§ II An Historical Sketch
The ease with which lead ores may be gained from the earth and then worked, is sufficient to show that the application of lead to the service of the arts must have been made very early.
Nowhere does it seem to have been so easily found as “in England herself which is the classic land of lead and tin” (Abbé Cochet). These two metals made the early fame of Britain; they brought here the Phœnician trader and had doubtless much to do with the Roman occupation of this distant island.
“Tin and lead,” says Harrison in his Description of England, “metals which Strabo noteth in his time to be carried into Marseilles from hence, as Diodorus also confirmeth, are very plentiful with us, the one in Cornwall, Devonshire, and elsewhere in the north, the other in Derbyshire, Weredale, and sundry places of this island.... There were mines of lead sometimes also in Wales which endured so long till the people had consumed all their wood by melting of the same.”
Tin, which was of such sovereign necessity for the composition of bronze, was, with lead, an object of wide commerce, as we may learn from the prophecy of Ezekiel against Tyre, whose long black ships did the carrying trade of the world. As the Tarshish of Scripture is the Tartessus of classic authors—an entrepôt of Phœnician trade in Spain—it may well be of English mined metal that the prophet speaks:—“Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs.”
The Assyrian slabs which contain the accounts of the expedition into Syria in the ninth century B.C. include among the tribute exacted of Tyre and of Jerusalem itself “bars of gold, silver, copper, and lead.” Solomon used lead in the structure of the great wall of Jerusalem.
Sir H. Layard says the mountains three or four days’ journey from Nineveh furnished iron, copper, lead, and silver in abundance, and he found instances of its actual use at Nineveh. Place also, in his excavations at Khorsabad, discovered a foundation inscription of Sargon II., the great builder of the eighth century B.C. engraved on a plate of lead. A leaden jar and a piece of pipe were found by Loftus at Mugheir.
In Egypt it was sparingly used. Sir G. Wilkinson says:—“Lead was comparatively useless, but was sometimes used for inlaying temple doors, coffers and furniture, small statuettes of the gods were occasionally made in this metal, especially those of Osiris and Anubis.”
In Egypt as well as in Babylonia it was the custom to make a deposit of several objects in the foundations, a tradition which we still follow to-day. At Daphnae Mr. Flinders Petrie found a set of little slabs of different stones and small plates of metal, gold, silver, copper, and lead, all engraved with the name of Psamtik. The lead tablet is here figured.
The ornamental objects of lead to which the earliest date can be assigned are those found by Dr. Schliemann in his excavations at Mycenæ and Tiryns.1
The Greeks very largely used lead for many purposes. It is twice mentioned in the Iliad, and its familiar use as a building material is shown by Herodotus, who says that Queen Nitocris built a bridge over the river at Babylon, of stone bound together with lead and iron; and the story the Greek historian gives of the celebrated hanging gardens describes how they were raised on high terraces of arches covered with bitumen and sheets of lead.
Sufficient actual examples of Greek lead work are stored up in museums, masonry with dowels of lead, inscribed tablets, small toys and tokens, little vases for eye salve about as large as a thimble, boxes for unguents, and sling bullets. These last are often inscribed so that the warrior might know his work, often with flouts and jibes and jeers. One in the Lewes Museum has ΕΥΓΕΙ,—“Well done”; others have “Hit Hard,” &c.
In the museums of Athens are some small figures, a Dionysiac wreath of gilt lead leaves to be worn as a garland, a lead quiver for arrows about fifteen inches long, also plummets and market weights, with other objects. Mr. Cockerell found that parts of the early pediment sculptures at Ægina were of lead, and lead is inlaid in the volute of the early Ionic capital from the archaic temple of Ephesus now in the British Museum.
The plummets are interesting to us as builders’ implements; there are two or three dozen in the British Museum, about three inches high and one inch at the base tapering upwards: some are marked with the letter A on one side and on the obverse a little relief, a throne-seat with an owl. The owl was Athene’s own symbol, and appears on the coinage of Athens in a form from which this seems copied. The Acropolis was her throne. We will stretch our imaginations far enough to believe that the A stands for Athens and that these are the very implements used in setting the masonry of one of the corner stones of the world’s art—the Parthenon.
The market weights are remarkable in bearing devices like the types of coins. For the most part they are square cakes and the devices simple almost to rudeness, yet they have that impress of style and grace in the design, with the large free handling in which is the exquisiteness of Greek art. A sketchiness so simple and easy can be the only right treatment for a metal so likely to receive injury in the use; to these as in all art so considered the inevitable injuries of wear are little loss. We can hardly suppose that such a simple industry as making lead weights for the markets would have had artists capable of designing, and suggesting in relief types like these, rather we may suppose that some of the great coiners furnished the models, especially as they would be issued by the authorities of the several towns.
We may take this first opportunity of remarking that the patterns for all ornament intended for casting should be modelled like these, never carved, as is now so universally the case for cast iron and the applied enrichments of picture frames, the reason being that cast material of this sort, so easily injured, is unsuited for giving definition and high relief, and should accept all the limitations of material frankly and make the most of dull suggestiveness; for in all these the “best are but shadows” the modelling emerging from or melting away in the ground. In two attempts the present writer has made in modelling for lead casting wax was used in one instance, and in the other, where very delicate relief was required made up mostly of threads and dots, gesso was found to answer.
