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COLONEL UNTHANK'S NORWICH

~ History, Decorative Arts, Buildings

COLONEL UNTHANK'S NORWICH

Tag Archives: Thomas Jeckyll

James Minns, carver

15 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by reggie unthank in James Minns carver, Norwich history

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Colman family, Edward Boardman, George Skipper, Thomas Jeckyll, wood carving

I’ve mentioned James Minns, ‘Carver’, a few times in these pages, always as an appendage to well-known local architects like George Skipper, Thomas Jeckyll or Edward Boardman, but I keep stumbling across his work and felt it was time that ‘Norfolk’s Grinling Gibbons’ [1] had a post of his own. 

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James Minns. From the East Anglian Magazine [1]

James Benjamin Shingles Minns – son of Sarah Shingles and James William Minns, cabinetmaker – was born in Lakenham, Norwich, at the beginning of 1825. ‘Minns’ is not uncommon in East Anglia and can be traced back to the Protestant Dutch ‘Strangers’ who brought the name here in the C16 , when it was Mins [2]. The 1841 census shows that James had two sisters; he also had two brothers, both of whom shared their father’s trade as cabinetmaker. Young James had woodworking in his blood.

E.C. LeGrice tells us that Minns lived in a house on Westlegate [1]. This house was ‘demolished – with several others – to make room for a modern block of shops’ but an old shop in that cluster ‘still remains … under the very shadow of the tower of All Saints Church’ [1]. That remaining building sounds very much like the thatched building below. 

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Westlegate 1939, under the shadow of All Saints tower. The thatched building was once The Barking Dicky PH, now Waring’s Lifestore. The adjacent building (left) was demolished to make way for Westlegate Tower. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

(Just after this article was posted, David Vincent sent this photograph of Westlegate in 1890, as Minns would have known it before the street widening)

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Westlegate 1890, courtesy of David Vincent. 

The census gives no clue to when Minns lived here but in 1851 he was living as a ‘visitor’ in the house of dressmaker Frances Scales (widow) at 180 Kensington Place, near the junction of Queens Road and City Road. Genealogical records show that Minns married Elizabeth Emily Thompson in 1858 and, according to the 1861 census, was living at The Steam Packet public house. Confusingly, three Norwich pubs shared the name of the Steam Packet (a small boat regularly plying between ports) but, since a William John Shingles Thompson is listed as a proprietor of The Steam Packet in King Street [3], it would appear that this is where James Minns was living with his Thompson in-laws.

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The Ferry Boat Inn (1936), formerly The Steam Packet. 191 King Street ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Papers at the Record Office indicate that in 1864, James Minns – listed as ‘wood and stone carver’ – bought two ‘recently erected cottages, part of a row of eight’, for £150 from the builder Edward Burton [4] . Numbers 9 and 11 were in Arthur Street, a cul-de-sac off Mariner’s Lane, which at that time connected Ber Street on the high ridge down to King Street on the riverside. So Minns moved up the hill from his in-laws’ riverside pub

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Mariners Lane once connected Ber Street (red) with King Street on which the Steam Packet is marked with a star. Minns lived in a block of 8 new houses on Arthur Street (purple). 1907 OS map courtesy of https://maps.nls.uk/.

Amongst Minns’ conveyances in the Norfolk Record Office there is an interesting aside: in 1876, the Norwich and Norfolk Provident Permanent Benefit Building Society turned out not to be so permanent and went into liquidation. Minns was allowed by the liquidator, Samuel Gulley, to redeem his mortgage for £20-8s-5d.

From 1851 to 1901 Minns described himself in public records with the plain English word ‘carver’: ‘carver in wood’, ‘wood carver’ and ‘wood and stone carver’. In 1881 there was a lapse when he used the Frenchified ‘sculptor’ but by 1891 and 1901 he was a  ‘carver’ once more. This down-to-earth description of his profession was consistent with E.C. LeGrice’s description of a ‘shy and diffident woodcarver (who) had great difficulty in courteously excusing himself from being presented to his royal admirer, King Edward the Seventh’ [1].

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Minn’s unflowing signature. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service [4]

James Minns was evidently no scholar, his only formal instruction being ‘a little general training which he received at the old (Norwich) School of Art when he was a youth’ [1]. An article in the Eastern Daily Press of 1904 confirmed, ‘He was no laborious school-product.’ [5]. It must have given him deep satisfaction, therefore, to have returned in his mid-sixties as Instructor in Wood Carving [6]. This was about 1890, at a time when the School of Art had rooms in the Free Library on St Andrew’s Street. In 1857 an extra storey had been added to accommodate the School: ‘On the third floor are two large rooms for the School of Art, with domed roofs and ample skylights, and four smaller apartments for classes are also provided [6].’

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The Norwich Free Library at the junction of St Andrew’s Street and Duke Street. James Minns gave instruction on the third floor. (From ref [7])

This arrangement proved unsatisfactory, for a few decades later a student committee of six men and four women petitioned for a  separate School of Art. One of the petitioners was J.W. Minns. This was James’ son John William who, like his father, became a Norwich Freeman in his twenties; he also described himself as ‘carver’ (1887) [8].

Despite his retiring nature James Minns was confident enough to instruct students in technical matters – after all, he had about 50 years of experience to pass on. He also had sufficient belief in the artistic merit of his work to submit – successfully – a carved panel to the Royal Academy’s 1897 Summer Exhibition.

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11 Mariner’s Lane is suggested to have been his workshop [9]. (2017 is the catalogue number)

The Royal Academy has no photograph of this entry and for some time I had no idea of the delicacy of his work until I came across this example in LeGrice’s brief essay on Minns [1].

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James Minns’ Bullfinch panel, undated. © 1958 E.C.LeGrice. 

Could this be the same bullfinch panel listed in the Norfolk Museums Collections? There is no image of that panel on the site but Samantha Johns generously tracked it down and photographed it for me, revealing this to be quite a different bunch of bullfinches (for which the collective noun is, surprisingly, a ‘bellowing’).

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Bullfinch Panel by James Minns. NWHCM 1897.55. Photo courtesy of Sam Johns.

In 1958 LeGrice [1] mentioned that several Minns panels were in the possession of the Colman family. Several still are and I was kindly shown the following three panels of intricate, deeply undercut birds and foliage (although the curved glass posed problems for this amateur photographer). Amongst them was the superb bullfinch panel featured in LeGrice’s article [1]. 

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Birds nesting amongst the larch. The Bullfinch Panel. Courtesy of James Colman

 

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Bird panel, courtesy of James Colman

 

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Woodcock, courtesy of Matthew Colman

Norwich Castle Museum holds a further Minns bird carving under glass.

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‘Pigeon’ by James Minns 1877. Norfolk Museums Service NWHCM: 1924.9

Minns’ success at the Royal Academy was not an isolated one for, as an obituary noted, ‘In competitions both at home and on the Continent he carried off some of the chief trophies of his time’ [5]. The carvings under glass quite likely represent his exhibition pieces. These high points of his artistic output contrasted with his bread-and-butter work at Gunton’s brickyard in Old Costessey. Over a long period – perhaps decades – he made moulds for decorative bricks that were turned out in their hundreds (see previous post on ‘Fancy Bricks’ [10]). 

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Cosseyware chimney bricks. The rose and shamrock are from the Patriotic range. Provided by Andy Maule.

