ORNAMENTAL PASSIONS

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-27T20:56:00.001Z

The apertures between C.H. Mabey's bas-relief panels and down the dramatic verticals of the lift shafts are covered with grilles created by Walter Gilbert, designer of the great gates of Buckingham Palace and the classical figures on the RSA, cousin of Sir Alfred Gilbert (the Eros man) and father of Donald (carver of one of the figures on the New Adelphi).
The smaller grilles mainly depict bats and squirrels, for some reason. Other motifs are birds and signs of the zodiac.
Walter Gilbert also designed a rather lovely set of bronze friezes featuring exotic birds, but their setting over the shop's doors means they are partly obscured by signs and the lights cause terrible reflections. What is the listing system for if it doesn't force owners of historic buildings to arrange things so they can be photographed effectively? Action now!

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-17T19:39:00.000Z

The last pair of bas-reliefs by Charles Mabey are reprises of subjects he has visited before. Perhaps he didn't care so much because they are round the back.
Top is another couple of men digging a hole in the road. Below, a pair of brickies clad the steel frame.
Despite the repetitions, this set of images must be one of London's least known masterpieces. I certainly never appreciated them until I managed to look at them closely by the wonder of telephoto and digital imaging.

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-16T20:48:00.000Z

Postmen heave sacks of mail here, perhaps sending out the catalogues that were being printed further round the building.
And another new trade - motor mechanics work on a rather grand automobile with an early 'cherished plate' DT 1932.
Cherished plates go right back to the early days of motoring. A popular joke in 1914 was:
"What does the Kaiser have on his number plate?" "2L."
"And what does the Crown Prince have on his number plate? 2L2!"
They don't write them like that any more, thank heavens.

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-15T19:54:00.000Z

At last, a trade that was entirely new when Derry and Toms was built, although the plane with its open cockpit, fixed undercarriage and manual starting (chocks away, Ginger!) already give the image a nostalgic, primeval atmosphere.

It is not entirely clear what the guys below are doing. They seem to be baling something, wool perhaps? The worker with his back to us is tending some sort of machine while his mate is hauling a huge bag away.

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-14T21:14:00.000Z

Above, bricklayers wearing traditional bricklayers' flat caps. Below, lumberjacks wearing something that is nothing like the hats lumberjacks used to wear in films of the great outdoors.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-13T22:36:00.000Z

At this point, Charles Mabey seems to have run out of ideas, time or money (or any combination of these essential elements of any artistic project). We have been here before, on the other side of the building.

Derry and Toms, Kensington W8

2012-01-12T20:44:00.002Z

The plastic arts, here. Above, potters throw and decorate a pot. Below, builders mix and pour concrete. It's an odd coupling - the potters get respect for their art, good money and it's inside work with no heavy lifting. For the builders it is the complete opposite.

Derry and Toms, Kenstington W8

2012-01-11T17:27:00.001Z

Here are printers bashing out the Derry and Toms annual Christmas gift catalogue. Below, silversmiths decorate urns.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-10T08:32:00.000Z

The panels at the eastern end of the main front of Derry and Toms show work on what would today be called 'infrastructure'. Two men wield pneumatic drills (above) without the benefit of ear defenders - yesterday's heroes, today's deaf old gits.

The workers below seem to have a much safer job, although I'm not sure exactly what it is. Assembling a transformer, perhaps? Or is it a boiler?

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-08T18:59:00.000Z

Wool was a major material for Derry and Toms, and here are some sheepshearers getting the raw material. They are using electric clippers, but the artist has simplified them so they look more like combs with hoses attached. It is probably in Australia.
The image below would be instantly nixed by the PR department these days. It shows trappers skinning a bear they have just shot, probably in Canada.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-07T20:27:00.000Z

More images of workers on the Derry and Toms building. Above, masons prepare a massive bit of cornice for hoisting into position. Below, a block of stone is levered into place.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-06T18:33:00.000Z

Derry and Toms was an early example of the American store system of big open interiors with the lifts and stairs at the edges. This was made possible by a steel frame, as being built by the workers above. Note absence of safety harnesses, hard hats or safety glasses.
Below, a joiner and his mate trim a panel with a plane.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-05T12:18:00.000Z

Indian cotton was a big line in Derry and Toms. If these reliefs are a true reflection of the trade, the cotton was picked and spun by women but the men seem to be 'supervising'.
Ghandi was campaigning against the cotton trade at the time, pointing out that cotton grown and picked in India would be shipped to Britain for spinning and weaving, to be shipped back to India for sale to the rich. Almost all of the wages and profit was made and spent in Britain.
These reliefs show a different angle - the cotton is being spun and woven in India (the guy on the right is examining a sample of cloth) and sold to rich people in London. Still, I'm willing to bet that most of the profit went to Derry and Toms.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-04T08:12:00.000Z

Blacksmiths and Miners. Love the flat caps.

Derry and Toms, Kensington High Street W8

2012-01-03T16:21:00.000Z

Once upon a time, most of Kensington High Street was Barker's. Even Derry and Toms was a branch of Barker's, despite being right next door.

Barker's was one of those operations that grew by gobbling up all the neighbours, and at one point it covered a vast area from the north side of Kensington Square to the High Street. Derry and Toms was one of the victims, and in the 1920s it needed a new store to replace the rabbit-warren of properties it had acquired over the decades. Barker's resident architect, Bernard George, designed a facade of Beaux Art proportions but Art Deco detail. The inside was designed on the latest American principles with huge floor spaces held up by columns at regular intervals. Construction began in 1929.
The frieze at the top contains a line of lovely bas-reliefs depicting trades associated with construction, transport and the materials sold in the shop. They are by Charles Henry Mabey Junior, the last of one of the family firms that used to dominate architectural sculpture.
It seems a shame they are so far away from the ground - you really need binoculars to see them and photographing them is difficult. They must have looked very impressive in the drawings George presented to the Barker's board, however.
There are no fewer than 29 of them, so I will be doling them out two at a time for the next fortnight or so, starting at the west end and proceding more or less round the building.
Identifying the trades is a matter of guesswork, because I have been unable to find a definitive list. The first shows a pair of foundrymen pouring molten metal into a mould - note their fireproof boots.
The next (below) shows one of them mixing the ladle while the other adds a bucketload of material.

Oriental Club, Stratford Place W1

2011-12-30T10:33:00.000Z

Stratford Place was built in the 1770s as a sort of top-end buy-to-let scheme with terraces of houses framing and funding a grand mansion at the centre.
The name on the drawings is Richard Edwin, but the real designer may well have been the client, the Hon. Edward Stratford, an Irish politician who later became the 2nd Earl of Aldeborough. His hobbies were architecture and quarreling with his family.
Stratford not only named the development after himself but placed his coat of arms in the pediment, on a banner displayed by Mars (Stratford was not a military man but his father was). Fame blows her trumpet while shaking Mars by the hand, which is about as difficult to do as rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time.
Those ox-skulls in the frieze below are called bucrania, by the way. Technically, they should only be used in the Doric order, not the Ionic, but that is what happens when amateur architects call the shots.

St Martin's School of Art, Charing Cross Road WC2

2011-12-19T21:49:00.000Z

St Martin's School of Art had its front door at the other end of the building from the College for the Distributive Trades and, as befits the more prestigious institution, has a much bigger entrance. Oddly, however, it has just four panels by Adolfine Ryland against the counter-jumpers' eight.
They are simple small heads, much more self-consciously 'arty'. St Martin is there, as might be expected, with a rather grand-looking couple in Renaissance dress and a crazy scowling lady with a scarf on her head and a flower between her teeth.

College for the Distributive Trades, Charing Cross Road WC2

2011-12-17T19:02:00.000Z

By the 1930s, science had arrived in shopkeeping, mainly in food, to protect the public and improve the products with longer shelf life and better presentation. Of course, all the scientists were men. Adolfine Ryland shows the boffin above doing some sort of experiment with a retort, possibly pasteurising milk or something, and the scientist at the right seems to be examining a fabric under a microscope.
But women's employment was changing too. The seamstress at her sewing machine is doing a job regarded as suitable for underpaid girls since forever, of course, but the cashier examining a ledger at her desk is doing a responsible job that many men would have regarded women as too irresponsible and featherheaded to do just a few decades earlier.

College for the Distributive Trades, Charing Cross Road WC2

2011-12-15T22:02:00.000Z

It would be easy to dismiss the College for the Distributive Trades as a place offering five minute courses teaching checkout girls how to smile sweetly and say hello when you get to the front of the queue, but shop work in the 19th century involved an enormous range of skills in the days before the pre-packaging of everything.
In 1939 it moved into modern accommodation (by E.P. Wheeler) that it shared with St Martin's School of Art. The door was decorated with eight carved panels by Adolfine Ryland, mainly remembered as an artist and printmaker.
The panels show occupations that are now as dead as tallow chandlers or cordwainers. Top left, a draper's assistant draws fabric from a bolt of cloth. Top right, a grocer's assistant puts lids on jars.
The trades that still exist are centre left and right, where window dressers work with lay figures.
The young man on the left wrestles with a torse, while the lady on the right adjusts a wig on a head.
But what a contrast with today's window dressers, who wear jeans and T-shirts - these butterflies are in full formal wear, and their hair is styled, dressed and held in place with regimental discipline.

County Hall SE1

2011-10-27T08:43:00.000+01:00

Whatever the politicians and public think about the sculpture on County Hall, everyone loves the South Bank Lion. Few realise it was created to advertise beer, having been modelled by William Woodington in 1837 for the Red Lion Brewery. The brewery was demolished to make way for the Festival Hall, and the lion was saved on the personal intervention of George V. After a spell next to Waterloo Station, it came to rest on the approach to Waterloo Bridge in the 1960s. The surface of the Coade stone is as crisp today as it was when it was cast, despite the removal of the red paint that it was originally coated with.

County Hall SE1

2011-10-26T08:14:00.001+01:00

Open Spaces

Hardiman's last two sculptures on County Hall are 'Open Spaces' and 'Education', both very important topics at a time when large tracts of London were industrial dynamos and children were supposed to be going to work not mucking about in the park.
That such an unusually dramatic, even hysterical, commission drew to a close in harmony was largely due to Hardiman's diplomatic skills. Ironically, he was himself to become in the 1930s the centre of a much greater national storm over his memorial to Earl Haig in Whitehall, with one former general describing it as 'a travesty of the Elgin marbles' in a letter to The Times.

