Lot number: 10
A rare Coadestone keystone
stamped Coade‘s Lithodipyra London, 1787
47cm.; 18½ins high
Eleanor Coade (d.1821) opened her Lambeth Manufactory for ceramic artificial stone in 1769, and appointed the sculptor John Bacon as its manager two years later. She was employed by all the leading late 18th century architects. From about 1777 she began her engraved designs, which were published in 1784 in a catalogue of over 700 items entitled A Descriptive Catalogue of Coade‘s Artificial Stone Manufactory. Then in 1799, the year she entered into partnership with her cousin John Sealy, she issued a handbook of her Pedlar‘s Lane exhibition Gallery. The firm became Coade and Sealey from this date and following Sealey‘s death in 1813, it reverted to Coade and in 1821 with the death of the younger Eleanor Coade, control of the firm passed to William Croggan, who died in 1835, following bankruptcy.
Coade‘s manufactures resembling a fine-grained natural stone, have always been famed for their durability (see A. Kelly Mrs Coade‘s Stone, London 1980). The London 1774 Building Act provided great opportunities for the Coade firm. The Act reduced exterior woodwork to the absolute minimum in an attempt to make houses as nearly incombustible as possible. Wooden porches and other decorations were banned, and window frames were set behind the embrasure, with very narrow glazing bars. As Sir John Summerson pointed out in Georgian London (p108-110) some form of fireproof decoration was needed, if house fronts were not to become intolerably boring and repetitious and this is exactly what the Lambeth factory was able to supply in great variety. With Coade units the doorway could be set within an arch formed of rusticated blocks and voussoirs of Coade stone. As front doors were more or less of a standard sizes, the sets of blocks could be made in large numbers and were very cheap. One of the voussoirs to go round an arch was only 6s.6d. The usual way of using them was alternately with brickwork, so that the lighter-coloured stone made striped accents round the arch. The springing of the arch was marked by an Impost Block. The effect is of great dignity though the original cost was very small. A set of blocks and voussirs could be bought for less than ú3, while a suitably-sized keystone cost 2 guineas, so that a handsome doorway could be had for ú50. Coade stone door surrounds can be seen all over the area between the British Museum and Edgware Road, and between Marylebone Road and Oxford Street. Much has gone in recent years, but a good deal still remains, the North end of Harley Street, and to a lesser extent Wimpole Street, shows the pleasing variety that could be had from quite a small number of different voussirs, keystone and impost blocks combined in different ways. Of the forty houses with Coade decoration remaining in Harley Street, there are no less than 16 models of front door. A whole page from the “Etchings of Coade‘s Artificial Stone Manufacture“ is devoted to keystones. The factory also made a habit of stamping their keystones on the underside at the front so that the Coade name could be seen by the pedestrian underneath, even when the keystone was rebated into a wall. Lithodipyna means “stone twice fired“ which was the most durable of the Coade products, since it was fired in the kiln twice. For a similarly stamped piece see Sotheby‘s sale of Garden Statuary 29th September 1989, lot 824.
Estimated Price: £5000-8000