However, one-off terracotta panels, like those at  St Bennet’s – a private house in Cromer (1893) – gave Minns the opportunity to be more creative.IMG_4152.jpg

James Minns’ best known panels decorate the red brick building, part of Jarrold Department Store on London Street. Until 1946 this housed the offices of the architect, George Skipper. Although Skipper wasn’t supposed to advertise his architectural practice he installed a panel illustrating himself with three of his Norwich buildings in the background: The Daily Standard Office of 1899 in St Giles Street; The Norwich Union Building of 1904; and Commercial Chambers in Red Lion Street, 1901 [11].Skipper.jpg

In this tableau, a top-hatted Skipper points to a shield presented by a bearded workman in a dust coat, with younger carvers to the rear. The older man presenting the shield would have been the senior craftsman and, as such, is likely to be James Minns himself.

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The head craftsman (left) and James Minns (see below)

Richard Barnes informs me that the terracotta panels on the front of Skipper’s office were being completed around the time (1904 [12]) that work was starting on another of Skipper’s projects – the building of Jarrold Department Store, literally next door. Because James Minns died in 1904, Richard wonders if much of the work might have been done by Minns’ son John. We cannot know for sure but it could explain the rare sighting of this shy carver.

As we saw in a previous post, father and son were both associated with the Costessey brickyard [10].

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Workers at Gunton’s brickyard ca 1900 named by Peter Mann. James Minns (red dot) and John Minns (white dot) were labelled ‘Carvers of Norwich’,  Photo courtesy of Paul Cooper

In his capacity as builder, George Gunton renovated the church at St Michael the Archangel, Booton, about six miles from Costessey. Minns carved the huge whirring wooden angels flying in the nave.IMG_2207.jpg

I haven’t been able to find objects sculpted by Minns in bronze although the St Michael over the door at Booton church is tentatively assigned to him on the racns website [11]. One specialist suggested that the sculptor was uncomfortable working with bronze [13] – perhaps someone like Minns, more used to subtractive carving than building up a maquette for casting? (See addendum at the end of this post).

StMichaelBooton.jpg

 Minns’ employment with Guntons was sufficiently accommodating that he could work on his own projects for local architects and designers in materials other than baked clay. For example, Minns worked with Thomas Jeckyll [14] on the Norfolk Gates – an exhibition piece by the Norwich foundry of Barnard Bishop and Barnards (1862) that was then given as a wedding gift by the people of Norfolk to the Prince (later, King Edward VII) and Princess of Wales at Sandringham [15]. Hand-wrought ironwork dominates but the piers and their base panels were cast and this is where Minns made his contribution, bringing him to the attention of the future king. 

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Left: The Norwich coat of arms, cast iron, from the Norfolk Gates. Image ©www.racns.co.uk. Right: carved wooden panel being sold by http://www.hillhouse-antiques.co.uk. A similar wood carving of the Norwich coat of arms, labelled “pattern for cast iron”, which is held in the Norfolk Museums Collections (NWHCM: 1969.59.1), is attributed to James Minns. 

Over the years, Jeckyll worked extensively for the Boileau family at Ketteringham, including house, church, farmhouses and the estate in general. Minns is known to have carved the figures on the church tower [17] and he is likely to have provided other touches around the village.

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About 1850, Jeckyll designed the well outside ‘Wellgate’ in Low Street, Ketteringham; it bears the Boileau arms. 

James Minns also designed this logo for Colman’s mustard.Colmans Duo.001.jpeg

 The bull’s head, from LeGrice’s article on Minns [1]. ©E.C.LeGrice

He also did much of the carving in the Colman’s home at Carrow House. Helen C. Colman reminisced:

“My Father and Mother returned to Carrow House on June 7th 1861 though it was still more or less in the hands of workmen … but the wood carving in oak in the Library … was for the most part done during the ‘sixties … it was nearly all carved locally, and much of it by James Minns.” [16].

Dated 1862, the fireplace in the Old Library at Carrow House is richly carved with birds, flowers and foliage. The four human heads, however, were said by Helen Colman to be ‘carved by someone from a distance’ [16]); i.e., not Minns.

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Mantelpiece in the Old Library at Carrow House carved by James Minns, except the four small heads. Photos courtesy of Sam Johns, Norfolk Museums Service

The remodelling of Carrow House is thought to have been carried out by Edward Boardman [17] (whose son was to marry into the Colman family) and he would have been familiar with James Minns. Indeed, a footnote on Boardman’s plans for the 1891 renovation of the Manor House at Catton specifically names the Minns family of carvers [18, 19].

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The cat and tun (barrel) rebus, carved by the Minns family, on the south door at Catton Manor House, copies the older carving on the east side. Courtesy of Robert Radford. Photo: Ray Jones, Old Catton Society

Although the Colman family were Nonconformist they supported church-going amongst their workers; at St Andrew’s Trowse – a short walk from Colman’s Carrow Works – they donated a reredos of the Last Supper. It is said to be ‘a copy of an Italian masterpiece, carved by James Minns of Lakenham’ and was dedicated in 1905, a year after Minns died [20].

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The Last Supper is often depicted with all figures aligned on the far side of the table, school-photograph style. Here, a second row of figures at front increases the depth. I can only find similar versions in Northern European panels. Can you identify the original?

George Skipper’s masterwork was Surrey House, headquarters of Norwich Union (now Aviva) in Surrey Street, and was completed in 1904. A 2008 conservation plan for Aviva states that H.H. Martyn & Co of Cheltenham, who specialised in woodwork and panelling, were assisted by James Minns of 11 Arthur Street, Norwich, “including the carved figures over the main doorway” [21]. The use of Minns’ correct address lends credibility although large carvings of women lolling on the pediment aren’t the usual Minns territory.IMG_2116.jpg

More in keeping with the skilfully carved foliage we saw in his bird panels are the baroque swags of  fruit and flowers hanging on the mahogany panelling. These are reminiscent of Grinling Gibbons’ work and Le Grice did, after all, confer the title of ‘Norfolk’s Grinling Gibbons’ on Minns. On the other hand, reproductions of Grinling Gibbons carvings were a speciality of Martyn’s of Cheltenham [22] so we await corroboration that James Minns was the actual carver. 

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Left: Intricate carving from the boardroom, Surrey House. Right: Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) Hampton Court Palace (by Camster2, Wikipedia, Creative Commons licence).

James Minns died on the 6th of August 1904. His death certificate gives the cause of death as cardiac syncope; he also had senile decay, which makes one wonder if this affected the quality of his work in the latter years and whether his son had to do work on his behalf. James Benjamin Shingles Minns left £200 to his son John  plus ‘effects’ – perhaps his tools. A few days later, the Eastern Daily Press wrote this tribute: “There passed away this week in Norwich a brilliant practitioner of a delightful form of art. As a wood carver Mr Minns was in the utmost sense of that term a genius [5].” 

©2020 Reggie Unthank

If you know anything about the life and works of James Minns, especially previously unrecorded carvings, please get in touch via the Contact link. Comments will not be published without your approval.