Education

County Hall SE1

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000+01:00

Town Planning

Child Education

On the departure of Ernest Cole, the committee in charge of the County Hall project brought in another young London sculptor, Alfred Hardiman, to produce the figures on the northern end of the building.
Hardiman was just back from studying in Rome and where he been deeply impressed by Etruscan art and early Greek sculpture. The influence is already visible in his work at County Hall. Otherwise, he returned to the Victorian tradition of figurative, aspiring sculpture illustrating the work of local authorities. On the Belvedere Road facade is Town Planning, a strong, determined, far-sighted man holding a giant pair of dividers over an unformed rock, ready to be carved into a new city.
Child Education, on the northern facade, illustrates one of the difficulties that both Cole and Hardiman faced - the setting their work was placed in. Windows are never a satisfactory background for sculpture - the brightness of the sky's reflection means the detail is washed out, as shown in the photograph despite a good deal of photoshopping.

County Hall SE1

2011-10-23T17:13:00.000+01:00

Untitled group

Ernest Cole's remaining sculptures at County Hall are more conventional than the others, but just as mysterious.
The untitled group on the southern end of the river front consists of a pair of muscly coves holding a swag of fruit. As several critics noted, they seem to be exerting far too much effort on an easy task.
Round the back at the southern end of the Belvedere Road facade, 'Hero' is depicted as an archer. His hairstyle and moustache are strangely 1960s.

Hero

County Hall SE1

2011-10-22T10:00:00.001+01:00

Untitled Group - said to be 'Benevolence and Humanity'

Sculpture commissioned by local authorities usually depicts either local history (such as Middlesex Guildhall or Wandsworth Town Hall) or aspirations like Social Justice, Welfare, Health etc (see Southwark Health Centre). Ernest Cole broke the rules so comprehensively at County Hall that even his supporters found it difficult to classify or even identify his subjects.
The politicians were frankly bemused. In 1920 Alderman Cotton tabled a series of questions for debate, including "Are the figures unclothed as a protest against the monstrous price of clothes?...Do their positions, crowded on precarious perches outside the windows, indicate the lack of housing accommodation?"
The untitled group on Westminster Bridge Road attracted his particular ire: "The two muscular citizens have such despairing looks on their faces they appear to be preparing to hurl a bomb at the Houses of Parliament."
Cole never gave the group a title, but in the draft response to the Alderman's questions the management team called them 'Benevolence and Humanity'. They certainly don't look very benevolent, and the extraordinary globes they carry support writhing bodies in very odd attitudes. They do look a bit like ornate hand grenades.

The other group on the Westminster Bridge Road facade, 'World Beyond', is supposed to represent humanity supporting the world. Three shrugged, downward-looking, muscular men hold a globe surrounded by symbols of uncertain import. On top, a pair of bronze figures adopt painfully grotesque poses. For a symbol of a forward-looking local authority, it is deeply pessimistic.

Alderman Cotton never got his debate but the tide was clearly turning against Cole.

'World Beyond'

County Hall SE1

2011-10-21T12:29:00.002+01:00

"River Thames" by Ernest Cole

County Hall was London's alternative parliament over the water. In the great war between right and left in the 1980s the Greater London Council under 'Red' Ken Livingstone set itself up in opposition to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who responded by brutally executing it and ordering the building to be converted into tourist facilities, the political equivalent of planting the soil with salt.
The facades, however, remain just as they were, with a fascinating array of sculpture that tells a story of artistic ambition, personal frailty, political interference and furious debates over taste and aesthetics.

The building was designed as the home of the London County Council in 1908 by architect Ralph Knott, who chose a rising star of sculpture, Ernest Cole, to produce a series of aspiring figures for the main elevations. Cole was only 24, straight out of the South Kensington Art School, where his work had been noticed by Charles Ricketts and others. So commissioning him with a major sequence of works was a brave gamble.

"Creation of Eve" by Cole

Construction started in 1912, so it was 1915 by the time Cole's sculptures were required. He started at a rush, completing five groups and most of a sixth in just 18 months despite having joined the army, which left only weekends for art. Most of the actual carving was done by his assistant Peter Induni.
At this point disaster struck. Cole was sent to the Western Front.
The artistic establishment was aghast that a talent of such promise was being put in harm's way and pressure was applied to transfer him to the much safer Intelligence Corps. In that capacity he was sent to America. On the way met a widowed lawyer called Laurie Manly and fell in love. Laurie decided Cole was a modern artistic genius ranking with Epstein and would devote her life to protecting his interests. Cole rejected his old friends such as Ricketts and struck out into abstract art. Ricketts said he had "gone over to the enemy."
After the war, Cole resumed work but he was a changed man. He had lost his drive and failed to meet deadlines, and he needed more money to cope with post-war inflation. Requests for extra payments were backed up by furious letters from his lawyer wife.

"Child Education" by Hardiman

In nearly two years he finished the incomplete group and provided only one more, which he carved without having supplied Knott with a plaster maquette for approval. Knott rejected it as unsuitable.

A major row ensued. Members of the LCC were getting worried about the escalating costs and many dismissed Cole's completed works as incomprehensible modern rubbish.

Knott counter-attacked by getting a group of luminaries including the poet and art critic Laurence Binyon (of We will Remember Them fame) to rally round in Cole's defence. For this, he was rewarded with a letter from Mrs Cole accusing him of having spent the war in safety in London drawing two salaries while her husband was defending his country.

By this time things had broken down irretrievably and the contract was terminated. The Coles retreated to a bungalow near Canterbury, rarely leaving except for a brief period at the beginning of the second world war when they were interned because of their open admiration for Mussolini and the Fascists.

To complete the project, Knott and the LCC brought in Alfred Hardiman, sculptor of the Haig statue in Whitehall, whose work was much more accessible.

Colet Court, Hammersmith Road W6

2011-10-11T12:42:00.000+01:00

John Colet was the Dean of St Pauls in the 16th century. A friend of Erasmus and a member of the reformist tendency in the Catholic Church, he founded St Paul's School and endowed it with a large part of the fortune he inherited from his City merchant father (he had no family - as an ordained priest he was celibate and all 21 of his siblings had died).
In the late 19th century the school had decamped to Hammersmith and was housed in a magnificent building by the great Alfred Waterhouse. The junior school, named after Colet despite the fact that it was actually founded by one Samuel Bewsher in 1881 was housed in a building across the road, designed in 1890 by architect W.H. Spaull of Oswestry. In 1968 the schools moved to their current campus in Barnes and the Waterhouse building was scandalously demolished except for the High Master's House. Colet Court was converted into offices.
A bust of the Dean is positioned at the centre of the facade, but for me the most charming part of the building is the skyline with its fancy Tudor chimneys and terracotta falcon.

18-21 Northumberland Avenue WC2

2011-10-06T12:25:00.002+01:00

India and south east Asia are represented by the Star of India with a lotus flower at its centre, Ceylon with an elephant and Burma with a peacock. Baker did not list the Buddhist Stupa or the garlanded ox.

As well as the portal guardians by Sir Charles Wheeler, the former Royal Commonwealth Society building is decorated with six roundels containing emblems of its various peoples. At the time (1934) it was the Royal Empire Society, created to foster the idea of a new empire on Roman lines with citizenship available to all but the British at the top (naturally).

The symbolism is explained by the architect, Sir Herbert Baker, in a revealing article "Symbolic Constellation of the Empire", that he wrote for United Empire, the journal of the society. He discusses in detail a set of roundels in wood inside the building, which repeat most of the symbols on the facade.

In the absence of a full set of official heraldry, Baker had to make it up as he went along. He remarks dryly that if he had had to wait for the Colonial Office and the College of Arms the building would never be complete.

The roundels were carved by Joseph Armitage, who also worked with Baker on South Africa House and war graves in Flanders. The next year he would go on to design the National Trust's famous oak leaf symbol.

Africa, with the stars of the Southern Cross. A winged springbok for South Africa. The source of the Nile is shown between what looks like the pyramids but in fact is intended to be Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon. The soapstone birds are 'column sentinels' at Great Zimbabwe. Baker describes the heads as 'two types of natives, the more backward Negroid type and that with a blend of northern blood and civilization'. In 1934 racism was not just for Germans, clearly.

Britain includes England, Scotland, Wales and also Ireland, despite Ireland having been independent for more than ten years by the time the building was erected. The cross is for Malta and the rock is Gibraltar.

Canada is given a new symbol, a cross with maple leaves and maple seed pods in the middle, overlain with symbols of the main immigrant groups, the English, Scots, Irish and French. The natives don't get a look-in. The cod represent the Newfoundland fisheries, already under threat from over-fishing, and the full-rigged sailing ship is heading back from the West Indies.

Oceania is represented by the Southern Cross around the Silver Fern of New Zealand. The shells and lateen-rigged boats are Polynesia and Melanesia.

The Southern Cross (again) with a Wattle for Australia. The Palm Tree is for the islands of the Eastern Sea including Borneo, and the anchor is for the Naval Ports of Hong Kong and Singapore.

I sent the picture of the Indian roundel to Peter Berthoud of that great blog Discovering London, who used it in his entertaining Weekend Elephant puzzle. I was surprised nobody got it, given that it is just off Trafalgar Square, but they are rather high up.

Many thanks to Rachel Rowe, archivist of the RCS archive at Cambridge University, and Ruth Craggs, author of a very helpful article on the history of Commonwealth buildings.

French Protestant Church, Soho Square W1

2011-09-30T17:18:00.001+01:00

The French Protestant Church in London was founded in 1550 when the child-king Edward VI, guided by Lord Protector Somerset, issued a charter establishing a strangers' church at the former Augustinian monastery in Austin Friars, in the City. The aim was to attract Protestant theologians and scholars experiencing persecution on the Continent.
Unfortunately, the congregation of all nations soon experienced the usual language difficulties and the Francophone faction decamped to Threadneedle Street.
The church was hugely boosted by the arrival in England of an estimated 50,000 Huguenots, exiled after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. They brought with them many hugely valuable skills and the word refugee.
After a peripatetic period in Victorian times they built the current church in 1893 to the designs of Sir Aston Webb. Soho was chosen partly because of its strong expatriate French population (the House of Barnabas on the other corner of Soho Square was immortalised by Dickens as the house of Dr Manette in Tale of Two Cities).
To celebrate the quadricentennial of the charter in 1950, the tympanum of the entrance door was filled with a delightful carving by John Prangnell.
A boatload of Huguenots is shown docking at Dover, the helmsman waving and cheering at their successful escape from religious tyranny. Not all are happy, however - a pair of faces looks gloomily out of the cabin window, as if they have been horribly ill for the entire voyage.
The escaping Protestants face one more trial on their journey to religious freedom - that gangplank looks very precarious. A woman in clogs carries a spinning wheel, indicating the silk production that was a Huguenot speciality.
Inside Dover Castle, a pair of Huguenot leaders in 17th century dress are met by Edward VI in Tudor garb, signing his charter. It is a shameless mess of anachronisms.

