A George III Coade Stone Corinthian Capital, Late 18th/Early 19th Century

Christie's South Kensington, 19 June 2013, lot 217;

Where acquired by Aso O. Tavitian.

Eleanor Coade ( d.1821) opened her Lambeth Manufactory for ceramic artificial stone in 1769 near the King's Arm's Stairs on the Thames on a site occupied by Daniel Pincot and appointed the sculptor John Bacon as its manager two years later. She was employed by all the leading 18th century architects who included Robert Adam at Croome Court, Sir William Chambers at Somerset House and James Wyatt at the Pantheon in Oxford Street. From about 1777 she began preparing engraved designs, which were published in 1784 in a catalogue of over 700 items entitled A Descriptive Catalogue of Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory. The design for a Corinthian capital is shown in Alison Kelly, Mrs Coade's Stone, 1990, p.158. Capitals most similar to the present lot can be seen on the Portico of Sir Robert Taylor’s Gorhambury House, Hertfordshire of 1872, and twenty large-scale capitals were supplied for the temple built by Lord Howard de Walden at Audley End to celebrate the return to sanity of George III in 1787.