Sources

  1. E.C.LeGrice (1958). James Minns: Norfolk’s Grinling Gibbons. East Anglian Magazine vol 18, No2, December.
  2. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/08/15/going-dutch-the-norwich-strangers/
  3. http://www.norfolkpubs.co.uk/norwich/snorwich/nchsp4.htm
  4. Norfolk Record Office: N/TC/D1/100/5-12
  5. Under ‘Local Topics’, an article written in the week of Minn’s death. Eastern Daily Press 12th August 1904.
  6. Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton with John Steven (1982). ‘A Happy Eye’: A School of Art in Norwich 1845-1982. Pub: Jarrold & Sons Ltd, Norwich.
  7. George A. Stephen (1917). Three Centuries of a City Library. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19804/19804-h/19804-h.htm
  8. http://nfro.norwichfreemen.org.uk/detail/11785/
  9. https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=ann_1283258555
  10. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/05/05/fancy-bricks/
  11. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp
  12. David Bussey and Eleanor Martin (2012).The Architects of Norwich: George John Skipper, 1856-1948. Norwich Society publication.
  13. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=1065
  14. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/04/15/thomas-jeckyll-the-boileau-family/
  15. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=540
  16. Helen C. Colman (1922) “Carrow House Past and Present”. In, Carrow Works Magazine pp51-54.
  17. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (2002). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  18. Ray Jones of the Old Catton Society, personal communication.
  19. https://norfolktalesmyths.com/2020/02/11/adventures-of-the-old-catton-village-sign
  20. https://www.trowsechurch.co.uk/page/43/about-our-church-2
  21. 2008 Aviva Conservation Management Plan mentions ‘H.H. Martyn & Co. Ltd., of Cheltenham – specialist woodwork and panelling, assisted by James Minns of 11 Arthur Street, Norwich (boardroom and committee rooms woodwork including the carved figures over the main doorway)’. Courtesy of Aviva Archivist Thomas Barnes.
  22. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/H._H._Martyn

Thanks. I am grateful to: Peter Mann, Paul Cooper and Brian Gage who provided  information on the Costessey brickyard; Richard Barnes for information on Jeckyll; Thomas Barnes, Archivist at Aviva for access and information; Robert Radford, owner of Catton Old Hall and Ray Jones of the Old Catton Society; Sue Roe for genealogy; Hill House Antiques & Decorative Arts Ltd; Byron Cooke and Mary Perrott for access to Carrow House; Samantha Johns of Norfolk Museums Service, for photographing Minns’ work; and Matthew Colman and James Colman for allowing me to photograph three superb examples of Minns’ framed bird carvings. Evelyn Simak provided James Minns’ death certificate.

Addendum 30/11/2020

Recently revisiting the carving of the Prince of Wales feathers on the Agricultural Hall I had the impression that I’d seen this way of handling feathers before. Comparison of the brick feathers with the wings on the Booton bronze shows they share stylistic traits: a rather fluffy treatment of the top of the feather and wing compared to the transverse barbs below. They could well be by the same carver/sculptor.

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Barnard Bishop and Barnards

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Barnard Bishop and Barnards, Norfolk Iron Works, Norwich industry, Thomas Jeckyll

There is little now to suggest that Norwich had an industrial past but the parish of Coslany, around the River Wensum, was once home to iron works, shoe factories, an electricity generating works and a brewery – all providing employment after the slow decline of the city’s wool-weaving trade.

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From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norfolk Iron Works was a major part of the industrial landscape of Norwich-over-the-water.

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Barnard, Bishop and Barnards’ Norfolk Iron Works. Courtesy Picture Norfolk (www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk)

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Ordnance Survey 1908. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (maps.nls.uk/index.html)

The son of a farmer, Charles Barnard (1804-1871) started making domestic and agricultural ironwork in Pottergate in 1842 [1]. Having lived on the land, Barnard was aware of the damage that wild animals could wreak on crops and began to experiment on a machine for weaving wire netting. Initially the netting was made on the machine below but later it was produced by a powered loom. Netting was to be remain a core activity well into the C20.

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Barnard’s loom for weaving wire netting at The Museum of Norwich

In 1846 Barnard went into partnership with John Bishop, then in 1859 Barnard’s sons Charles and Godfrey joined the business, becoming Barnard, Bishop and Barnards.

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Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ ‘four Bs’ trade sign – the two smaller bees representing Charles Barnard’s sons. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

This ‘four Bs’ rebus marks the firm’s attachment to puns: their designer Thomas Jeckyll used his own two-butterfly signature from the time of his early collaborations with Barnard and Bishop. Jeckyll, incidentally, was a friend of Frederick Sandys who drew the portrait of Charles Barnard (unable to show): both inserted a rogue ‘y’ into their surname.

I have already written at length about Jeckyll [2-5] but it’s not possible to omit him entirely since it was his designs that brought Barnards national attention, elevating some pieces to high art. Two examples: first, the intricate wrought and cast-iron ‘Norwich’ gates that won the firm ecstatic praise at the 1862 International Exhibition;

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The Norwich gates, given to the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1863 as a wedding present by the citizens of Norwich and Norfolk. Now at Sandringham House, Norfolk. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

second, Jeckyll’s associations with a group of London artists – notably James Abbott McNeill Whistler – made him a key figure in the Anglo-Japanese Aesthetic Movement. Jeckyll used japonaise designs for Barnards’ fireplaces while his cast iron sunflower (to be seen on the gates of Heigham Park and Chapelfield Gardens) came to symbolise the Aesthetic Movement.

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Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

In 1871, Barnards moved their iron works to Calvert Street in the parish of St Michael-at-Coslany.

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St Miles Works from the river. Courtesy The Museum of Norwich

The business contained a large foundry at one end while a new building housed the netting mill, for which steam was used to power the looms [1]. The factory was also known as St Michael’s Works; Miles is a diminutive of Michael and both are also applied to one of the city’s most beautiful churches, the elegant St Michael Coslany.

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Barnard Bishop and Barnards St Miles Works 1951. The works had several tall chimneys but the one shown here may belong to Bullard’s Anchor Quay Brewery on the other side of the river. ©2017 RIBApix

At the St Miles site the workforce of ca 400 produced an eclectic range of utilitarian objects. The drawing below lists: “a coke barrow, a garden arbour, trellis, wire netting, a garden seat, a chair, a pheasant feeder, a swing water barrow, a hose reel, a fire dog, a grate, a table, a roller & a sheep trough. ‘All made on the spot’“.

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Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

 

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Still desirable. Garden chairs from Barnard Bishop and Barnards 1884 catalogue for their London showroom. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

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Barnards celebratory brochure  1844-1925. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

The railways arrived in Norwich in the mid-C19 and Barnards provided much of the metal work for at least two of the city’s three stations. These ornate barriers at Norwich Thorpe station were made by Barnards and were designed by W. Neville Ashbee, the company architect for the Great Eastern Railway.

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The wrought iron platform barriers at Norwich Thorpe station. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich.

The barriers have gone but the cast-iron canopy supports with the elegant spandrels can still be seen along the platforms.

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The station forecourt is still enclosed by fine examples of Victorian ironwork.

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Barnards also cast the columns and spandrels  for Norwich City station. This station near the St Crispin’s roundabout was the terminus of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway whose hub was at Melton Constable. It closed to passengers in 1959.

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 Norwich City station. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich NWHCM 118.959.51

In 1882, a river bridge was built to provide access to the new City Station. St Crispin’s Bridge, which was manufactured by Barnards, became part of the ring road in 1970 taking traffic in clockwise direction.  A new bridge built parallel to it takes traffic in the opposite direction.

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Charles Barnard died in 1871 but the firm lived on as Barnards Limited (from 1907).

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Mr and Mrs Charles Barnard in later life. Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk 

The managing director James Bower played a direct part in the running of the company, rebuilding and re-designing the wire netting machines. In 1921 they purchased part of the old Mousehold Aerodrome where, in the Second World War, they manufactured gun shells and parts for the Hurricane fighter. This attracted the attention of the Luftwaffe who bombed the site in July 1942, killing two people [6].

The Norwich engineering firm, Boulton and Paul, made aircraft (including the Overstrand and Sidestrand) but who knew that Barnards helped make planes? Barnards also made buses …

Barnards bus.jpg

Bus made by Barnards Ltd in Cathedral Close.  Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk

 … and at their factory in Salhouse Road they produced steam traction engines.

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Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk

 Barnards Ltd ceased trading in 1991. The Coslany site is now occupied by social housing – Barnards’ Yard.