123 Cannon Street EC4

2011-09-23T20:26:00.000+01:00

Herbert Huntly-Gordon was an architect who decided to branch out into property development, that being the classic route to huge wealth.
He worked with Doulton to create a rough brown terracotta that would be hard-wearing, cheap and suitable for the free Renaissance-Tudor-Arts'n'Crafts style he favoured.
Right along the top of this block runs a a pair of of terracotta panels depicting charming little putti playing at work.
The chubby little chappies to the west (above) are importing and selling woollen cloth, carrying bales from boats and laying it out for a buyer who seems to be wearing nothing but a bag of money.
The panel on the west (below) shows a group of nudist potters making a terracotta urn and carving slabs of clay into ornamental panels. A kiln blazes merrily to the left, and a massive gear wheel indicates they are using steam power for the wheels.

18-21 Northumberland Avenue WC2

2011-09-18T13:56:00.002+01:00

Citadines Trafalgar Square is one of that curious new species of property speculation, the apart-hotel. The idea is that you buy a suite in it, so when you are in residence you get all the services of a top hotel and when you aren't they rent it out. Sounds like a recipe for the hotel to offload the capital risk onto investors and charge them an arm and a leg for services too - brilliant!

The building was created for a nobler purpose, as the headquarters of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Originally it was "a meeting place for gentlemen interested in colonial and Indian affairs" but has morphed into an educational charity. These days it perches in the Commonwealth Club along the road at No 25.

Built in 1934 to a dull design of Sir Herbert Baker, it features a pair of nude men supporting the balcony over the main entrance. These are much better, dynamic and forceful, the weight of the balcony held by the arms resting on the knees. Could they be pictures of Wheeler's favorite model, Tony Assirati?
As a bonus, the keystone over the door features a pair of merlions, mythical creatures that crop up in Etruscan and Indian art as well as Western heraldry. They appear in the arms of the East India Company and the cities of Great Yarmouth and Manilla.

In the 1960s the merlion was adopted as the symbol of the Singapore Tourist Board and nowadays it is protected by law in that country.

Art under the yoke

2011-09-03T23:08:00.003+01:00

The new Girl with an Oar in Moscow

A fascinating story of how art gets perverted under dictatorships has evolved in Russia.
In 1934, Ivan Shadr created a gigantic statue for Moscow's Gorky Park. 'Girl with an Oar' was 23ft tall and symbolised the beauty, strength and nobility of Soviet athletes. She turns on her heel, holding the oar upright, poised, bold, fearless and as sexy as anything by Canova.

Imitation Girl with an Oar in Yekaterinburg

Shadr was approved by Stalin, to the extent that anyone was approved by that psychopath, but times were changing. Soviet art had been at the forefront of the modern movement but now Social Realism was imposed by the censors and sex was out.
Girl with an Oar was banished to the Ukraine and subsequently disappeared. Shadr had to create a replacement in a more chastely classical style. That version was destroyed by a German shell in the Great Patriotic War.
But Girl with an Oar was fabulously popular. Regional governors throughout the Soviet Union commissioned third-rate carvers to churn them out for town halls, parks and lidos in their own cities. But they were much more careful not to offend the censors, cladding their girls in swimsuits and even tracksuits. 'Girl with an Oar' became shorthand for Soviet kitsch.
Amazingly, Girl with an Oar has made a comeback, courtesy of nostalgia for Soviet style, capitalism and sport.
Shadr made a plaster copy of his masterpiece which was later cast in bronze, and the bronze was located by the Russian Amateur Rowing Association. They have now commissioned a life-size (6ft 7in) copy that has been placed in Gorky Park overlooking the finishing line of Moscow regattas.
Shadr's girl is back, as sexy as ever.
The moral?
Art will survive?
Despotism fosters mediocrity?
Capitalists have similar tastes to communists?
Naked ladies are always popular?

Thanks to Hear the Boat Sing for the heads-up.

Hammersmith Carnegie Library, Shepherds Bush Road W6

2011-09-02T11:56:00.000+01:00

Hammersmith Library was built in 1905 by Henry Hare, an architect who specialised in municipal buildings.
The Free Style design has a central hall with pavilions at each end, lavishly decorated with allegorical sculpture by Frederick Schenk.

The right-hand pavilion has women representing literature and art. Literature has a book open on her lap, and sits next to a pile of tomes with a massive inkwell balanced rather precariously on top - an accident waiting to happen, I think. Art is sketching a Greek fragment - you can even see the outline on her pad.

The left-hand pavilion has a figure of Craft with a spinning wheel - note Schenk's signature.

Finally, Science (in a stroke of unconscious sexism, the only male figure) holds a pair of dividers. And I'm a bobtailed ptarmigan if those aren't the telescope and celestial globe that appear in Schenk's previous work at 37 Harley Street. Perhaps Schenk had a collection of science gear knocking around in his props cupboard for this sort of commission.

Graven images of the twin gods of English Culture, Milton and Shakespeare, are set up in the attic colonnade.

According to an academic paper, 'Free Classicism in the Edwardian library' by Clare Sherriff, the symbolism is highly significant: "Allied to the issue of freedom; the 'free' libraries were a political metaphor for the libertarian issues that dominated the period.

The race of nations and supremacy of empire created a political necessity for the libraries. Sculptural linguistics, such as Schenck's statues of Milton and Shakespeare at the Hammersmith library (1905) acted as semiotic bait. The Edwardian sculptor, often marginalised, is objectified by the research, which aims to map new meanings and connections to the Edwardian library."

So, all is clear.

37 Harley Street W1

2011-08-31T08:31:00.000+01:00

The bay window on the Queen Anne Street facade is decorated with the figures of Day and Night, again by Frederick Schenk.

Day is a woman reclining in a Roman-style columned attic, catching a few rays. She holds something in her right hand - a notebook? an abacus?

Night is an astronomer with a telescope and a celestial globe. The sky is studded with stars that look like paper stars cut out by a child and pasted to the window. He supports his elbow on a pile of books, presumably star atlases.

37 Harley Street W1

2011-08-28T09:48:00.000+01:00

It is difficult to discern a theme in the various low relief panels on the facade on Beresford Pite's building. Often, the original occupier gives a clue but I haven't been able to discover who that was.
On the upper storey of the corner bay window, Frederick Schenk has placed a pair of female figures of Spring and Autumn on either side of the Angel of Judgement with her scales and sword.
The lower storey has a female spreading out a scroll, flanked by children carrying a posy and a torch. She could be a personification of Fame.
To her left is a man wearing a laurel wreath sitting in front of a line of volumes marked Homer and Milton, who must be Poetry. To Fame's right is a rather ambivalent figure clasping his brow in one hand and a slim volume in the other. Could this be a poet that Fame has overlooked - a mute inglorious Milton, possibly?

37 Harley Street W1

2011-08-25T20:46:00.000+01:00

Frederick Emil Eberhard Schenck was, as you might expect from the name, a native of Edinburgh (his father was an artist who had emigrated from Germany).
He began his career in the plastic arts as a modeler for various potteries in Stoke on Trent but his particular specialism, a technique called pate-sur-pate, fell out of favour because of its very high costs. So he left Stoke for London and set up as an architectural sculptor.
In 1899 he was commissioned by the architect Beresford Pite to carve the decoration on a particularly ornate office block on Harley Street.
The corner site is emphasised by an oriel window with an implied cupola on top, with an aspiring female wearing a cowl and holding her arm aloft amid what seem to be palm leaves.
More later....

Corinthia Hotel, Northumberland Avenue WC2

2011-08-14T21:31:00.085+01:00

The Corinthia Hotel was built as the super-de-luxe Hotel Metropole in 1883 to designs by Francis and JE Saunders. It was patronised by the Prince of Wales who used to entertain in the royal suite, believed to be behind the bay window above the main entrance.

After decades as government offices, the building finally reverted to its original use earlier this year, after a bit of a hiccup when it was found the hotel company's largest shareholder is...the Libyan government, whose assets are frozen.
The restoration of the building included the cleaning of these two lovely figures in the spandrels of the arch over the former front door (the main entrance is now round the corner). They are by Henry Hugh Armstead, a sculptor who began his career as a silversmith.
Both figures represent London. On the left is the City, a queen in classical garb holding a winged staff in her right hand. She used to hold a torch in her left but it seems to have disappeared. Behind her loom Big Ben and the dome of St Paul's.
On the right is Old Father Thames brandishing a trident and holding his urn, from which the river perpetually springs. A swan swims at his feet. Behind him can be glimpsed the White Tower and a ship.
The underside of Bertie's bay window is decorated with a lively frieze of water babies playing with hippocampi.

Old War Office, Whitehall SW1

2011-08-10T19:21:00.001+01:00

Alfred Drury's final group for the old War House consists of the Sorrow of Peace and the Winged Messenger of Peace.
I have to say the symbolism eludes me. Is Drury saying that peace with poverty and injustice is as bad as war? What message is the little winged chap bringing, exactly?
The magazine The Studio was admiring but vague in a 1906 article:

"He has avoided the theatrical taint with memorable discretion, and yet he has found in the subjects suggested by the purpose to which the building he has adorned will be applied ample inspiration for sculpture which embodies the vital points in the drama of Peace and War. Each of the figures and each of the groups signifies something that is nobly imagined and finely thought out; each is an independent and original conception; and yet each one takes its proper place in the story which the whole series sets forth, and takes it as rightly as the work itself agrees with the architectural design."

Lots more from this article at VictorianWeb.

Old War Office, Whitehall SW1

2011-08-06T09:11:00.002+01:00

Victory and Fame are much more the type of subject one might expect to find on a military building, but once again Alfred Drury treats them in a curiously downbeat fashion. Victory holds a tiny figure of the goddess Nike and a laurel wreath, but she is pensive rather than exultant. Fame inscribes names on her scroll with a pen.

Old War Office, Whitehall SW1

2011-08-03T20:12:00.000+01:00

Truth, proverbially the first casualty of war, sits on the War House with her mirror in one hand and a closed, unalterable book in the other, together with the fragrant flowers that are the fruits of truth.
Justice does not hold her usual attributes of sword and scales and is (correctly) not blindfold: she holds the book of judgement with a tree emblazoned on the cover. Note Alfred Drury's signature.

Old War Office, Whitehall SW1

2011-07-31T10:40:00.002+01:00

This figure by Alfred Drury, Horrors of War, is remarkable in itself but doubly remarkable for its date and position. It was carved about 1900 when jingoism was at it height, the Second Boer War was raging and the arms race that would lead to the First World War was getting into its stride. So what is an image like Horrors of War doing on the headquarters of British militarism?
The building was designed by the Glasgow architect William Young and completed after his death in 1900 by his son Clyde. In all respects apart from the sculpture the design is standard British Imperial Baroque with giant columns and a dome at each corner. One would have expected the sculptural adornment to be either military impedimenta (displays of swords, spears, shields, flags etc), classical heroes or depictions of great British victories. What we have is a series of eight contemplative, serious, quiet allegories of war and peace that were extremely unfashionable at the time.
In Horrors of War, a woman looks aghast at a skull. Her left hand rests on a poniard, point down in the ground. Her cloak billows around her, giving a movement that accentuates the horrific atmosphere.
Next to her sits Dignity of War, a woman wearing a helmet and armed with sword and shield. She is not triumphant and there is no hint of glorification of war: she sits quiet and pensive. The other figures in the series (for subsequent posts) are equally ambiguous.
What was the public reaction to these images at the time? There seems to have been none. Quite possibly nobody noticed them, perched as they are just under the skyline of this tall building. Nobody notices them now.

