eigh- teenth century a Mrs. Coad or Coade (no doubt the wife of a Cornishman, for the name is well known under several varieties of spelling throughout the Duchy, although according to Jewitt, ' Ceramic Art of Great Britain, J i. 138-41, this branch of the family came from Lyme Regis) settled herself in Lambeth. Her premises were at " Pedlar's acre, King's arms stairs, Narrow wall, Lambeth, opposite Whitehall Stairs or Ferry," where they were known as " Coade's Lithodipyra, Terra Cotta or artificial stone manufactory " ; and she must have acquired the patents and buildings of Richard Holt.

The groundwork of the statements about Mrs. Coade's manufactory is to be found in John Nichols's ' History of Lambeth ? ('Bibl. Topog. Brit., J vol. ii.), p. 82, where it is recorded that

" in the year 1769 a burnt artificial stone manu- factory was erected by Mrs. Coade at King's arm stairs, Narrow-wall. This manufactory is of a very extensive nature, being calculated to answer every purpose of stone carving ; having a pro- perty peculiar to itself, of resisting the frost, and consequently of retaining that sharpness in which it excells every kind of stone sculpture, and equals even marble itself. Here are many statues, which are allowed by the best judges to be master pieces of art, from the models of that celebrated artist John Bacon, esq ; a speci- men of which Mrs. Coade has given us liberty to present to our readers in the annexed etching of the Deity of the Thames. It also extends to every kind of architectural ornaments, in which it comes much below the price of stone, and is in many particulars considerably cheaper than wood. This infant manufactory certainly deserves some distinguishing encouragement."

This etching, 'Mrs. Coade's figure of father Thames,' faces p. 83. Another etch- ing, p. 82, bears the motto "Nee edax abolere vetustas, n and displays in an advertisement the fact that the manufactured pieces are expressed in " catalogues and

books of prints of 800 articles and upwards, sold at y e manufactory near King's arms stairs, Narrow wall, Lambeth, opposite Whitehall stairs, and at Mr. Strahan's, Bookseller, No. 67, Strand, London."

" In the year 1769, n repeats Lysons in his 'Environs of London,' sub Lambeth, "Mrs. Coade established here a manufactory of artificial stone.' 1 In the supplement, which is dated 1811, to this work comes the state- ment (p. 41) that "the manufactory of artificial stone now belongs to Messrs. Coade & Sealy. n Jewitt says that this partnership began in 1769, when the two Misses Coade joined with their cousin, a Mr. Sealy, the nephew of Mr. Coade. Sealy is also, I may state, a Cornish variation of the name generally known as Seely or Seeley. The firm down to 1811 bore the title of Coades & Sealy ; but on Sealy's death, who sur- vived the Misses Coade, a William Croggon, who had for a long time been a clerk or manager, became the proprietor of the works. Into the subsequent changes of ownership, and into the removal of the works from Lambeth, it is not necessary to enter.

The memoir, by the Rev. Richard Cecil, of John Bacon, R.A., which appeared in The Gentleman 1 s Magazine for 1799, pt. ii. 808, stated that during his apprenticeship to a Mr. Crispe (which began in 1755) he

" formed a design of making statues in artificia stone, which he afterwards perfected. The manu- factory now carried on at Lambeth by Mrs. Coade originated with him."

This, however, was too broadly stated, and in Cecil's memoir, when printed separately I quote from the 1822 ed. it is modified into the assertion that

" by these exertions he recovered the manu- factory at Lambeth now carried on by Mrs. Coade which before Mr. Bacon undertook the manage- ment of it had fallen into very low circumstances."

The ' D.N.B.' adds, from some source not clearly specified, that in 1762 and afterwards Bacon was at work in this lithodipra (sic) factory, where he much improved the invention :

" Groups and statues as large as life, coats of arms, sculptured key-stones, wreaths of flowers, and all that species of work known by the general name of ornamental, were here modelled and burnt."

In Peter Cunningham's ' London Past and Present 4 (Wheatley's ed., 1891) we find it stated, sub Westminster Bridge Road, that "on the north side are some houses, on one of which (No. 266) is a stone inscribed 'Coade's Row 1798.* The name was given from its neighbourhood to Coade's manu- factory of artificial stone, situated in Narrow