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Barnards’ Ironworks now Barnards’ Yard social housing

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©2017 Reggie Unthank

Sources

  1. Williams, Nick (2013). Norwich, City of Industries (an excellent book on industrial Norwich).
  2. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2015/12/26/two-bs-or-not-tw…s-thomas-jeckyll/
  3. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/04/15/thomas-jeckyll-the-boileau-family/
  4. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/01/06/jeckyll-and-the-sunflower-motif/
  5. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/11/10/jeckyll-and-the-japanese-wave/
  6. http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/industrial-innovation/barnards.htm

Thanks to Hannah Henderson of The Museum of Norwich for kindly showing me the Barnards collection, and I also thank David Holgate-Carruthers for his help. Do visit the Museum of Norwich, which has a section devoted to Barnards and Jeckyll and gives a fascinating glimpse into Norwich as it once was. I am grateful to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for allowing me to reproduce photographs. Clare manages (https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/PICNOR/HOME), which contains a searchable collection of 20,000 images of Norfolk life.

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Jeckyll and the Japanese wave

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Aesthetic Movement, Decorative Arts, Norwich history

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Arts and Crafts, Barnard Bishop and Barnards, James McNeill Whistler, Japonisme, Thomas Jeckyll

Sackler sunflowers.jpg

Thomas Jeckyll’s ‘Sunflower’ andirons – emblems of the Aesthetic Movement. (c) The Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington DC USA. Photo: Neil Greentree 

He was a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement who helped spread an esoteric fascination with japonisme to the nation, yet Thomas Jeckyll was an unsung local hero who died in a Norwich lunatic asylum. In previous posts [1,2, 3] I discussed how this son of a clergyman from Wymondham, Norfolk  joined the set of London aesthetes including Whistler, Swinburne, Rosetti and fellow Norfolkman Frederick Sandys. This influenced his work  back home in Norfolk where his designs for Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norwich Iron Works advertised the Anglo-Japanese Movement on an industrial scale.

Jeckyll and father.jpg

Thomas Jeckyll with his father George in the 1860s ((c) Picture Norfolk. Norfolk County Council)

Jeckyll’s first national success was with the Norwich Gates that he designed for Barnards in 1859 [4]. They took three years to manufacture and, when exhibited in the 1862 International Exhibition in London, were awarded a medal for craftsmanship; Jeckyll – who received ecstatic critical acclaim – was elevated to national attention. The people of Norfolk and Norwich bought the gates by public subscription and presented them to the Prince and Princess of Wales on their marriage in 1863. The gates can still be seen at Sandringham.

Norwich Gates.jpg

Norwich Gates, Sandringham, Norfolk (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

But Jeckyll’s continuing reputation was shaped by events on the other side of the world. In 1853-4 US Admiral Perry used gunboat diplomacy to force Japan out of its self-imposed isolation, opening trade with the west. The woodblock prints that emerged had an immediate impact on western art: the works of Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Cassat all showed the signs of Japanese influence, often being occidental versions of original oriental themes [5]. The unusual (to western eyes) cropping of the image, flattened shapes and planes composed of few subtle colours changed the direction of French art in the latter half of the C19th.

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‘Mlle Marcelle Lender en buste’ by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1895); bust of the waitress Okita of the Naniwaya teahouse by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806)

James McNeill Whistler, who was an avid collector of Japanese prints and pottery, is said to have been the first to bring back japonisme to this country after his return from Paris in 1860. The art dealer Murray Marks said that the artist had “invented blue and white in London” [5]. The mania for things Japanese could attract a certain preciousness; after Oscar Wilde said he was finding it hard to live up to his blue china, George du Maurier – one of Jeckyll’s London circle – pricked the bubble with this Punch cartoon:

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The Six Mark Teapot (c) Punch

Aesthetic Bridegroom: “It is quite consummate is it not?”

Intense Bride: “It is indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!”

Whistler’s own painting was changed by his exposure to Japanese art. His well known nocturne of Old Battersea Bridge certainly borrowed strongly from Hiroshige’s print of Kyobashi Bridge, part of his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (as Tokyo was called).

WhistHiro1.jpg

Utagawa Hiroshige, Kyobashi Bridge 1857: James McNeill Whistler, Old Battersea Bridge 1859

While the fashion for things oriental was originally confined to a metropolitan elite, where it developed out of their interest in the fine arts, it soon became a widespread phenomenon of the applied arts [5]. The influential decorative arts designer Lewis F Day recognised that Jeckyll’s work was amongst the first to show this Japanese influence [4]. Art dealer Gleeson White wrote that Jekyll was:

the first to design original work with Japanese principles assimilated – not imitated [6]

As designer for Barnards at their Norwich foundry, Jeckyll was able to spread japonisme  and he did this largely via the Great British Fireplace (coming soon to BBC1). From ca 1870 Barnard Bishop and Barnards produced numerous japonaise designs into which Jeckyll skilfully introduced cranes, cherry blossom, chrysanthemums, sunflowers etc.

Jeckyll stove.jpg

Designed by Thomas Jeckyll From Barnards’ 1884 catalogue. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Japanese heraldic roundels or mon also became a recurring motif in Jeckyll’s designs, providing a ready shorthand for japonisme.

Roundels Fplace.jpg

Jeckylll fireplace (c)  The Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Jeckyll designed numerous pieces of metalwork for the fireside, including perhaps his best-known items: andirons or firedogs in the form of the sunflowers that were to become emblematic of The Aesthetic Movement [7,2]. These sunflowers fenced in Jeckyll’s Pagoda that once stood in Chapelfield Gardens and – in reproduction form – now decorate the gates to these Gardens and to Heigham Park (see previous post [2])

sunflower dogs.jpg

Barnard Bishop and Barnards catalogue 1884. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

But it was this fender – seen in the apartment of Jeckyll’s friend, the Norfolk painter Frederick Sandys – that impressed a leading figure of the Anglo-Japanese Movement, E.W. Godwin. Indeed, Whistler insisted on having one of these fenders in his own apartment even though Godwin, who was refurbishing it, could have supplied fenders in his own designs [4].

Jeckyll-Brass-Fireplace-Fender_2_1.jpg

EW Godwin’s sketch of the ‘Sandys fender’ (c) Victorian and Albert Museum, London

This fender can be glimpsed in part of a larger sketch made in Charles Barnard’s home ‘Greyfriars’, Norwich (demolished). Jeckyll’s sunflower andirons are also illustrated.

BarnardsFPlace.jpg

Firedogs. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

These were not prototypes made just for friends, for the fender must have been sold in fair numbers through Barnards’ catalogues and showrooms. Barnards’ Norwich showroom was on Gentleman’s Walk next to the market. By the 1930s the Hope Brothers had taken over the shop but it was still possible to see on the second floor the balcony railings that Jeckyll designed.

Hope Bros.jpg

(c) Picture Norfolk. Norfolk Museums Service

Barnards also had a showroom in Queen Victoria Street, London.

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Barnards London showroom (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Below, we can see the fender advertised in the London showroom – the photograph providing a glimpse of the mishmash of Japanese, Chinese and even medieval influences available to the rising middle classes wanting to establish their Aesthetic credentials.

barnards showroom.jpg

Barnard, Bishop and Barnards London showroom in the latter part of the C19. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

The scalloped pattern, which became one of Jeckyll’s most frequently used motifs, was based on a Japanese design. For the fender, Jeckyll had used a single layer of semi-circles as the main motif but it is clear from his other work that this had been extracted from the larger seigaiha (blue ocean wave) design.

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Seigaiha pattern on a kimono. (c) SmithjackJapan on Etsy

The overlapping waves were also used on cast-iron garden benches.

benches.jpg

Barnards catalogue 1884. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

A local application of the seigaiha design can be seen on the gates at Sprowston Manor Hotel on the outskirts of Norwich.