33 New Bond Street W1

2011-07-17T11:48:00.000+01:00

The scaffolding has come down from the new Richard Green gallery, revealing a neo-Classical facade by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture. It is pure Soane, with his typical Grecian incised pilasters and acroteria.

The main decorative element is a relief in three panels by Alexander Stoddart, depicting the last voyage and death of Odysseus as foretold by the spirit of the blind seer Tiresias (who appears on the left of the main panel).

The work is in stark constrast to Henry Moore's screen only a few yards away. Moore rejected a relief, saying it would be "using the position only as a hoarding for sticking on a stone poster."

Stoddart has no problem with stone posters. His relief is not just a poster, it's a polemic, an allegory of the descent of art into modernism. He kindly explained the symbolism for me:

Dear Chris,
In my work Odysseus tends to mean one thing in the emblematic line – and that is classical art itself. In this function Odysseus appears in the friezes I made for the new Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace some years ago, and here in New Bond Street the same thing happens.
Many years ago, in the solitude of my studio, I set myself the mental task of figuring out an emblematic scheme of decoration for a gallery of modern art. I asked myself how this might be done, and how the idiom of neo-classicism might approach this imaginary commission. In view of the extreme lengths modern art has taken to distance itself from its origin in Greece , the Prophecy of Teiresias, found in the Book of the Dead in the Odyssey, sprang to mind. This is where the ghost of the Theban prophet describes a scenario in the aftermath of Odysseus’s return to Ithaca in which, after the great slaughter of the Suitors, he must take up his oar and travel away again; away and away into a land of cornfields, where the people do not use salt in their cooking. There he will be stopped by a man on a path and asked why he carries a winnowing fan on his shoulder – and by this mistaking of the most commonplace object to be found in Greece, Odysseus will know that he is in a land where the sea is unknown and so is as far from Greece as can be imagined. (Ultimately, Homer is describing a place north of the Black Sea, in the heart of the Ukraine or suchlike steppe.) When the man asks him this, he should stop, plant his oar in the ground and make of it a makeshift altar to Poseidon, the god against whom he originally transgressed when he put out the single eye of the Cyclops, son of Poseidon. Before this “altar” (an oar, set in the middle of the endless prairie; an image of considerable pathos) Odysseus must make sacrifice, after which he will return to Ithaca to die in his bed. The three panels on the building represent this story, this prophecy.
The allegory is simple. Odysseus (art) enters an era inaugurated by a great slaughter (the Great War). After this, art travels to a region completely alien to Ithaca ( Greece ), where the customary things are entirely unknown (modernist culture). The oar (the Grecian Thing) is set up in a geographically distant location, as the very building upon which this allegory is played out, as it happens, sits in a time and culture terribly distant from the original conditions (the pathos of the oar in the steppe). Odysseus returns to die in his bed – and here a prophecy upon a prophecy appears; for the resolution of the struggle in rest and dying strikes to the heart of what a return for our culture to the proper terms of art will necessarily entail – namely the recovery of the non-stimulative function of art; the will-stilling, renunciatory purpose of aesthetic experience, and the re-integration of death into our culture, as against the overwhelmingly philistine life-lust of the last century’s parade of cultural mischief.
In this last respect the work is highly Schopenhaurian; art is a “Sabbath” in the penal servitude of the world’s willing; a momentary arrestment of the Ixion’s Wheel of life-affirmation; a little death. True artists are those who take the pessimistic stand; they comprehend the nature of the world’s suffering. But they are not “pessimistic” in the vulgar, optimistic sense; in fact, to be true they must try to be cheerful and ready to pat the dog! Pessimism, in the proper philosophical sense, is in fact a eudaemonology; a programme for the happy life. Optimism, on the other hand, is a programme for the setting up of camps, and optimistic people are so often wilfully miserable in demeanour. But look how the Dali Llama (God bless him) smiles so! This is because Buddhism is the most pessimistic of all the world outlooks. I believe that there are two waves of modernism, the first (to which I belong) commencing with the emergence of the Ossianic materials in the age of Mengs, Gluck and Winckelmann, climbing to the absolute zenith of artistic achievement in Liszt and Wagner, then declining in a wan sunset with Pound, Eliot and MacDiarmid. The second wave starts with Duchamp’s toilet and ends in Emin’s bed, forming a rainbow of uniquely scatological character, coloured brown. This second wave was contrived to counteract the achievements, and more importantly the effects, of the first; it was done to re-assert Nature over the counter-natural triumphs of past culture. In the way of elegy, the sculpture scheme in New Bond Street invokes the last hurrah of the first wave, in that The Wasteland, by Eliot, has as the sole candidate for its narrator, the prophet Teiresias; “I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,/ Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see/ At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives/ Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,/ The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights/ Her stove, and lays out food in tins.” The sculpture-scheme’s title is, in fact, “The Prophecy of Teiresias.”

All best,
Sandy

Time - Life Building, New Bond Street W1

2011-07-16T11:51:00.002+01:00

Henry Moore didn't like doing architectural sculpture, largely because the sculptor is under the control of the architect and, even worse, the client. His first experience was at the London Underground building, which he hated even though the architect and client were the most artist-friendly team in history - Charles Holden and Frank Pick.
In 1951 he had become interested in the possibilities of sculpture as part of the architecture, however, so he welcomed the approach from architect Michael Rosenauer to work on the new Time-Life building. The fact that it was the richest commission in post-war London, funded in US dollars and therefore exempt from rationing on building materials, must have helped.
In a lecture for the British Council in 1955, Moore recalled: "It was feeling that the time is coming for architects and sculptors to work together again.....It seemed to me that the screen must be made to look as though it was part of the architecture, for it is a continuation of the surface of the building – and is an obvious part of the building.....The fact that it is only a screen, a kind of balustrade to the Terrace with space behind it, led me to carve it with a back as well as a front, and to pierce it, which gives an interesting penetration of light, and also from Bond Street makes it obvious that it is a screen and not a solid part of the building."
Moore characteristically rejects any form of surface relief because it would be "using the position only as a hoarding for sticking on a stone poster."
He also wanted to mount the sculptures on rotating mounts, so they could be turned round regularly for a variety of artistic effects, complaining bitterly that his proposal was rejected. "I’m sure that the people who built Chartres Cathedral were able to have second thoughts," he said.
A transcript of the lecture is here.
Moore did four maquettes of the screen, which he had cast in bronze in editions of ten for sale. It is interesting to see his design evolve - an example of the first version is in the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, and I recently discovered a Maquette No 4 in the unlikely surroundings of a lobby in the Blue Fin Building in Southwark.

Methodist Central Hall, Storey's Gate SW1

2011-07-08T21:49:00.001+01:00

The entablature on the giant order of columns on the Central Hall is eccentric to say the least, with windows and the symbols of the Gospel writers. The eagle is John, the ox is Luke, the human, Matthew and the lion Mark.
I originally assumed they represented the the continents but that is clearly wrong.
It is not clear who is responsible for them, but Henry Poole was busy with the angels so I imagine they were designed by H.C. Fehr who was also involved with the project.

Methodist Central Hall, Storey's Gate SW1

2011-07-07T21:37:00.000+01:00

I've never been sure what to make of the Methodist Central Hall. It was deliberately designed not to look like a church so heathens would not feel detered from entering, and the design competition specified a non-Gothic style to avoid competing with Westminster Abbey.

However, the design, by Lanchester and Rickards, is not just secular - much of the symbolism is actively militaristic. Bunches of spears, arrays of Roman swords, helmets and flags. This would not be surprising on a Government building in the England of 1905 when the design was started, but it is very odd for Dissenters with their tradition of pacifism.
The high point from an artistic point of view is the pair of angels at the centre of the main facade. They are by Henry Poole, who did a lot of the sculpture with Henry Fehr. They float serenely in lovely calm over the bustle of the tourists in Parliament Square.

Bank Underground Station, King William Street EC4

2011-06-27T21:54:00.001+01:00

The City and South London Railway was the first deep level 'tube' line in the capital, and indeed the world. It was also the first to use electric locomotives. The carriages had no windows on the grounds that there was nothing to see through them, gaining them the nickname 'padded cells'.

Bank station was the original northern terminus, with a booking hall located rather strangely in the crypt of Hawksmoor's St Mary Woolnoth. The entrances in King William Street were designed in 1899 by Sydney Smith, architect of the Tate Gallery in Millbank.
The two figures were carved by Oliver Wheatley, who had trained under Thomas Brock and in Paris. The woman on the left represents Electricity, surrounded by billowing thunder-clouds and shooting lightning bolts from her extended finger. Mercury reclines on the right, representing Speed. Scrolls above the figures where originally intended to bear the name of the company.
I ought to love a composition as barkingly mad as this, but it is strangely unsatisfactory. The figures are oddly stiff and lifeless and look rather cheap. Perhaps the railway had run out of money after paying the church £170,000 for the use of the crypt.

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-19T20:53:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-18T22:45:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-17T22:42:00.001+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-16T22:41:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-15T22:40:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-14T22:39:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-13T22:38:00.000+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-12T22:47:00.001+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-11T22:33:00.001+01:00

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

2011-06-10T22:32:00.000+01:00

What a pleasure it is to happen on a fabulous building you had never noticed before despite it being in an area you have been cycling round for forty years.
Admittedly, it isn't on any of the tourist trails, being built in 1951 for the Ministry of Agriculture. The architect was C.E. Mee of the Ministry of Works, whose only other work I can find is a school canteen in Clacton.
The style is an official, safe version of the Lutyens classicism of twenty years before, and as such is very acceptable and well handled. But the outstanding element is the sculpture by James Woodford, who created the bronze doors and guardian figures on the RIBA in Portland Place.
Woodford carved a massive royal coat of arms over the front door, adding fecund ears of wheat. On either side are men riding a bull (left) and a dolphin (right).
Woodford also carved a sequence of attractive keystones depicting various animals just below us in the food chain, which I will post over the next few days.
The building was reconstructed behind the facade in 2003 and is now occupied by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, so Woodford's sculptures are still appropriate, sort of.

