Friday, 21 August 2026

The Coade Artificial Stone River Gods.

 

It appears that at least three of these statues were made by Messrs Coade.

One is at Ham House, another is at Terrace Garden Richmond and a third at Moor Park, Herts.








The Richmond version below image from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Thames#/media/File:Old_father_thames_richmond_terrace_gardens.jpg





















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The Moor Park Coade Stone River God.


The recently rediscovered Moor Park River God lies semi-hidden at Moor Park at Rickmansworth. Although headless and armless it is recognisably the same as the Ham House river god, even to the Code signature nestling inside. 

It appears to have been moved to its present position in a 19th century shrubbery during a remodeling of the gardens by Lord Ebury and was still intact when the mansion was sold to Lord Leverhulme in 1919 to convert to a country-club come golf course. 

Lady Susan Grosvenor returned to her childhood haunts and described ‘Neptune’ as being ‘brown with age,…, head engulfed in a Portuguese laurel’ but with water still trickling from the pitcher in his hand (though it looks more like tucked under his arm).


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The Coade Manufactory - in the Yard.

Two men mixing something by the Pump.

George Shepherd (c. 1782 - c. 1830).

Watercolour.

They suggest c. 1800.


https://www.watercolourworld.org/collections/89f0de8d-1ed4-37b1-bbf8-6516a3a1e9bc/?s%3DCoade&pos=4

Image courtesy London Picture Archive.

https://londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=17371

 







The Bronze River God at Somerset House.


 https://www.flickr.com/photos/90489560@N02/8439334596/in/photostream/
















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A Page from the Mark Blanchard Catalogue

Mark Henry Blanchard was born at Portsea, Hampshire and christened on 30 August 1817. He was apprenticed at the Coade Factory in Lambeth in the firm's declining years, probably when it was managed by Thomas John Croggon between c.1835-37, or after the business had been let to Thomas Routledge and John Danforth Greenwood 1837 and lasted until 1840.

 

Blanchard commenced business in Blackfriars Road, Lambeth shortly after 1840 (probably working initially in plaster) and then appears to have acquired some of the Coade Factory's moulds when Routledge and Greenwood consigned them at auction in 1843.

 

 

Note the continued use of a varient of the Coade engraving in Blanchards promotional material (below) and the mention of John Bacon as designer.




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Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames (painting 4 of 6 in the series 'The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture')

James Barry (1741–1806)

Royal Society of Arts.

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/commerce-or-the-triumph-of-the-thames-218503




Coade, Soane and Caryatids.

 

Soane used the Caryatids on the Bank of England Pitzanger House and his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/412202260_'Slaves_of_Antiquity'_John_Soane_and_the_Caryatid_as_a_Symbol_of_Slavery


John Soane's first use of the Coade Caryatids

The Buckingham House Caryatids now at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire.

Size 1920 x 600 x 400 mm.

Coade & Sealy, 1793. 

They were once  painted in order to appear like bronze.

One of six over-life-size caryatids moulded of Coade artificial stone and based on figures from the Porch of the Caryatids of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens and also on the caryatids at Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli. The base and its original inscriptions eroded. 

The statues once held up the dome of the oval lantern above the staircase at Buckingham House, Pall Mall, which was rebuilt by John Soane (1753-1837) for the first Marquis of Buckingham in 1792-95

Removed from Buckingham House, Pall Mall in 1908.


Image courtest National Trust website.

https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/516655.1










The Coade Caryatids at Pitzhanger Manor.

The Manor was remodelled by Sir John Soane between 1800 - 1804.


https://www.pitzhanger.org.uk/about/history/coade-stone/


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The two caryatids on the balcony at the top of the projecting 'loggia' on the second-floor façade of 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields are made of Coade stone, a form of artificial stone. Sir John Soane paid £41 to Coade and Seeley at Lambeth for them in November 1812, the year that he rebuilt the building.