SpowstonGates.jpg

Jeckyll also used the wave design independently of the work he did with Barnards. Here it is seen in a terracotta plaque on the garden wall of High House, Thorpe St Andrew (left) and on a quadrant from the ceiling of the Boileau Memorial Fountain (right, demolished) that once stood at the junction of Newmarket and Ipswich Roads near the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital (see previous post on the fountain [1]).

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Left, Jeckyll plaque at High House, possibly made at the Costessey Brickworks. Right, a quadrant of the ceiling from the Boileau Fountain [1]

Fabric is not always durable but in this case the japonaise embroidery, made to Jeckyll’s designs, outlived the Chapelfield Pagoda that was dismantled in 1949. Fortunately, the hangings that decorated the pagoda at international exhibitions are conserved in Norwich Castle Study Centre –the seigaiha design bottom right.

Pagoda_final.jpg

Left: The Chapelfield Pagoda. Right: Jeckyll’s hangings used to decorate the structure when it was exhibited internationally. (c) Norfolk Museums Service

Jeckyll was an inventive designer who was certainly not restricted to one design or material. He had previously collaborated with the sculptor Sir J Edgar Boehm on the Boileau memorial Fountain and when Boehm sculpted the monument to Juliana, Countess of Leicester for the estate church at Holkham Hall it is highly likely that Jeckyll designed the japonaise base [4].

holkham.jpg

Base of the monument to Lady Leicester in the church of St Withburga, Holkham Estate, Norfolk, which is attributed to Thomas Jeckyll

Sources

  1.  https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/04/15/thomas-jeckyll-the-boileau-family/
  2.  https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/01/06/jeckyll-and-the-sunflower-motif/
  3.  https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2015/12/26/two-bs-or-not-tw…s-thomas-jeckyll/
  4. Soros, Susan Weber and Arbuthnott, Catherine (2003). Thomas Jeckyll: Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. Yale University Press.
  5. Ives, Colta Feller (1974). The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  6. The Cult of Beauty (2011). Eds Stephen Calloway and Lynn Feder Orr. V&A Publishing
  7. The Aesthetic Movement (1973). Ed, Charles Spencer. Academy Editions, London.‎

Thanks to: Hannah Henderson, Museum of Norwich, Bridewell Alley for showing me the Jeckyll collection; to Michael Innes for allowing me to photograph the Jeckyll terracotta at his house; to Mary Parker, warden of Ketteringham Church for providing the photograph of the ceiling in the Boileau Memorial; to Lisa Little of Norwich Castle Study Centre, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, Shirehall,for showing me the Jeckyll hangings and to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for permissions.

Visit the display of Barnards’ work and Jeckyll’s designs in The Museum of Norwich, Bridewell Alley, Norwich

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich.   Visit: www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

NorwichSocLogo.jpg

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Thomas Jeckyll & the Boileau Family

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Aesthetic Movement, Arts and Crafts, Decorative Arts

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Barnard Bishop and Barnards, Boehm statue, Ketteringham Hall, Norwich buildings, The Boileau Fountain, Thomas Jeckyll

You may have gathered from two earlier posts [1,2] that I am fascinated by a local hero, the Wymondham-born architect and designer Thomas Jeckyll. Through his C19th designs for the Norwich foundry of Barnard Bishop and Barnards he became a major contributor to the Japanese-inspired Aesthetic Movement and helped make the sunflower its defining motif.

Jeckyll tabletop.jpg

Sunflower table top, cast-iron. Designed by Thomas Jeckyll ca 1870 for Barnard Bishop and Barnards. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service)

Jeckyll was also the original designer of the iconic [3] Peacock Room, made to accommodate shipping magnate Frederick Leyland’s extensive collection of china. However, Jeckyll’s mental collapse allowed arch-aesthete James McNeill Whistler to reinvent the room as (an admittedly stunning) ‘Harmony in Blue and Gold’ by literally overpainting Jeckyll’s surfaces to make the best-surviving example of the Anglo-Japanese style.

This post is about the Boileau fountain, a more humble project of Jeckyll’s but another that can no longer be seen as he originally intended.

Boileau fountain.jpg

Boileau Fountain at the junctions of Ipswich and Newmarket Roads, Norwich. Designed by Thomas Jeckyll ca 1870, completed in 1876. (Postcard bought at a local antiques fair).

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2016

As a young man, Jeckyll had been the protégé of Sir John Boileau of Ketteringham Hall, a few miles south of Norwich.

Sir John P Boileau.jpg

Sir John Peter Boileau by Sir Francis Grant (President Royal Academy 1866)

It was therefore fitting that one of Jeckyll’s last projects was to design this drinking fountain (ca 1870) as a memorial to his former mentor. Sir John had died in 1869 but it took time to prove his will that provided £1000 for the memorial, which was completed in 1876 [4, 5].

Boileau fountain 1908.jpg

Postcards tended to focus on the electric trams that arrived in 1900

Boileau fountain 61.jpg

“for people and cattle”

Sir John had been concerned for the welfare of animals being driven to Norwich market, explaining the gift of water, but the statue added a more personal note to his legacy. The seated figure represents Charity giving a child a drink of water from a shell.

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Charity by Sir J Edgar Boehm

Lady Catherine Boileau had died in her fifties in 1862 but the face of the seated Charity is said to have resembled Lady Catherine when younger.

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Lady Catherine Boileau by Sir Francis Grant

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The plaster maquette of the Boehm statue can be seen through the door of the Orangery at Ketteringham Hall 1878

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The Orangery (above) was later used as the Ketteringham Hall Preparatory School where the  Boehm maquette (top centre) was still in situ ca 1958.

The sculptor, Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, was born in Vienna and moved to England where he became an Associate of the Royal Academy [6].  One of his students was Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise; she was in Boehm’s house when he died, fuelling speculation in the press of a sexual relationship between them [6].

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Carte de visite of Sir JE Boehm 1860s (Wikimedia Commons)

At the ceremony to dedicate the fountain, Sir John’s son Francis praised Jeckyll’s contribution and noted his famous metalwork designs.

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Francis Boileau’s pencilled annotation at the top of the cheque reads, “For luncheon on opening of the Boileau Fountain”. Note the names of the famous Norwich banking families.

But within a week of this ceremony Jeckyll had descended into the manic state that eventually led him to be confined to the Bethel Asylum, where he died in 1881 [4].

Curiously, younger members of the Boileau family were to be involved in a ‘carriage accident’ at the site of this ceremony one generation later.

Boileau fountain panorama_1.jpg

On Wednesday 16th November 1910, according to the Eastern Evening News of that date, a carriage containing Sir John’s grandson Sir Maurice Boileau, granddaughter Lady Margaret and Rev. Hart were in an “Exciting scene in St Stephen’s”. Approximately where the pony and trap are seen to the right of the fountain a cyclist skidded in front of the horses causing them to bolt “at a terrific pace”towards St Stephen’s Gates. Horses and carriage crashed into two stationary vehicles outside Mr Bean’s the corn merchant.  Margaret, who was herself a physician (a fact not mentioned in the report) helped the injured coachman into the adjacent hospital to which her grandfather had been a benefactor. One of the fine bay horses had to be put down.

Jekyll’s double-canopied fountain was dismantled in 1965 in order to ease traffic flow and to increase the visibility of passing traffic.

Boileau fountain Archant_1.jpg

The Boileau Fountain 1965 during demolition. (c) Archant/EDP Library

In 2008 the statue was returned, some 50 metres west of where it had once stood, to a new site next to a pond in the grounds of the former Norfolk and Norwich Hospital [5].

Boehm Charity statue.jpg

Boehm’s ‘Charity” statue in the grounds of the former N&N hospital, 2016.