Howard de Walden Estate Office, 23 Queen Anne Street W1

2011-06-07T18:02:00.000+01:00

The Howard de Walden Estate, which owns most of the north part of St Marylebone, moved into purpose built offices in 1937. The architects were Messrs. Joseph, who also designed the Shell Mex building on the Embankment and many synagogues.
The plaque is attributed to William Charles Holland King, a Cheltenham-born sculptor well known for animal bronzes and war memorials, though almost every sculptor working from 1918 onwards did a sadly large number of war memorials. One of his more unusual commissions was a series of miniature sculptures to go on Edwin Lutyens's great model of the proposed Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool, that unfortunately never got above basement level. King later became president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.
The Estate's archivist and librarian, Richard Bowden, kindly looked up details of the design for me and wrote: "It replaced an older Estate office building on the same site and as photographs of the earlier building show an older plaque commemorating JMW Turner on its facade it seems likely that the new one would have been made soon after the opening of this new office."
It is a simple bas relief of the great man's head, beautifully carved. Such as shame the architect placed it under a balcony so half of it is hidden in shadow.

81 King William Street EC4

2011-06-03T08:22:00.000+01:00

The front door of 81 King William Street is decorated with these playful putti by Charles Hartwell, a sculptor better known for his bronze animals. The boys in the centre hold the seal of the London Life Association, a bucolic scene showing a man in 18th century garb sowing and a cherub reaping at the same time, rather oddly.

81 King William Street EC4

2011-06-01T09:14:00.000+01:00

Prudence, with her mirror and serpent

Foresight, with a winged herald's staff or kerykeion

The Moscow Narodny Bank was built as the London Life Association in 1925 by W. Curtis Green. It is a standard City Baroque job, designed to emphasise all the virtues of probity, stability and general holiness that the financial sector still holds so dear, and allegories of those virtues are placed on the broken pediments at either end of the building.
The figures are by Herbert Palliser, and, as with his other work of this period, they are a step away from the Edwardians with their bosomy goddesses and muscle-bound heroes.

Unity, with a fasces

Security, with a guardian's spear

6-7 St George Street W1

2011-05-23T22:53:00.000+01:00

Sotheby's St George Street gallery was originally built for some other purpose in 1904 by C.H. Worley. It has a pair of interesting and attractive bronze figures over the front entrance signed by Fritz Roselieb, the sculptor who changed his name to Louis Roslyn when he joined the Royal Flying Corps in WW1.
It was common for warriors with German names to change them, partly as a statement of patriotism but also for fear that if captured they would be taken for traitors and shot.
This was particularly true of airmen who stood a good chance of crashing behind enemy lines.
Roslieb's figures seem to represent Ferdinand and Isabella considering the conquest of the world, though I could well be wrong, especially as Ferdinand is usually portrayed clean-shaven.
Isabella examines what looks like an atlas while Ferdinand stares moodily at a globe, one foot resting on a couple of books.
Why Ferdinand and Isabella? Does anyone know the original purpose or owner of the building?

Vintners Place, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-17T09:37:00.000+01:00

Bang up against the end of Thames House is Vintner's Place, a disgusting parody of classical architecture erected by the Vintner's Company in 1990. The designers were Whinney Mackay-Lewis & Partnership. Mr Whinney, Mr Mackay-Lewis and all the Partners should be ashamed of themselves. The building replaced an Art Deco office block of 1927 called Vintry House that stuck up through the sightlines to St Paul's, making its demolition a condition of redevelopment. The developers mercifully spared the portico to Vintry House and its lovely sculpture of a nude Bacchante with goats, carved by Herbert Palliser.

It is an interesting contrast with the nudes all over Thames House next door. She stands full frontal, her hands raised to hold bunches of grapes over her shoulder, which accentuates her nudity. The goats look up from below and doves look down from above, focusing the entire composition on one particular spot. Is it just me, or is this the sexiest sculpture in London?

The composition is framed by a pair of swans, reminding us that the Vintner's Company is one of the three owners of all the swans on the upper Thames, the others being the Dyers and HM the Queen. Vintner's swans are traditionally marked with nicks on either side of the beak, the word 'nick' being corrupted to 'neck' in the pub sign 'Swan with Two Necks'.

Unfortunately, the Vintry House portal was crammed against the south facade of Thames House, concealing several of Richard Garbe's sculptures from view. All you can see from the street is a tantalising glimpse of some putti, one writing in an exercise book.

Thames House, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-13T21:06:00.000+01:00

The south pavilion of Thames House has a particularly lavish doorway surmounted by an arch over a circular window or oculus. The spandrels over the arch contain bas reliefs of women denoting Commerce (left) and Wisdom (r), by Richard Garbe.
Commerce holds a caduceus and brandishes an oak branch, symbol of endurance and fortitude. Above, wheels with wings symbolise trade. Wisdom holds a torch and proffers a laurel branch, symbol of victory. Above, a dove with an olive branch in her beak brings peace.
Between the two, the wise owl stands on a scroll, supported by a small boy kneeling in the keystone of the arch. The owl holds a just balance in her beak.
The lintel over the main door is decorated with swirling hippocampi and supports a curious bronze sailing ship by the metalworker William Bainbridge Reynolds. It is the shortest ship in history, with just one mast, but the stern is as ornately carved as any galleon so it must make a splendid sight from the room inside. Unfortunately, they don't seem to care - in the photo you can clearly see a corporate minion sitting with his back to it, speaking on the phone.

Thames House, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-07T20:58:00.000+01:00

The south pavilion of Thames House features more sculpture by Richard Garbe.
The subject is the abundance of ag and fish (again), but officially entitled The Fruits of Land and Water.
A woman on the left holds a sheaf and fruit, Neptune on the right holds a trident and a rope for his net, with which he has caught a great big cod. Between them is a boy throwing a scarf over his head.
The capitals at the top of the columns (probably not by Garbe but by the firm that did the rest of the stonework) are unusual designs with an owl for wisdom (note the book it is standing on) and an eagle for courage (are those thunderbolts clutched in his talons?).

Thames House, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-06T20:35:00.000+01:00

The central entrance of Thames House features figures representing Abundance, by Frank Lynn-Jenkins. On the left a woman holds a cornucopia of fruits of the land, on the right a man pours out water from a jar. Between them is a pair of steer's horns, one of the few references to the source of the money that paid for this tremendous building - South American beef.
Above, a trio of chubby cherubs hold up a shield with the date, 1911.
Note the sensitive positioning of the 'No Parking' sign right in front of the main entrance. Having trouble with chauffeurs, were we?

Thames House, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-03T19:48:00.000+01:00

Stanley Hamp's 1911 facade towards Southwark Bridge is arranged as two wings with an entrance block in the middle and pavilions at either end. The sculpture on the north pavilion is by Richard Garbe, son of a Dalston manufacturer of ivory and tortoiseshell goods. As well as architectural sculpture he produced much work in ivory and ceramic figurines for Doulton.
A pair of nude figures hold a strop to tame the winged horse Pegasus, who beats the cloud with his hooves in his struggle. They look strangely casual.

Five Kings House, Queen Street Place EC4

2011-05-02T10:14:00.000+01:00

Five Kings House was built as Thames House in 1911 for Liebig's Extract of Meat Company, which made a Bovril-like goo from boiled up cows at a huge plant in Fray Bentos in Uruguay. It later became famous for the Oxo cube.
Thames House was designed by Stanley Hamp in the big Baroque he used before he went Art Deco, and the facade has lots of jolly figures from several good sculptors. It is admirably free of cow-related imagery.
The grand entrance on the corner with Upper Thames Street is enlivened by a pair of figures by George Duncan Macdougald, who mainly did portrait busts.
The male figure on the left has winged feet so must be Mercury. He seems to be grasping something, and there is a pair of holes in the wall opposite, so did he originally have a bronze caduceus?
The female figure is wearing (well, almost wearing) a hood but it is unclear what she represents.
A carved coat of arms over the door includes the head of a steer so it must be that of the Liebig company.
Above, a pair of charming putti with harebell hats hold a shield.

28-30 Cornhill EC3

2011-04-22T11:02:00.001+01:00

The Scottish Widows Fund building in the City was built in 1934 to the designs of W. Curtis Green.
It features two statues of Scottish Widows by William McMillan, a Scottish sculptor who had the unusual distinction of designing some of the medals that he himself won for his service in the First World War.
One of the Widows is the classic figure familiar from a gazillion TV ads, wearing a hood and holding a puir wee fatherless bairn. The other holds a cornucopia from which pours the largesse from a claim on a policy held with one of Britain's famously generous life assurance companies.
In the pediment at the top, Bellerophon grabs Pegasus's forelock, a reference to the company motto 'Est Capilatta Fronte Post Est Occasio Calva' or 'Take Time by the Forelock'. McMillan made a version of this in bronze over the front door.

262 High Holborn

2011-04-14T10:11:00.000+01:00

The relief on the modernist office block at 262 High Holborn has been described as everything from a vision of the Book of Revelation or Celtic imagery to 'hallucinogenic doodling'.
In fact, it is the heraldry of the Pearl Assurance Company, who built it in 1956 to the designs of T.P. Bennett and Son, who occupied it themselves for many years.
At the top is St Margaret of Antioch, whose name in Latin, Margarita, means pearl. She holds a gigantic pearl in her right hand and the martyr's palm in her left - she was devoured by Satan in the form of a dragon, who lies beneath her feet looking a bit grumpy.
The other symbols relate to places associated with Pearl Assurance. The swords are the City of London, and the covered cup is St Dunstan, the patron saint of Stepney where the company had its first office. The wounded hind is St Giles, of St Giles in the Fields, the local parish.
Other symbols are the sun and a star, and the elements, air, fire and water.
The artist has not included Pearl Assurance's motto, Damus Plus Quam Pollicemur (We give more than we promise), which is a shame because then I could have given you a poem written by some unsung South African employee way back:

Upon the dragon's back for years
St Margaret bravely hid her fears.
A most precarious place to stand
And hold a pearl in outstretched hand.
But Margaret has no need to worry
For if she jumps off in a hurry,
And slips perchance and breaks a femur -
DAMUS PLUS QUAM POLLICEMUR.

Many thanks to Jo French, information manager at T.P. Bennett, who dug out this information.

Grocers' Hall Court EC2

2011-04-08T21:48:00.000+01:00

This rather charming statue of St Anthony the Great was made for the Grocers' Hall of 1889.
It stood high up on the second floor, and was one of the few items to survive a huge fire in 1965. It now stands by the front entrance of the present hall.
In medieval times, grocers also supplied medicinal herbs and spices so they liked to associate themselves with St Anthony, the patron saint of skin diseases. The Grocers' company was originally incorporated in 1348 as the Fraternity of St Anthony. The old hermit is shown with his attributes: a pig (he is said to have been a swineherd), a cross of Tau, a bell and a book (despite that fact that his biographer, Athanasius, said he was illiterate).
Something I didn't know - grocers were originally grossers, that is, wholesalers who only sold stuff by the gross. You learn something every day.

