DOI Heft:
Nr. 193 (April 1909)
DOI Artikel:Spencer, Edward; Spencer, Walter: Wrought iron work
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20966#0235
IVnought Iron IVork
THREE CANDLESTICKS IN WROUGHT IRON, SHOWING THE USE OF STAMPED FIR
CONES, VINE LEAVES, ETC., INTERLACED WORK AND THE USE OF PUNCHES OF
VARIOUS PATTERNS. FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER
his fine feeling for pattern and proportion in design
gave absolute dignity and architectural suitability
to the work as a whole, yet the initiation of the
apprentice of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies must have been shorn of half the mystery
that waited upon the aspirants of the mediaeval
period at every stage in their advancement.
From a very early period, four or five hundred
years before the forging of the beautiful gates and
grilles of the German Renaissance, the English
smith was already famous as a weaver
of wonderful intricacies of interlaced
and plaited strap-work in the hinges,
“vizzyings” and door defences of the
late Saxon and early Norman period.
From this period onward to the time
when we yielded our supremacy in iron
work to the foreign chasers and damas-
cenes of ceremonial armour, and to
the locksmiths of France and Germany,
English wrought iron work is full of un-
expected and ingenious details. Grilles
of sober and monotonous pattern are
made rich with a hundred different and
fanciful scroll endings, massive hinges,
bolts and doorstraps are ploughed with
deep fuller lines, chamfered, swaged,
diapered and tooled in a manner that
emphasises the purpose of each part,
without impairing its strength and
fitness.
Finally, in the latter
half of the thirteenth
century, in the stamped
work of John de Leigh-
ton, a method promis-
ing an endless variety
of new and beautiful
ornament appeared,
flourished apparently
for little more than
fifty years, and after
producing two or three
masterpieces of luxu-
riant simplicity, inex-
plicably disappeared.
The famous Eleanor
Grille in Westminster
Abbey, the best speci-
men of this work in
England, is an extra-
ordinary example of the
richness and variety
that can be given to a
piece of work of the simplest possible design, by
the judicious use of a few stamping tools.
It is a thousand pities, that a method so
sound should not be employed to-day in the
making of church screens and grilles as well as in
domestic iron work and small architectural fittings,
for which it is peculiarly fitted by reason of its
cheapness, the ease of its application, and the
immense variety which can be obtained by its use.
For grille and gate work, however, one important
WROUGHT IRON TRIVET SHOWING INTERLACED WORK
FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER
209
THREE CANDLESTICKS IN WROUGHT IRON, SHOWING THE USE OF STAMPED FIR
CONES, VINE LEAVES, ETC., INTERLACED WORK AND THE USE OF PUNCHES OF
VARIOUS PATTERNS. FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER
his fine feeling for pattern and proportion in design
gave absolute dignity and architectural suitability
to the work as a whole, yet the initiation of the
apprentice of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies must have been shorn of half the mystery
that waited upon the aspirants of the mediaeval
period at every stage in their advancement.
From a very early period, four or five hundred
years before the forging of the beautiful gates and
grilles of the German Renaissance, the English
smith was already famous as a weaver
of wonderful intricacies of interlaced
and plaited strap-work in the hinges,
“vizzyings” and door defences of the
late Saxon and early Norman period.
From this period onward to the time
when we yielded our supremacy in iron
work to the foreign chasers and damas-
cenes of ceremonial armour, and to
the locksmiths of France and Germany,
English wrought iron work is full of un-
expected and ingenious details. Grilles
of sober and monotonous pattern are
made rich with a hundred different and
fanciful scroll endings, massive hinges,
bolts and doorstraps are ploughed with
deep fuller lines, chamfered, swaged,
diapered and tooled in a manner that
emphasises the purpose of each part,
without impairing its strength and
fitness.
Finally, in the latter
half of the thirteenth
century, in the stamped
work of John de Leigh-
ton, a method promis-
ing an endless variety
of new and beautiful
ornament appeared,
flourished apparently
for little more than
fifty years, and after
producing two or three
masterpieces of luxu-
riant simplicity, inex-
plicably disappeared.
The famous Eleanor
Grille in Westminster
Abbey, the best speci-
men of this work in
England, is an extra-
ordinary example of the
richness and variety
that can be given to a
piece of work of the simplest possible design, by
the judicious use of a few stamping tools.
It is a thousand pities, that a method so
sound should not be employed to-day in the
making of church screens and grilles as well as in
domestic iron work and small architectural fittings,
for which it is peculiarly fitted by reason of its
cheapness, the ease of its application, and the
immense variety which can be obtained by its use.
For grille and gate work, however, one important
WROUGHT IRON TRIVET SHOWING INTERLACED WORK
FORGED BY WALTER SPENCER. DESIGNED BY EDWARD SPENCER
209