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The plaster maquette of Boehm’s ‘Charity’ remains in Ketteringham Hall

Thomas Jeckyll enjoyed a long relationship with the Boileau family. The son of a cleric, Jeckyll had a fascination for church architecture; he restored many churches around Norfolk and worked on the tower of Ketteringham church, adjacent to the Boileau’s Hall [4].

At the beginning of his career, in the 1840s, Jeckyll had helped design a Gothic folly – a medieval ruin – in an old gravel pit near Ketteringham Hall [7].

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Her Ladyship’s Pit also known as St Catherine’s Cell, 1886. The figure here is Lady Lucy, daughter-in-law of Lady Catherine who had died in 1862. 

In about 1847 Jeckyll was called in to complete the pit as a work-in-progress, which he did with the help of Mr Woodbine, a local builder. Jeckyll told Sir John he would, “Build the Ruins for her Ladyship as cheap as I can“. In the event poor Mr Woodbine completed the job for £12 instead of the £18 he had estimated.

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Lady Lucy Boileau with her three children (Maurice, Margaret and Raymond) and school friend Harry Bennett disporting themselves in a lime tree in ‘her Ladyship’s Pit’, 1886. Herr Stein maintains his dignity.

In 1849 Sir John had supported a proposal to install stained glass in the west window of Norwich Cathedral in commemoration of his great friend, Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich. Only 40 or so years later it was thought that the fifteenth century tracery into which the glass had been set was insufficiently robust and should be replaced. Sir John’s son Francis, who was as avid a collector of antiquities as his father, bought the Perpendicular stonework for £10 and set it above a wall in another part of the Ketteringham estate known as ‘The Abbey’. By this time Jeckyll was too ill to have been involved in the venture.

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The head of the C15th Perpendicular window set upon a wall, 1885.

Unfortunately, during the great gale of 1895 two elm trees fell on the wall leaving only a narrow course of arches.

LadyshipTraceryAfter.JPG

After the storm of 1895

Abbey wall.jpg

Recently 

 

Acknowledgements

This article was based on the record generously supplied by local historian and warden of Ketteringham Church, Mary Parker.  The section on the Gothic follies at Ketteringham is based on an article that Mary and I wrote for the Norfolk Gardens Trust News, which can be downloaded online [7]. I am grateful to Hannah Henderson of the Museum of Norwich, Bridewell Alley, for showing me the Jeckyll collection.

If you are interested in the history of Norfolk landscape, gardens and their buildings join the Norfolk Gardens Trust for only £10 single/£15 joint. The NGT promotes the preservation of gardens and designed landscape and has a programme of garden visits and lectures. Their magazine, Norfolk Gardens Trust News, appears twice yearly. Contact membership secretary Tony Stimpson stimpson4@gmail.com

Sources

1.http://wp.me/p71GjT-f1

2. http://wp.me/p71GjT-7q

3. http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/peacock/

4. Weber Soros, Susan and Arbuthnott, Catherine. (2003). Thomas Jeckyll. Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. Yale University Press.

5. Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk.     http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=571

6. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Edgar_Boehm

7.  Norfolk Gardens Trust News No21 Spring 2016 pp12-15.

http://www.norfolkgt.org.uk/Resources/NGT%20Spring%20Newsletter%202016%20.pdf

 

 

 

 

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Jeckyll and the sunflower motif

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Aesthetic Movement, Decorative Arts

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Chapelfield Pagoda, sunflower motif, Thomas Jeckyll

sunflower_2pixlr.jpg

Martin Battersby wrote that the sunflower has no special association with Japanese art (1) yet, during the second half of the nineteenth century, it became the symbol of the Anglo-Japanese Aesthetic Movement.

Norfolk’s Thomas Jeckyll played a part in its popularization – his Japonaise designs  for fireplaces, produced by the Norwich foundry of Barnard Bishop and Barnards, helped connect the sunflower motif with other more recognisably Japanese emblems like cherry blossom, fan shapes and cranes. The sunflower crops up on illustrations, paintings, metalwork, china. One explanation for its popularity was “… the ease with which its simple flat shape could be wrought into a formal pattern…” (1).

SunflowerSpirals_pixlr.jpg

Clockwise and anti-clockwise spirals

It may be beautiful but the sunflower’s flat shape is anything but simple. The pattern of seeds on the flower head is mathematically complex, comprised of clockwise and anti-clockwise spirals. The numbers of right-handed and left-handed spirals, which change as the flower grows, are adjacent numbers in the Fibonacci series; for example 55 and 89, or 8 and 13. Described by Leonardo Fibonacci in the thirteenth century, this series is  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc, where the next number is the sum of the previous two. Jeckyll, like all other artists (such as van Gogh in his later  series of sunflower paintings [1888]) had to devise a shorthand for representing such complexity. Fortunately, in working for Barnards, Jeckyll was able to exploit their fine casting in his experiments to translate the Fibonacci series into a visually pleasing effect.

Difft SunflowersPixlr.jpg

Abstracted flower designs in which the contrary spirals of the sunflower are represented with varying degrees of success. On a single cast-iron fireplace Jeckyll used six different sunflower designs (the two motifs at right were semicircles that I mirror-imaged  to form whole circles). A Barnards fireplace at Norfolk Museums Service, Gressenhall.

Jeckyll was certainly not the only one to use the sunflower motif in an Arts and Crafts context – William Morris had popularised it a generation earlier – but as a member of a London-based circle of connoisseurs of oriental art he was one of the first to apply it within the Anglo-Japanese Aesthetic Movement. One of his most famous designs was for Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ cast-iron Pavilion or Pagoda for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, 1876. Seventy two sunflowers, three-foot-six inches high, formed the railings around the Pagoda (2).

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Jeckyll’s Pagoda exhibited in Philadelphia, surrounded by the golden sunflower railings (Courtesy Jonathan Plunkett [3])

The Pagoda was bought ca. 1880 by the Norwich Corporation for £500 and erected in Chapelfield Gardens.

Chapelfield pagodaPixlr.jpg

The sunflower railings can just be seen at the base of the Pagoda installed in Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich. (Courtesy http://www.racns.co.uk [4])

 

When exhibited, the ceilings and upper parts of the walls of the Pagoda were decorated with embroidered textiles in the Japanese style. But when the pagoda was dismantled some 70 years later these seem to have been cut for curtains; fortunately large fragments are conserved in the Costume and Textile Department at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery (5).

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For the Pagoda, Jeckyll designed textile hangings embroidered with cranes and Japanese flowers (1876). (Accession number, NWHCM: 1968.240)

Below, an early colour photograph from the essential George Plunkett photographic archive of Norwich (3) shows the Pagoda in 1935, left of the bandstand.

Chapel Field bandstand and pagoda COLOUR [0738] 1935-08-21.jpg

The Chinese Pagoda (left) in 1935, apparently painted Corporation Green.(Courtesy of georgeplunkett.co.uk)

 

The photographer George Plunkett’s great-uncle, the wonderfully named Aquila Eke, was a son of a blacksmith. He also became a blacksmith at Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norfolk Iron Works and is said to have made much of the bas-relief work for the Pagoda (3).

aquila eke 21 June 1937reduced

Aquila Eke 1937.(Courtesy Jonathan Plunkett)

“At about the age of 10 [Aquila] ran away from home, finding his way to Norwich. (On arrival, he thought he had reached London!). He found his way into the blacksmith’s shop in the yard of the Royal Oak public house in St Augustine’s Street, where he was recognised, and promptly driven back to Drayton. However, he eventually came to Norwich to work, and joined the Norfolk Ironworks of Messrs Barnard, Bishop and Barnard, where [twelve years after running away] he assisted in the manufacture of the handsome wrought-iron pavilion which for so many years graced Chapel Field Gardens.”(From the Plunkett family archive, courtesy of Jonathan Plunkett).

