Studio: international art (38.1906)

Recent Lead-Work by Mr. G. P. Bankart

lead gutter at Lincoln Cathedral, does not so much
as name the lead-work of similar design, more
elaborately treated, which runs along the top of
the parapet of the choir-transept and of the Chapel
of the Holy Trinity at Christ Church, Canterbury.
Professor Lethaby assigns no date to the work at
Lincoln. The fact is that a simple Gothic sex-foiled
rose or wheel, such as this pattern consists of, is
so rudimentary in character that it might have
been produced almost any time between the years
1250 and 1550, or thereabouts. The former might
be thought too early a date ; but the peculiarities
of our climate, with its frequent and heavy down-
pours of rain, and the consequent necessity of

FIG. 3. LEAD FONT FOR DESIGNED AND EXECUTED
ST. ALBAN’S CHURCH, BY G. P. BANKART

LEICESTER

examples at Haddon Hall, these belonging to a
comparatively late date, some of them possibly as
late even as the end of the sixteenth century.

The works here reproduced by Mr. Bankart, divers
and elaborate as they are, yet represent but two
phases of lead-work, viz., casting and tin-soldering ;
no example of the well-known perforated ornament,
as at Haddon, nor of the coloured and niello
effects, as at St. John’s College, Oxford, and the
Bodleian Library, being included.

FIG. 2. RAIN-WATER DESIGNED AND

GARDEN TANK EXECUTED BY

G. P. BANKART

devising means to carry off the water, are no doubt
accountable for the fact that, as Viollet le Due
testifies, our own country was so far in advance of
others in this regard that in the thirteenth century
native builders in England, though nowhere else
as yet, had learned to construct rainpipes from the
roof of a building down to the ground. The great
variety and beauty of ornament of which rain-water
heads admit is well illustrated by the many extant

FIG. 4. RAIN-WATER DESIGNED AND EXECUTED

HEAD WITH CASE ' FOR D. GIBSON, ARCHITECT
ORNAMENTATION BY G. P. BANKART

(WOOD, DEVON)

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