Ministry of Defence, Horse Guards Avenue SW1

2011-04-05T20:47:00.001+01:00

The vast bulk of the Ministry of Defence building was designed by Vincent Harris, originally for those ill-matched arms of government, the Department of Trade and the Air Ministry. It was built in phases from 1939 to 1959. The warriors moved in in the 1960s when the Ministry of Defence was created.
The main entrance is flanked by a pair of reclining giantesses symbolising Earth and Water, by Sir Charles Wheeler (1949). The figures weigh 40 tons each and don't look an ounce less. Despite their size, they have lovely pensive expressions.
A complementary pair, Fire and Air, were planned for the south entrance but the Treasury balked at the cost.
I don't think they are much of a loss - Earth and Water are differentiated only by sitting in waves or on the ground, so presumably the others would have had a bit of cloud and a few flames but otherwise more of the same.

Natwest Bank, 1 Prince's Street EC2 (Mansion House Street facade)

2011-03-25T20:32:00.000Z

Two more allegorical figures by Charles Doman stand on the south facade of the old National Provincial building. Courage is a female, unusually, holding a sword with which she has just slain a snake. So very unlike my dear lady wife, who hates swords almost as much as she fears snakes.

Integrity is venerable man with a beard, holding a locked ledger and standing on a pile of more ledgers. The light of truth is at his feet.

Natwest Bank, 1 Prince's Street EC2

2011-03-22T20:49:00.000Z

The former National and Provincial Bank building was adorned at ground level with serenely classical statues symbolising financial virtues. by Charles Doman. Doman was the favourite sculptor of Sir Edwin Cooper, the architect.

The figures on the Prince's Street facade represent Security and Prosperity.

Security is a veteran soldier wearing a Phrygian cap (for Liberty) and a pauldron or shoulder-plate with an embossed lion's head. He holds a key and a bridle, and stands on books and scrolls.

Prosperity is a graceful girl with one foot on a cushion and holding some fruit from a basket on an ornately-carved bracket behind her. A wreath and more scrolls lie at her feet.

56 Vincent Square SW1

2011-03-18T11:33:00.000Z

To celebrate the bicentenary of the enclosure of Vincent Square as playing fields for Westminster School in 1810, the residents association put up a rather jolly half-relief portrait of the man who got it done, William Vincent, Dean of Westminster and former headmaster of the school.

At the time, the whole area was a boggy place owned by the Abbey, known as Tothill Fields. Dean Vincent saw it was being developed piecemeal and the school risked losing the area it had always used for recreation. He paid a bloke called Jonathan Green £3 to mark out ten acres of land, plus £2 4s for a horse and a plough to dig a deep furrough round it.
Vincent was a respected headmaster, known for his cry of ‘Eloquere, puer, eloquere’ (‘Speak out, boy!, speak out!’), though his vigorous use of corporal punishment would not be acceptable today. He expelled the future Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, for writing an article against the practice called The Flagellant.

The terracotta roundel is by Karen Newman, who based it on a portrait by William Owen, court painter to the Prince Regent. It livens up the corner of an extremely dull block of flats erected in 1994.

Globe House, Temple Place EC4

2011-03-15T09:38:00.000Z

Globe House is a typical 1990s post-modern affair by GMW Partnership, with classical references and faced in Portland stone, and they had the good taste to retain a couple of lovely statues from the previous building on the site, Electra House by Sir Herbert Baker, built in 1933.
The life-size bronze figures of Mercury are by Sir Charles Wheeler. They stand gracefully on columns, each brandishing his snakey stick or caduceus with elegant insoucience. The model was a musician, artist and body-builder called Charles Assirati, cousin of the famous champion all-in wrestler Bert Assirati. Wheeler also used Assirati's torso for the merman in the Jellicoe fountain in Trafalgar Square.
As I was taking the photographs from the public pavement, a rather nice lady receptionist came across and told me that I must stop because it was 'against company policy'. I politely explained that the law of the land overrode company policy. Then a less nice security man said I had to stop, and fiddled threateningly with his radio. A member of the public backed me up, describing the company position as 'outrageous'. Then I took the rest of the pictures I wanted and we all left in anger.
Outrageous is the word. Even the police have stopped hassling photographers going about their legitimate business. If London's bloggers descended on the Globe House one fine day and held a mass snap-in just to get up the noses of the security men, it would serve them right.

Natwest Bank, 1 Prince's Street EC2

2011-03-11T12:54:00.001Z

Ten years after he created the caryatids at the entrance of P&O in Cockspur Street, Ernest Gillick returned to the figure of Britannia for an allegorical group on top of the new headquarters of the National and Provincial Bank (now the NatWest).

The architect was Sir Edwin Cooper, a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, who was having no truck with the modern sculpture that had just appeared on the rebuilt Bank of England over the road. As a result, the decoration of 1 Prince's Street could just as well date to 1909 instead of 1929.
It is a lovely group. Britannia rises on a winged seat, flanked by Mercury (representing Commerce) and Truth with his torch.
At Britannia's knees are crouching nude females representing Higher and Lower Mathematics. Higher Maths, on the left, holds a carved 'magic square' a grid of numbers, almost any four of which add up to 34, the number associated in astrology with Jupiter. The square features in Durer's famous engraving Melencolia I and in Dan Brown's recent extrusion, The Lost Symbol.
The symbolism oozes with irony today, after a decade in which the financial sector cynically abused mathematics to loot the world, then hid the truth until economic meltdown was just days away and Britannia was close to ruin.

14-16 Cockspur Street, SW1

2011-03-08T08:58:00.000Z

When P&O took over Hamburg America Line's building in 1918 as part of Germany's reparations for the war, the company lost no time adapting it for their own use. The ground floor booking hall was completely revamped, and the entrance marked with an extraordinary bronze relief by Ernest Gillick.
The theme of a pair of figures representing each end of the liners' routes is repeated, but this time they are caryatids symbolising Britain on the right and the Orient on the left. A pair of putti repeat the theme, one holding Britannia's trident and the other a lotus flower. They stand confidently on ship's yards.
At the centre is a rising sun with P&O's motto Quis Separabit (from Romans 8:35 and the motto of several British regiments).
I love the way that Britannia stands in a strong, confident but no-nonsense stance, whereas the dusky oriental lovely has a slight but sensuous swing to the hips.

14-16 Cockspur Street, SW1

2011-03-04T22:12:00.000Z

The three bay windows on the Hamburg America Line's London HQ are decorated with reliefs of Greek gods carved by W.B. Fagan, each flanked with boys riding either dolphins or hippocamps.
On the left is Dionysos, the god of wine, in a ship with a lion. According to Homer, Dionysos was kidnapped by pirates who wanted to sell him into slavery, believing his exceptional good looks would fetch a high price. He turned himself into a lion, and all the pirates leapt overboard. Mercifully, he turned them into dolphins.

The other panels are of Europa and her bull (the god Zeus, who today would be on all sorts of registers) and Icarus flying too close to the sun.
This is interesting. Here is a shipping line in 1906 depicting the world's first fatal flying accident in stone, just as aeroplanes were coming in - the Wright brothers had flown in 1903. Flying was the hot topic at the time - did HAPAG see the writing on the wall for ocean liners?

14-16 Cockspur Street, SW1

2011-03-03T20:37:00.001Z

Cockspur Street was where you went to buy a ticket on an ocean liner. All the famous names were there including, up to 1914, the German Hamburg America Line, whose flagship Deutschland held the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing in the first few years of the 20th century.
Hamburg America Line built one of the grandest buildings on Cockspur Street in 1906, to the designs of A.T. Bolton and featuring a riot of sculpture by William Bateman Fagan.
During the First World War, Fagan worked with Francis Derwent Wood at the 3rd London General Hospital making facial masks for disfigured soldiers and sailors. At the end of the war, his magnum opus at Cockspur Street was seized as reparations and presented to P&O. Nowadays, the tenant is the Bank of Scotland but you can still see the P&O logo carved in the piers between the windows on the attic storey above the entablature. If you look very carefully, behind the logos are the ghosts of the letters HAPAG, for Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actiengesellschaft.
The bay over the office entrance is emphasised by an ornate bay window and a complex pedimented affair that was originally the base for a stone lantern. At the top is a monstrous head of Neptune with a long flowing beard merging into a diving eagle carrying a fish in his beak. To left and right, merfolk hold sceptres.
Under the curved, broken pediment are two figures symbolising the great liners. On the left, a woman wearing an uncomfortable-looking embossed metal corset holds a model liner [the Deutschland herself - see comments]. A cherub kneels by her side holding an anchor. On the right,a man holds another ship model [the Amerika] but he is comfortably swathed in a cloak. An eagle perches beside him.
Below, the bay window is topped by a carving of a ship's bow with a stylised bow wave. The figurehead is a mermaid holding on to the beakhead, her bifurcated tail snaking through the timbers. It has to be admitted there is something rude about a mermaid with two tails. Starbucks used one as its original logo but changed it after protests from the public decency lunatics.

Thanks to Beth Ellis of the P&O Heritage Collection for her help.

108 Cannon Street EC4

2011-02-25T20:45:00.000Z

The names alone are enough to induce deep gloom: Seifert and Tsereteli. Possibly the worst architect in London, and one of the worst sculptors in the world, working on the same building.
Siefert's building is one of his usual cheapo horrors, clad in wafer-thin marble and glazed in tinted glass. On the corner is a niche containing a bronze statue by Zurab Tsereteli, self-styled 'People's Artist of the USSR.'
A muscly nude male has burst through a crucifix-shaped hole in a wall, holding his hands aloft in triumph.Two angels hold hands above.
Dating from 1990, the clunking symbolism is about the fall of the Berlin Wall just a few months before.
We can be thankful that the work is tiny by Tsereteli standards. His widely-mocked monument to Peter the Great in Moscow is the eighth tallest statue in the world, and according to a World Tourist poll, the tenth ugliest. Tsereteli's close friendship with former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov resulted in his work being installed all over the city. We cannot sneer however - we still have the Victoria Memorial.

Debenham and Freebody, Wigmore Street W1

2011-02-07T20:20:00.000Z

Soon after the commission for the Savoy Hotel in 1903, Doulton landed another prominent job for its Carrara Ware white glazed tiles. In 1907 they were specified for Debenham and Freebody's new West End store.
Sir Ernest Debenham was a fan of glazed tiles, which were plastered all over his remarkable home in Addison Road. It is a pity he didn't use the same architect, Halsey Ricardo, on the shop. It would have had a lot more bite than the conventional Edwardian bombast served by William Wallace and J.S Gibson.
The grand curved pediment in front of the central tower displays the Royal Arms and a pair of voluptuous ladies, one with laurel wreaths and another holding a scroll and a pen. I imagine they symbolise Victory and Peace, though they could just as easily represent Value and Customer Service.
I do like the cartouche with the pair of delightful putti over the front door, however. Very lively.