The ram’s head (see Fig. 4) for instance has only the frontal, the lips, and the horn, made out, the rest the imagination sees transparently below the field. In the words of Blake “it is everything and nothing.” The raised rim is a good protection.
The second, a half Mina of Ægina, is yet simpler—just a pot, but a beautiful one well placed. The third is Attic, a quarter Dimnoun with scarabeus-like tortoise. The last is a Mina of Ægina, it bears the well-known Greek rendering of the Dolphin and the letters Μ Ν Α Α Γ Ο Ρ. “Market Mina.” The dolphin has the “bowed back” Sir Thomas Browne pointed out as a “popular error” of painters, but the dolphin was to the Greek mind, rather the genius of the waving sea itself than any mere particular fish, and this is the time consecrated form, like this it swims amongst the undulating hair of the Arethusa of Syracuse, the most beautiful coin in the world.
The Romans used lead extensively and much in the same way as we do—for roof coverings and water pipes, in masonry and for coffins. In Rome an immense quantity of lead piping has been found. The pipes were formed of strips of cast lead bent round a rod and then soldered. Most of the work was signed by the plumber, his name and that of the owner being impressed in the sand mould.2
There are many beautiful cistae or circular boxes in the museums of Naples and Rome. These are decorated with little medallions, shells, beaded rods, &c., stock patterns which were impressed in the sand mould in such fresh combinations as the thought of the workmen suggested, just as a cook makes pie crust, which is the subject of nearly the only spontaneous decorative art now remaining to us. Figs. 8 and 9 are from the Kircherian Museum.
Of the Roman leadwork in the British Museum the specimens are mostly coffins, and a number of ingots of lead. These “pigs” have been found in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Norfolk, Hants, Somerset, and Sussex. Of these there are ten in the British Museum bearing names of emperors and dates which, put into our era, are—A.D. 49, Claudius; 59, Nero; 76, Vespasian; 81, Domitian; 117, Hadrian.
These pigs are about 41⁄2 by 18 inches; and even they are not without design, for some of them have the well-known classic label to receive the name.
A beautiful object, remarkable as an instance of lead used in an article of price, is a vase some 5 inches high. This is evidently a wine cup from the figures and emblems which decorate it—Bacchus, Silenus, thyrsi bound with cords, and four genii of the Seasons carrying appropriate symbols, one being a garland, another a sheaf of corn; around the middle is a belt set with glass jewels of varied colour, dull reds, greens, and blue, and below this is a wreath of vine (Fig. 10).
Compare a very richly decorated vessel in the engravings of the Museo Borbonico.
Lead water pipes of Roman make are frequently found in England; at Bath there is a water channel 1 foot 9 inches by 7 inches, of lead nearly one inch in thickness, and sheets of it 10 feet long lined the basin of the great bath, 30 lbs. in weight to the foot. In the refuse of the Mendip mines Roman lamps and other articles of lead have been found.
During the Byzantine era lead was much used. In a curious relief found at Tunis “the founder seems to have used up all the old models in his studio. Here a Good Shepherd, Peacocks, and stags drinking from the four mystical rivers, palms and vines, are found side by side with Silenus, a Victory, a Nymph, an Athlete, and scenes of the chase.”3 In Saxon England lead was a staple commodity for export and used in great quantities at home. English merchants of lead and tin are mentioned as attending the French fairs from the time of Dagobert. During the middle ages it was largely applied to many purposes and manipulated by the various methods and decorated with the ornaments, particulars of some of which follow. England was still the best esteemed source of supply. About 1680 M. Felibien wrote a book on the crafts connected with architecture, in which he says that “The greatest part of the lead we use in France comes from England in large ingots called ‘Salmons,’ a little lead also comes from Germany, but it is dry and not so sweet as the English.”
Up to the 15th century sheet lead was cast only, but a coffin of the Duke of Bedford (Joan of Arc’s) at Rouen is already laminated.
Lead is an easy medium for the forgery of antiques, and some of the objects so produced are quite pretty. In the museum at Taunton there is a small lead bottle which seems to be a forgery.
The Plumbers’ Company in London appears to have been in existence early in the fourteenth century. In 1365 (39 Edward III.) ordinances were granted to the Company which had then been in existence some years. In 1588 (31 Elizabeth) arms and crest were granted; and in 1611 (9 James I.) a charter was given renewing all powers and privileges.
Throughout the middle ages lead was more extensively used in England than elsewhere—our cathedral roofs, for instance, were all of lead, whereas abroad they are often of corrugated or flat tiles, stone or slate. The methods of conducting water from the roof by stone gutters and gargoyles was much further developed in France than here, where lead always came to hand. Lead pipes with ornamental heads were first introduced here in England for this purpose, and they reached a development without parallel abroad. During the eighteenth century there was, as we shall see, a large industry in lead statues, and the plumber’s art continued to the opening of the present century; indeed, cisterns decorated with the old devices may be seen as late as 1840, and some of the old methods have not yet passed entirely out of memory. The Exhibition of 1851 marked exactly the general eclipse of craft tradition. England was no longer to be saved by work, but by commerce.