In 1942 the Pagoda was damaged during the ‘Baedeker’ raids that bombed cities judged by the German travel guide to be of cultural and historic importance. Blast damage and general corrosion led to the dismantling of the structure in 1949. Some panels of the sunflower railings were salvaged and, after being used at the tennis courts of Heigham Park, Norwich, were refurbished in 2004 as the park’s entrance gates. During restoration, Sarah Cocke (4) remembers a mixture of old and new sunflowers mixed in cardboard boxes at Norwich City Works. Presumably, Sarah’s photograph below shows a new sunflower since it has a simplified single row of petals instead of a double row as in the original pieces.

SunflowerHeighamPark_racns.jpg

A ‘Heigham Park’ sunflower during restoration. Note that the highly complex double spirals are now reduced to one. (Courtesy Sarah Cocke)

This was the same design that Jeckyll used for the andirons in the fireplace of the Peacock Room, one of Jeckyll’s few remaining vestiges after Whistler’s makeover (see previous post).

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Jeckyll’s sunflower andirons and grate – some of his few untouched contributions to the Peacock Room. (Courtesy Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington, USA [6])

Sunflowers Freer galleryPixlr.jpg

Whistler’s painting above, Jeckyll’s sunflowers below (Freer and Sackler Galleries [6])

 

The most recent manifestation of Jeckyll’s sunflower design is in the newly-made gates to Chapelfield Gardens, where the originals had surrounded the Pagoda over 125 years ago.

chapelfield_sunflowersPixlr.jpg

Twenty-first century sunflower gates at the entrance to Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich

The flower motif is ubiquitous and can be found elsewhere in Norwich. The flatiron-shaped red brick and terracotta building (1880) at the junction of London and Castle streets was part of Edward Boardman’s London Street Improvement Scheme. On this building, around the top of the second storey, Boardman added a series of white terracotta roundels containing flowers with blue-glazed petals. Admittedly, these flowers are more daisy-like than sunflowers but so were some of Jeckyll’s own variations as he worked out ways of representing the sunflower – see, for example, one of his fireplaces in the third figure from top. Boardman would have been well aware of Jeckyll’s work for Barnards, whose showroom was just around the corner in Gentleman’s Walk.

BlueSunflower.jpg

Blue-glazed roundels.

At some point, perhaps for ease of manufacture in materials incapable of showing such fine detail as iron, what might once have been an Aesthetic sunflower becomes a generic daisy. The house at number 19 Ipswich Road is profusely decorated with diapered panels of Aesthetic-influenced flowers above windows and on a gable.

19 ipswich rdPixlr.jpg

Repeated Aesthetic flower motifs in Ipswich Road, Norwich

At 50 All Saints Green is a restored (2015) former coach house and stables. It is highly decorative with two panels of terracotta flowers; one in the east end’s Dutch gable… 50AllSaintsGreenPixlr.jpg

… and the other above the front door (below).

sunflower panel.jpg

Although described as sunflowers the central apple-like structure sidesteps the complexity of Fibonacci spirals that Jeckyll had managed to convey in iron.

 

Sunflower_Chapelfield.jpg

Jeckyll sunflower, ‘new’ gates at Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich

Sources

1. Martin Battersby (1973). Essay on ‘Aesthetic Design’. pp 18-24 In, The Aesthetic Movement, Ed Charles Spencer. Academy Editions .

2. Susan Weber Soros and Catherine Arbuthnott (2003). Thomas Jeckyll, Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York. Pub, Yale University Press.

3. George Plunkett’s Photographs of Old Norwich http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/ 

4. Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk. http://www.racns.co.uk

5. The Costume and Textile Department at the Castle Study Centre, Norfolk Museums Service.  http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/Visit_Us/Norwich_Castle_Study_Centre/index.htm

6. The Freer and Sackler Galleries, The Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art. Washington D.C., USA. http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/peacockRoom/pano.asp

Thanks to Sarah Cocke of racns; Jonathan Plunkett of the Plunkett photographic site; Lisa Little, Samantha Johns and Shaz Hussain of the Norfolk Museums Service.

 

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Two Bs or not two Bs? Norfolk’s Thomas Jeckyll

26 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by reggie unthank in Aesthetic Movement, Decorative Arts, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Barnard Bishop and Barnards, Butterfly signature, James McNeill Whistler, Japonisme, Thomas Jeckyll

THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT IN NORFOLK

Norfolk’s Thomas Jeckyll was a largely unsung hero of the nineteenth century Aesthetic Movement whose popularization had its roots in Norwich.

I first came across Thomas Jeckyll’s work when I bought the catalogue to a 1973 exhibition that had done much to bring together the work of this diffuse group: The Aesthetic Movement 1869-1890 (1).

aesthetic movement catalogue.jpg

Catalogue of 1973 exhibition, The Aesthetic Movement, edited by Charles Spencer

In the 1980s, my first house in Norwich had a wrought-iron gate bearing a small roundel embossed with two butterflies. I was told this was how Jeckyll stamped his designs for the Norwich foundry of Barnard and Bishop. These insects have been described as moths  but butterflies make more sense to me and tie Jeckyll in to the wider art movement. [A correspondent later suggested that the roundels on the wings signified peacock butterflies. This makes sense in the context of the Aesthetic Movement and even has resonances in Whistler’s later Peacock Room].

Jeckyll insignia.jpg

Jeckyll’s two-insect motif on a cast-iron fireplace..

Jeckyll was born in 1827 in Wymondham, a market town a few miles south of Norwich. His father was curate of the Abbey Church, Wymondham and church restoration was an important part of Jeckyll’s early work. He established an office in Norwich and his entire family moved to the city’s Unthank Road in 1854 (2). [I hope to write a post on the Unthank Estate].

The opening up of Japan for trade to the west in the early 1850s had an enormous impact on European art: collectors fought over porcelain and James Whistler even tussled over a Japanese fan. There was great competition for the wood-block prints included in shipments of imported goods. Largely free of the western preoccupation with linear perspective these Japanese images came to inspire the ‘flattened’ poster art of western artists such as Toulouse Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, while Gustav Klimt’s decorative effects can be traced to the coloured patterns and motifs on Japanese fabric.

kiyonaga.jpg

On Japanese fabrics the roundel was a key motif superimposed upon geometric backgrounds. Torii Kiyonaga 1752-1815.

This avant-garde passion for things oriental filtered into popular culture as the Anglo-Japanese Aesthetic Movement. While The Arts and Crafts Movement had become, under William Morris’ influence, an exclusive enterprise based on handmade goods and opposition to mechanization, The Aesthetic Movement became an expression of middle-class taste for Japonaise objects produced on an industrial scale. Household objects, such as china and pottery, were embellished with roundels, cherry blossom, cranes, fan shapes and other geometric patterns of the kind seen on Japanese fabrics and prints

Aesthetic Jug Pixlr4.jpg

A travelling salesman’s ‘flat’, showing Aesthetic Movement decoration of cherry blossom, fan shapes and roundels

Aesthetic bowl Pixlr.jpg

Victorian soup dish (actually, my porridge bowl) decorated with ‘Aesthetic’ motifs of sunflowers and cherry blossom.

One of Jeckyll’s first successes for Barnard Bishop and Barnards was his design for the Norwich Gates, shown in the International Exhibition, London 1862. The gates were then presented by the people of Norwich and Norfolk to the Prince of Wales (later, King Edward VII) as a wedding present and can still be seen at the queen’s country estate at Sandringham.

