Croydon Public Library, Katharine Street CR9

The Braithwaite Hall above Croydon library is adorned with as much symbolic sculpture as could reasonably be fitted in, commissioned from Edwin Roscoe Mullins, a Londoner who studied at the Royal Academy and then in Vienna where he shared a studio with Onslow Ford.
The representative figures continue the theme of untilitarian service. From left to right, they are Health, Study, Religion, Recreation and Music, all helpfully labeled.

I particularly like Health. She holds a snake, the traditional symbol of healthcare, completely ignoring the way it is slithering over her lap. Her other hand holds a smoking censer.
On her right, a small girl is watched by her mother as she drinks from a public fountain. On her left, workmen lay the drains.

Education is represented by a number of lads from the Whitgift School, one being tutored by the Archbishop (I think).

Am I reading too much into this, or are the figures surrounding the allegorical female figure a bit subversive? The languid posture of the boy on the left, leaning on his mother's shoulder, radiates boredom and disbelief. On the right, Mother seems to be almost forcing her son onto his knees to pray.

 

 Recreation. Dancing for the girls and bloody cricket for the lads. So predictable.

Finally, Music is represented by St Cecilia with her organ, a violinist and cello on the left and a trio of choirboys on the right.

Croydon Town Hall, Katharine Street CR9

Eric Aumonier, sculptor of one of the invisible winds on 55 Broadway, came from a dynasty of architectural carvers founded by his grandfather William, who started the Aumonier Studio just off the Tottenham Court Road in 1876.









So it must have been Grandad who supplied the ornamental stonework for Croydon Town Office, built in 1892.
Croydon Town Hall is an uneasy mix of the pompous and prosaic. The enormous brick and stone building housing the Corporation Offices is a hymn to the civic grandeur of the new borough, but the heraldry over the porch is devoted to everyday priorities: policing, drains and municipal amenity areas.Even the borough's motto, Sanitate Crescamus ('May We Grow in Health') is strangely uninspiring, especially compared with neighbouring Wallington's Per Ardua ad Summa ('Through Difficulties to the Heights') or Carshalton's Animo ad Fide ('By Courage and Faith').

So the scrolls round the front door are labelled Education, Protection, Justice, Order, Sanitation and Recreation. It is all a bit Daily Mail.

London Underground, 55 Broadway SW1

Two of the Winds are not visible from street level, although you can get a sidelong glimpse of Eric Gill's East Wind from beside the bins down a rather unpleasant alley.

So here are a couple of shots from London Transport's archive, showing Gill's East Wind (above) and Eric Aumonier's South Wind (below) when the building was first unveiled.

London Underground, 55 Broadway SW1

The last two 'winds' that are still visible from street level are the North Wind by A.H. Gerrard and the West Wind by S. Rabinovitch.
Gerrard's North Wind (on the west side of the south wing) is a busty girl holding her hair as it trails in geometrical waves behind her. 'Gerry' Gerrard was in a position to observe how hair waved in the wind, having been an airman in the First World War, but he has clearly rejected naturalism for formal composition. He was steeped in Art Deco, designing a lot for ocean liners at the time. After the Second World War he became professor of sculpture at the Slade, spending considerable time scouring bomb sites for good carving stone.
Samuel Rabinovitch studied in Manchester, the Slade and Paris: the West Wind (on the south side of the east wing) was his first major commission. She sweeps in from the Atlantic with a gull.
He went on to carve some heads on the new Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street but then decided for some reason to abandon sculpture in favour of all-in wrestling and acting in films, under the nam Sam Rabin. He returned to art later, becoming drawing teacher at Goldsmiths' College.

London Underground, 55 Broadway SW1

Henry Moore contributed the West Wind on the north face of the east wing of 55 Broadway. It is the softest, most lyrical of all the figures, the least Art Deco and possibly the one that looks most to the future. But perhaps Moore was in a romantic mood - he was courting his future wife Irina at the time, and one of their first dates was to take her up the scaffolding to watch him carving it.
The East Wind on the south face of the west wing (confused yet?) is by Allan Wyon, a member of one of those families of sculptors that were such a feature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Wyon's father, grandfather and greatgrandfather had all been Engraver of Seals to the Monarch, and he followed in their footsteps but rather than take up the office took holy orders and spent the last decades of his life as vicar of Newlyn in Cornwall.
His East Wind is a dynamic figure of a man riding the rays of the rising sun, squeezing a balloon from which the wind is spreading over the earth.

London Underground, 55 Broadway SW1

Epstein's sculptures on the podium of the London Underground building might have got all the attention, but the allegorical figures along the parapet are by some equally distinguished artists including Eric Gill and Henry Moore. If Epstein's work had been up there as well, no-one would have noticed.
The figures illustrate the Four Winds, but because each wing has a wind on both sides, there are actually eight of them. Also, confusingly, because they are presented blowing out of the building, the South Winds are on the north wing, the East Winds on the west wing and so on. Because Winds are named for where they come from, now where they are going to. Clear?
Gill got three of these plum commissions, a brisk and chilly North Wind (above), the balmy and fecund South Wind (below) and the East Wind, but unfortunately that is now hidden from the street by a boring commercial block gratuitously put up right in front.

London Underground, 55 Broadway SW1

A treat on BBC4 tonight - at 8.30 in Art Deco Icons, David Heathcote looks at London's first skyscraper, Charles Holden's London Underground building, built in 1927.

It was controversial enough to have such a tall building so close to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, but Holden had to bring Jacob Epstein in to carve the lowest and most visible sculptures. Holden and his client Frank Pick knew what to expect - Holden had collaboarated with Epstein on the BMA building and had caused a mighty rumpus then.

And Epstein delivered. The figures, Day on the south face and Night on the north, are as powerful as anything he did, and attracted a storm of reactionary fury with all the usual newspaper leader columns advising men not to let their wives or daughters see these abominations.
The crime? The figure of Night shows a father being embraced by his son, who has a visible penis. In fact, his whole body is twisted round to make the penis visible. If he were simply giving Dad a hug he would be facing away from the public.
Just why this should be so offensive is not clear, considering the number of cocky cupids carved on any baroque church. It may have been its size - it is said that Epstein was forced to whittle the willy down to more acceptable proportions as the price of Frank Pick's survival in his job.
Removing the sculpture entirely would have been impractical - as with the BMA figures, they were carved in situ.

UPDATE David Heathcote said that Epstein had to remove an inch and a half off the poor boy's willy because rain ran down it and formed a perfect arc of water onto the pavement. I find this story entirely convincing.