Dolphyn Court, Great Turnstile WC2

2011-02-01T20:59:00.000Z

As you approach the dreary alleyway dignified by the name Great Turnstile, wondering vaguely about the risk of being mugged, it is easy to miss the lovely bronze dolphin springing into the air in front of the dull grey facade of Dolphyn Court (built in 1986 by Michael Aukett Associates, designers of many a Tesco).
It's when you pass beneath and it is sillouetted against the sky that its beauty becomes apparent, especially if the sky is bright and blue.
A stone plaque records that it is the work of Annabel Richter Pentncy, and was added in 1989.

Savoy Hotel, Strand WC2

2011-01-23T10:27:00.000Z

The Strand frontage of the Savoy is a bit of a jumble, dictated by the way it expanded from the Embankment around the Savoy Theatre. The northern extensions were planned by T.E. Collcut in 1903.
Collcutt created the deep entrance courtyard beloved by pub quiz question-setters because it is the only street in Britain where you drive on the right. The tight roundabout at the end is said to be the reason why London's black cabs have to turn on a sixpence.
The main entrance was emphasised by a grand arcade of Ionic columns in the attic storey, with classical figures in the spandrels. Two pairs of figures are repeated along the arcade. The whole facade is made of Doulton's Carrara Ware.
The figures must have been difficult to see properly even before the Art Deco canopy was installed in 1929. At present, the eye is drawn away from them to the enormous billboard for the latest Savoy Theatre production.
The figures represent the luxury of ancient Sybaris, with food and wine, drama and music. The story goes that one Sybarite had a bed made of rose petals but was unable to get a good night's sleep because one of the petals was folded. I suspect this demanding standard of luxury is very typical of the Savoy's clientele.

Somerset House, Strand WC2

2011-01-15T19:56:00.000Z

Surmounting the Strand facade is the coat of arms of George III, carved by John Bacon Senior. The shield is quartered with the harp of Ireland, the lion of Scotland and the three lions of England and the fleur-de-lys of France.
In the fourth quarter is the badge of Hanover, comprising two lions for Brunswick, another lion for Luneburg and a horse for Westfalia. Charlemagne's crown at the centre signifies George's position as Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire, a title that must have given him much simple pleasure.
It must be one of the last royal coats of arms to show the fleur-de-lys, which were finally abandoned in 1801 partly because the claim to throne of France was ridiculous but also to recognise that the French throne no longer existed.
The arms are supported by figures of Fame, blowing his trumpet, and the Genius of England, who points meaningfully to a plaque below the main arms with the image of Saint George brandishing his sword as he jumps his horse over the dragon.
The group was very much admired at the time. Giuseppe Baretti in his Guide of 1781 says "The whole is a much approved performance of Mr Bacon."
John Bacon was the son of a clothworker in Southwark who became rich and famous churning out memorials for churches. Philip Ward-Jackson has written of him: "His great abilities as a sculptor were disagreeably offset by what some saw as a smug and smarmily pious manner."

Somerset House, Strand WC2

2011-01-09T11:13:00.002Z

The Strand facade of Somerset House was the first part of the complex to be built, in 1776. It is adorned with four allegorical figures carved by two interesting Italian artists based in 18th century London, Agostino Carlini and Giuseppe Ceracchi.
The figures, venerable Roman senators, stand in front of the attic storey right at the top, representing (from left to right) Moderation, Justice, Prudence and Valour. Carlini did the pair in the middle, Ceracchi the ones at the corners.
All wear a Phrygian cap of Liberty and hold a fasces, its tightly-bound reeds symbolising strength through unity. Moderation holds a bridle; Justice, scales; a mirror for Prudence and a sword for Valour.
Above all is the Royal Arms.
The message was clear: the British state is the new Rome, governed by rational principals for the benefit of all.
However, it must have looked very odd only a few years later when the French Revolution broke out and the Phrygian cap became for ever associated with bloody revolution, chaos and the Terror. And in the 20th century the fasces became associated with one of the nastiest ideologies of all time. Such is the danger of adopting ancient symbols for propaganda purposes in stone - you never know the company you might be keeping.
The republican symbolism was dear to the heart of Ceracchi in particular, who was a commited Jacobin. He made a bust of Napoleon as Consul and later visited America and carved a notable bust of George Washington. His end was dramatic: he saw Napoleon's transformation into an Emperor as a betrayal of the Republic and got involved in a conspiracy against the tyrant, leading to his execution in 1801. Legend has it that he went to the guillotine in a triumphal chariot of his own design.
Carlini was a much more establishment figure. He had come to London from Genoa, living in Soho (Ceracchi was staying with him while they worked on the Somerset House figures) and was a founder member of the Royal Acadamy which was then located in that very building.
The Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy, Dr Hunter, commissioned Carlini to make a cast of the body of an executed smuggler whose skin had been flayed. This gruesome item was exhibited as 'The Dying Gaul' with the subtitle 'Smugglerius', and copies were used to teach medical students.

Gordon Mansions, Torrington Place WC1

2011-01-03T15:34:00.000Z

Gordon Mansions is just the sort of overpoweringly ugly mansion block that got late-Victorian 'Queen Anne' architecture a bad name. The bay windows, the tourelles at the corner and the volutes on the pediment on the skyline all fail to conceal the elephantine dimensions.
But the doorways are pretty. Arts and Crafts arches decorated with pairs of cherubic, mop-headed charyatids that would now be illegal under the Architecture That Makes A Statement For Our Time Act, 1948.

Cumberland Hotel, Oxford Street W1

2010-12-27T17:44:00.000Z

The massive Cumberland Hotel behind Marble Arch was built for J. Lyons in 1930 at the height of the Art Deco mania for everything Egyptian sparked off by the discovery of King Tut's tomb. Lyons's in-house architect, F.J. Wills, decorated the facade with giant Egyptian figures and created a very odd new order of columns with bulls' heads on the capitals.

A rather nice little detail is that the Egyptians have different expressions on their faces, one having a rather twinkly smile. You need binos or, in my case, a long lens to see that from street level, of course.

34-36 High Holborn WC1

2010-12-18T21:45:00.000Z

The Artist as Hephaestus (1987) could be by no-one but Eduardo Paolozzi, a perfect example of his brutalist style, looking as though the work had been sawn into sections and then carelessly reassembled with all the bits slightly out of alignment.
Hephaestus was the Greek equivalent of Vulcan. He was a sort of divine Q, supplying all the Gods with their gadgets. He made Hermes's winged helmet and sandals, Aegis's breastplate, Eros's bow and arrows and Helios's chariot.
Paolozzi portrays himself holding a number of strange-looking objects. Are they mystical machines such as Hephaestus might have knocked up for his divine clients? They look a bit like impedimenta from a foundry, perhaps items associated with the lost wax process Paolozzi used so extensively.
Paolozzi suggests the Hephaestus's lameness by making one leg slightly shorter than the other and moulding his left foot as though it is fused to the block under it.

27 Southampton Street WC2

2010-12-10T19:49:00.002Z

27 Southampton Street dates from 1707 but its main interest is, unusually, the plaque over the front door put up in 1900 to commemorate the residency of the actor, impressario and Shakespeare idoliser David Garrick.for nearly 30 years.
The plaque is unusual on several counts. Firstly, its quality and cost (it is cast bronze). Secondly, unlike most plaques it is the work of a top-flight sculptor, Henry Fehr. And thirdly, it was paid for by the freeholder, the Duke of Bedford, who was not known for his generosity. He even got his personal architect, Charles Fitzroy Doll, to sketch out the design.
A bust of Garrick circled with a laurel wreath stands on a plinth with the inscription. On either side stand two Muses, helpfully labeled. Less helpfully for today's Londoners, the labels are in Greek, but one of the advantages of a scientific education is a working knowledge of the Greek alphabet so I was able after only a bit of head-scratching to identify them as Melpomene (left) and Thalia (right).
Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, holds her dagger in her right hand. She traditionally also carries a club but Fehr clearly thought that would be rather unladylike so she holds a slim, elegant mace with a crown hanging round it instead.
Thalia holds the mask of comedy and a shepherdess's crook. Both are sad and pensive

Former Catesby's Store, 64-67 Tottenham Court Road W1

2010-12-02T20:37:00.000Z

The top end of Tottenham Court Road was the place where the super-rich of Edwardian London furnished their houses, trooping round Heals, Maples and Catesby's, the latter being where they bought carpets for upstairs and linoleum for downstairs. The area was so expensive that the plutocratic Baron de Rothschild could quite seriously justify his passion for buying antique French furniture by saying "it's cheaper than going to Maples."
In 1904 Edward Catesby rebuilt his store in a flamboyant Free Renaissance with Arts and Crafts touches. The architect was Henry A. Whitburn, whose initials appear like very polite grafitti behind the dragon in the tippy-top gable at the centre of his facade.
Catesby's initial appears much more ornately carved and prominently positioned, but as he was paying for it I suppose that was fair dos.
My absolute favourite sculptures are the storks under the bow windows on the fourth floor. They have the ungainliness of Martin pottery birds, with those faintly ridiculous beaks and spindly legs.

Minerva House, North Crescent WC1

2010-11-20T19:17:00.000Z

The Minerva Motor Company was a Belgian luxury marque that once had a reputation as high as Rolls Royce or Mercedes.
This ad appeared in 1905 ad in the Ashburton Guardian - note the car's top speed of 'up to 25 miles per hour and the added inducement 'Purchasers taught to drive free of charge'. I bet you got what you paid for.
The price of £176 equates roughly to £15,000 now, which seems cheap for a top quality car but you didn't get many of the features we take for granted today. Such as a roof, for example.
The Minerva Motor Company built a swanky headquarters and repair shop just off the Tottenham Court Road in 1912 which was rather bad timing. Minerva survived the First World War by building armoured cars, as Rolls Royce did.
Their London HQ was designed by George Vernon and decorated with a statue of Minerva. Regretably, there does not seem to be any record of the sculptor. Even more regretably, the architect placed Minerva in front of a window which now looks extremely tawdry. As a final indignity, the landscaped park she used to look out on was destroyed in 1941 when the lifts were installed for government bomb shelters. The unsightly structures are still there.

Covent Garden Market WC2

2010-11-14T21:04:00.000Z

The charming allegorical group stands on the east end of the Charles Fowler's Market House of 1828. Two women support Cupid, who stands on a plinth. One holds a laurel wreath over his head as the other adjusts a swag of flowers and fruit around a cornucopia. The material is the famous artificial stone made by Mrs Coade at her factory in Lambeth. The modeller was R.W. Sievers, about whom I have been able to discover nothing.