Smaller but more dramatically Aesthetic gates – showing repeated use of the fan shape – were designed for Sprowston Hall (now Sprowston Manor Hotel) just north of Norwich.

gates sprowston manor.jpg

The gates for Sprowston Manor are one of Jeckyll’s best realised Japanese designs. Some of the gold-painted roundels contain Jeckyll’s insignia (below).

jeckyll emblem sprowston gates_2.jpg

In addition to such individual pieces, Jeckyll’s designs reached the mass market in the form of cast-iron fireplaces in the Japanese style. Again, roundels are the predominant motif, the piece below showing various depictions of the sunflower’s mathematically-complex seed heads.

Jeckyll fireplace.jpg

Barnard Bishop and Barnards fireplace designed by Thomas Jeckyll. Note his symbol in the roundel top left. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service.

The insects imprinted within Jeckyll’s roundels are sometimes described as moths but they clearly have bulbs at the ends of their antennae as butterflies do but which moths – with feathery antennae – do not. The two initials B of the butterflies would have celebrated Jeckyll’s role as designer for Barnard and Bishop, as the firm was known when he was first associated with them.

butterfly antennae.jpg

The bulbs at the ends of these insects’ antennae are characteristic of butterflies.

Jeckyll worked with Charles Barnard of Barnard and Bishop from 1850 but when Barnard’s two sons joined the company in 1859 the firm used a four-bee motif as seen in the roundel on the fireplace below. The firm became Barnard Bishop and Barnards – note the ‘Barnards’, plural.

Jeckyll fireplace2.jpg

Jekyll-designed fireplace marked with the four-bee motif used by Barnard Bishop and Barnards. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service.

Barnards 4 bee emblem.jpg

Close-up of the four-bee emblem from the fireplace above

On a recent visit to the Costume and Textile Study Centre, Shirehall, Norwich (3), I was shown a working fireplace that had one time been boarded up in a store room. Its top left roundel contains four bees in a square, inside that are four letter Bs and at the centre a capital N, possibly for Norwich.

Barnards 4B symbol.jpg

A variation on the four-bee motif for Barnard Bishop and Barnards:  four insects, four capital Bs and a letter N.

Barnard fireplace.jpg

Registered design for a Jeckyll fireplace. The close-up of the four-bee symbol in the preceding image can just be seen in the top left roundel.

Although the four-bee motif relates to the enlarged ‘Barnards’ group, the two-butterfly symbol does not seem to have been appropriated by the earlier pairing of Barnard and Bishop and was clearly reserved for Jeckyll himself. Recently, I visited Saint Peter’s church Ketteringham, a few miles south of Norwich. Jeckyll is known to have restored the upper part of the tower in the early 1870s for the Boileau family of Ketteringham Hall. The churchwarden pointed out Jeckyll’s oriental-style monogram carved on one of the stone bosses terminating the eyebrows over the towers’ Gothic arches (below left). This monogram was also used in terracotta panels on the Lodge of Framingham Manor for which Jeckyll was the architect (2).The central image shows another defining symbol of The Aesthetic Movement – the sunflower – while the right-hand image shows his symbol of two-butterflies with interlocking antennae.

3 Jeckyll motifs.jpg

Three of Jeckyll’s symbols on stone bosses decorating the tower of Ketteringham Church, Norfolk: his initials, a sunflower and two butterflies

This demonstrates that Jeckyll used his two-butterfly motif independently of his metalwork with the Barnards; it also shows that he was using it more than ten years after Barnard and Bishop had expanded to four Bs.

Jeckyll’s family were Jeckells and Thomas changed his name, perhaps as an affectation, much as his Norfolk-born friend Frederick Sandys had elevated himself from Sands (2). Sandys’ paintings in the Pre-Raphaelite style can be seen in Norwich Castle Museum (4). It was Sandys who introduced Jeckyll to  a group of London aesthetes including George du Maurier (author of Trilby), the poet Algernon Swinburne, the artists Whistler and the Pre-Raphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

Jeckyll was employed by wealthy collector Frederick Leyland to design a room with extensive shelving  to display his collection of Chinese porcelain. Jeckyll re-fashioned the dining room in an eclectic style in keeping with the current Aesthetic  manner (2). It was lined with embossed leather thought to have come from Catton Hall, in Old Catton just outside Norwich. Another of Jeckyll’s signature motifs, the sunflower, was present in the form of two gilded andirons in the fireplace above which hung  Whistler’s appropriately entitled painting,  The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (5, 6).

Peacock Room 2.jpg

The Peacock Room painted by Whistler with Jeckyll’s sunflower andirons in the fireplace. The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, USA.

Since his early interactions with the Boileau family at Ketteringham Hall, Jeckyll had shown signs of unreliability. While decorating Leyland’s rooms his behaviour became increasingly erratic (7, 2) due to what is now recognised as severe manic-depression. In his absence Whistler took over the decoration. To achieve one of the high points of the Aesthetic Movement, ‘Harmony in Blue and Gold: the Peacock Room’, Whistler  overpainted Jeckyll’s leather-clad walls, shelving and even his sideboard. While the  result was undoubtedly splendid it effectively overwrote Jeckyll’s contribution to art history.

The press referred to this as Whistler’s room, a half-truth that Whistler himself seems to have been slow to correct, causing Jeckyll’s loyal friend Sandys to confront the American artist.  Whistler did, however, appear to have a begrudging admiration for Jeckyll’s work and his own famous, more ethereal, butterfly signature has been traced to the influence of Jeckyll’s earlier motif (6).

Whistler's butterfly signature.jpg

Whistler’s butterfly signature

Towards the end of his life Jeckyll spent time in Heigham Hall, a private asylum. heigham hall asylum.jpg

He returned to the family home in Park Lane, Norwich,  but Jeckyll’s father was also exhibiting extreme mania at this time so the family transferred Thomas to the Bethel Hospital, Norwich, where he eventually died in 1881.

Victorian attitudes to mental illness may have contributed to the lack of recognition due to Jeckyll but later scholarship helped to right this wrong (1, 2, 7). What is clear is that the Anglo-Japanese designs for Barnard Bishop and Barnards are indisputably Jeckyll’s and that the widespread sale of goods bearing his butterflies, roundels and sunflowers did much to bring the Aesthetic Movement to a broader public.

Sources

This post has relied heavily on the scholarship of Susan Weber Soros and Catherine Arbuthnott (2). I thank Shaz Hussain of the Norfolk Museums Service, Gressenhall, Norfolk for showing me the Jeckyll fireplaces in storage at Gressenhall, and Lisa Little for pointing out another Jeckyll fireplace in situ at the Costume and Textile Study Centre, Shirehall, Norwich. I am grateful to churchwarden Mary Parker for teaching me so much about Jeckyll’s work at Ketteringham.

Sources

1. The Aesthetic Movement (1973). Ed, Charles Spencer. Academy Editions London.

2. Soros, Susan Weber and Arbuthnott, Catherine. Thomas Jeckyll: Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. The Bard Graduate Centre for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York in association with Yale University Press, 2003.

3.The Costume and Textile Department, Castle Study Centre, Norfolk Museums Service.  http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/Visit_Us/Norwich_Castle_Study_Centre/index.htm

4.http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/Whats_On/Virtual_Exhibitions/Frederick_Sandys_and_the_Pre-Raphaelites/Sandys_and_the_Pre-Raphaelites/NCC081281

5. http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/peacock/2.htm.

6. For a highly-recommended interactive tour of The Peacock Room download this free app for iPad and iPhone: http://www.asia.si.edu/apps/

7. Merrill, Linda. The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art in association with Yale University Press, 1998.

Also, do visit Norfolk Museums Service Collections website: http://norfolkmuseumscollections.org

 

 

 

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