Old Middlesex Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green EC1

2010-11-02T22:38:00.000Z

Middlesex built its court house in a rather dreary, industrial area on the northern edge of Georgian London, so it must have stood out considerably when it was newly built amid the workshops and factories of Clerkenwell in 1779. The architect was Thomas Rogers, the county surveyor.
The good burghers clearly decided to push the boat out and got Joseph Nollekens to carve the panels on the facade. He was probably the most famous sculptor in England at that time - when he had become a member of the Royal Academy just seven years before, his diploma had been signed personally by King George III. A bust of the King appears over the central window.
To the monarch's right is Justice, seated and correctly wearing no blindfold. She holds a drawn sword in her left hand and scales with her right.
On the left sits Mercy, her sword sheathed and holding a sceptre with a dove of peace perching on the crown.

Nollekens was the London-born son of a Dutch painter, and was said to have been abundantly naturally talented but rather dim. He made an enormous sum of money when he went to Rome on a study tour and found a lucrative market sculpting souvenir busts of visiting English notables, including David Garrick and Laurence Sterne. He also bought fragments of Roman sculpture and added all the missing limbs to sell to credulous collectors as perfect specimens.
The court house pediment is filled with the arms of Middlesex, probably not by Nollekens. The three weapons are usually described by tour guides as scimitars but they are actually seaxes, the notched sword of the Anglo-Saxon warrior.
They also appear on the arms of Essex. The shield is surrounded by a luxuriant growth of oak, the tree of Middlesex, and laurel.

219 Oxford Street W1

2010-10-24T17:52:00.000+01:00

The Festival of Britain spawned a mass of art, music and literature, but nothing as curious as these three plaques on an anonymous shop/office block in Oxford Street.

The architects, Ronald Ward and Partners, clearly felt the need to acknowledge the Festival even though they were not involved and Oxford Street is miles away from the site. Perhaps they wanted to associate the building with the sense of a new beginning that the Festival projected - 219 Oxford Street was apparently the first new commercial building to go up in London after war's end. Ironically, by the time it was complete most of the Festival buildings had already been cleared by the incoming Churchill government, which regarded them as too socialist.
According to City of Westminster archives the sculptor is unknown.
The plaques show (above) the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon, with a clutter of navigational paraphenalia; (middle) the Festival plaque by Abram Games with the date; and (below) the Festival Hall, the old shot tower with the curious 'radio beacon' that was put on top for the duration and a clutter of musical impedimenta.
I remember my father pointing out the shot tower as we walked over Hungerford Bridge on our way to a Robert Mayer Childrens' Concert about 1960, raging at the announcement it was to be demolished. It came down in 1961 to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street WC1

2010-10-16T20:44:00.000+01:00

Flea

Tick

Louse

I am all for appropriate decoration on the facades of our great institutions, such as the figure of Justice on the Old Bailey or the statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament. But the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine might have crossed a line with the gilded bronze sculptures on its balconies.

Fruit fl

Sensitive people might get the heebijeebies.
Most of the creepy-crawlies are unpleasant but not generally lethal, like the flea or the bedbug.

Bedbug

Fruit flies are almost completely harmless and are even contributing mightily to medical knowledge because of their position as study species of choice for scientists.
Even the cobra does not kill many because it is too large to survive in competition with housing estates and roads.

Rat

The rat is more of a hygiene problem than a mass-murderer. Bubonic plague, spread by a parasite on the brown rat, has not been significant for years.

Cobra

There are two real killers here, however.
The Anopheles mosquito spreads malaria and the Culex mosquito distributes Nile fever and a number of other nasty diseases round the tropics.
Biodiversity notwithstanding, I for one wouldn't weep if they went extinct tomorrow.

Culex mosquito

Anopheles mosquito

I am indebted to Emma Golding, assistant archivist at the LSHTM, for identifying the creatures.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street WC1

2010-10-15T18:40:00.000+01:00

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine was built in 1926 by P. Morley Horder and Verner O. Rees, with a huge budget from the Rockefeller Foundation. It was designed in a stripped-down classical style, and where the entablature would be has a band carved by Alan Howe with the names of famous medical men.
Over the front door is a stone version of the School's seal, designed by Allan Gairdner Wyon. It shows Apollo and his sister Artemis riding in the sun-god's chariot.
Both deities were associated with medicine. Apollo was god of prophecy, music and medicine and Artemis combined roles as goddess of hunting and chastity with that of comforter of women in childbirth.
The palm behind recalls their birth on the island of Delos, when a palm tree sprang up miraculously to give shade to their mother Leto in her labour.
The seal also includes the caduceus or snake-entwined rod of Asclepius, god of medicine and Apollo's son, but the sculptor has replaced it with four snakes writhing dramatically on either side.
Was this the work of Howe or Wyon himself? The sunburst behind the seal would be typical of Wyon - take a look at his East Wind on the London Underground building.
One odd thing - Artemis is holding the reins as Apollo aims his bow. A woman driving a man? Never happens in real life.

Ornaments on show

2010-10-12T08:25:00.000+01:00

Russell Bowes writes:

Hi there. Thought you and your OP readers may well be interested in the
free photographic exhibition at the National Theatre called "A London
Bestiary" on the mezzanine floor which is wonderful.
Its stuffed full of the kind of ornamental details that we all love. I
enjoyed it thoroughly. Thought perhaps you could put some details up on
the site.
RTB

Thanks for the info, Russell. I haven't made it yet - I'd better get a move on, as it closes at the end of the month.

Old Patent Office, Southampton Buildings WC2

2010-10-08T09:45:00.000+01:00

I used to spend a good deal of my time in the Patent Office in another life a long time ago. Today the Patent Office is in Newport, Gwent, and the Victorian building has been converted into serviced office suites.

The facade looking out onto the lovely little garden of Staple Inn was cheaply rebuilt after war damage and again in 2003, but this time they saw fit to reproduce the Victorian design in detail, something I thought was illegal under the Architecture That Makes A Statement For Our Time Regulations. It is particularly strange as it is right opposite Holborn Gate, an outstandingly boring Statement for 1965, which replaced the amazing Doulton phantasmogoria of Birkbeck Bank (right) in a scandalous demonstration of what can happen when greedy developers enlist modernist architects to defeat supine planning authorities.

The Patent Office developer, bless him, didn't just slavishly reproduce the old design but went a step further and created a memorial to the great Victorian inventor, author and founder of the Patent Office Library, Bennet Woodcroft. His head appears below the bow window at the centre where his name is carved in big letters. Woodcroft was fascinated by the history of invention, and when the South Kensington museums were founded he persuaded them to let him buy interesting industrial artifacts for display. It is solely due to him that such world-changing machines as James Watt's beam engine, the world's oldest steam locomotive Puffing Billy and Stevenson's Rocket are preserved.

Bush House, Aldwych WC2

2010-10-02T11:23:00.002+01:00

Bush House looks quintessentially Imperial, a grandiloquent Edwardian Beaux Arts design. This impression is reinforced by its position between Australia House and India House. But it was an entirely American concept and design and wasn't constructed until 1923, when International Modernism stalked the land.
Designed by Helmle and Corbett of New York (Corbett had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris), it was built by Irving T. Bush as a centre for merchants trading with America.
Once you know, its 100% USofA origins are obvious. Buildings like it are all over Washington DC - think Lincoln Memorial.

The figures standing on the entrance screen with the inscription 'Dedicated to the Friendship of English-speaking Peoples' were sculpted by Malvina Hoffman, a New Yorker who had moved to Paris to study with Rodin. Unfortunately Rodin was unaware of this, and she had to spend some time badgering him into it. On completion of her studies, he advised her to return to Manhattan and spend a year dissecting bodies at the School of Physicians and Surgeons, which gave her an unrivalled knowledge compared with most artists of what goes on under the skin. She also got involved with bronze founding and other skills that artists often leave to the craftsmen. Apparently, the sight of this little woman scuttling about with whacking great hammers and chisels six storeys above Aldwych attracted quite a lot of comment.
Her figures of Britain and American holding the Torch of Friendship over a Celtic-style altar thing are dramatic and evocative.
In one of the ironies that make wars so entertaining in retrospect, the Clasp of Friendship was blown apart by the blast from a German V1 in 1944, leaving the American waving a stump at the Brit for over 30 years. It was finally reinstated for the Silver Jubilee celebrations of Elizabeth II in 1977 by an American who worked for the Indiana Limestone Company and persuaded his employers to send a arm and a stonemason to attach it.

111 Strand WC2

2010-09-27T17:48:00.001+01:00

This plain but quite elegant building was designed by Michael Squire & Partners in 2001, and constructed with load-bearing panels. The sculpture is by artists Langlands & Bell, who specialise in this sort of thing.

I like it. It is a map of the surrounding streets - the building itself is at the intersection of the second and third panels up.

I've tried to match the pattern with a map and aerial photography from Google, but of course it is distorted by the camera angle from the street. Interestingly, the aerial photo fits the pattern much better than the map - perhaps the camera angle from the plane was similar.

The artists themselves describe the work as "a vector of cityscape. An axial section of the locality rising perpendicular to the ground in the form of a block and street plan in low relief. The city is upended and “re-presented” as a view from above on 5 storey's [sic] of the buildings [sic] facade."

More evidence that artists should let their work speak for itself - it is usually so much more articulate.

Kingsgate House, 114-115 High Holborn WC1

2010-09-21T22:26:00.001+01:00

You really have to crane your neck to see this extraordinary pair of statues perched right on the top of the Queen Anne style Kingsgate House. When they were placed there in about 1903 they represented the first and latest Edwards to sit on the throne of England, Edwards I and VII.
The building is in fact part of the Baptist Union complex in Southampton Row behind, designed by Arthur Keen. The statue of Bunyan on that building is by Richard Garbe, who indeed carved the two kings.
The choice of subject was no doubt prompted by the fact that Edward VII had just come to the throne. Comparing the new monarch to Edward I, a great warrior, Crusader, legal reformer and establisher of parliament, probably went down well.
The images will be totally familiar to anyone who went through an English education before about 1968. Edward I is dressed in chain mail, wears a sword and holds what appears to be a hammer, a reference to his nickname, Hammer of the Scots. Edward VII with his familiar beard holds the orb and sceptre. No sword, though he was a noted swordsman in his own inimitable way.

Jubilee Market Hall, Covent Garden WC2

2010-09-18T15:32:00.000+01:00

The market porters of Covent Garden were famous for carrying tottering piles of baskets of fruit, veg and flowers, up to six or seven, on their heads. Now few of the tourists who mill around buying tacky souvenirs and watching the buskers realise the place was a market at all.
Some families worked as porters at Covent Garden for generations, as portrayed in a bronze on the Jubilee market Hall by Glynis Owen. The caption at the bottom of the bronze explains all - click to enlarge, as with all picture on this blog.