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Eleanor Coade

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Eleanor Coade
Born(1733-06-03)3 June 1733
Exeter, Devon, England
Died16 November 1821(1821-11-16) (aged 88)
Camberwell, London, England
Resting placeBunhill Fields cemetry, London
Occupation(s)Business woman,
Neoclassical statuary sculptor and manufacturer,
Belmont House, Lyme Regis, Dorset, with Coade Stone decoration.

Eleanor Coade (3 June 1733–16 November 1821)[1] was a British businesswoman known for manufacturing Neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments made of Lithodipyra (Coade stone) for over 50 years from 1769 until her death. She should not be confused with her mother, also named Eleanor.[n 1] [n 2] [n 3]

Lithodipyra (stone fired twice) was a high quality, durable moulded weather-resistant, ceramic stoneware, whereby statues and decorative features still look new today. She did not invent 'artificial stone', various inferior quality precursors having been both patented and manufactured over the previous forty years, but she was probably responsible for perfecting both the clay recipe and the firing process. High quality manufacturing and artistic taste combined with her entrepreneurial, business and marketing skills to create the overwhelmingly successful stone products of her age. She produced stoneware for St George’s Chapel, Windsor; The Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Carlton House, London and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, whilst shortly after her death a large quantity was used in the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.[1][2]

Born in Exeter to two families of woolen merchants and weavers, she ran her business, Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory; Coade and Sealy and latterly Coade (by appointment to George III and the Prince Regent), for fifty years in Lambeth, London. A devout Baptist, she died unmarried in Camberwell.

In 1784 an uncle gave her Belmont House, a holiday villa in Lyme Regis, her late father's town of origin, which she decorated extensively with Coade stone.[1][3]

Personal life

Early life

Eleanor Coade was born on 3 June 1733 in Exeter, the elder daughter of the Nonconformist (devout Baptist[2]) family of Eleanor (Elinore née Enchmarch) and George Coade.[4] George Coade (1706–1769) was a wool merchant originally from Lyme Regis, and his wife, Eleanor (Elinore née Enchmarch[4]) (c.1708–1796[5]) daughter of Thomas Enchmarch (d.1735)[4] and his wife Sarah,[6] also a merchant and weaver, of Tiverton, Devon. Eleanor Coade's sister Elizabeth was born 1738 in Exeter.[4]

Eleanor's maternal grandmother Sarah Enchmarch was a successful business woman in Tiverton, running the family business for 25 years after her husband Thomas died in 1735. She employed 200 people making cloth, and used spies to learn the latest techniques used in Norwich. She travelled around Tiverton in a sedan chair and in 1749 re-built the Enchmarch mansion.[6]

Later life

About 1760, the Coade family moved from Exeter to London. In early 1769 the family were living at St Thomas Apostles Street[7] when her father George Coade died having gone bankrupt for the second time.[1][2] From around 1769 she lived on the factory premises at Narrow wall, Lambeth.

In 1784 Eleanor was given Belmont House, Lyme Regis, Dorset, by her uncle. It had been built in 1774 by Simon Bunter, an 'Attorney at law' from Axminster,[8] as a simple two-storey Georgian seaside villa known as 'Bunter's Castle', but was renamed Belmont House by the Coade family.[9]

By 1811 she was living in Great Surrey Street (later Blackfriars Road), Southwark,[5] and by her death in 1821 she was living in Camberwell Grove, Camberwell, London.[5]

Death and commemoration

"Eleanor Coade's will:
I ELEANOR COADE of Great Surrey Street, Blackfriars Road in the parish of Christchurch in the County of Surrey, Spinster, in the fear of God who has blessed my labours amidst many afflictions to the accumulating some property which I now consider as a talent to be rendered back to Him whenever he shall see fit to remove me to that better inheritance which through the aboundings of his Grace in Christ he has enabled me as a chief sinner to hope for, pressed down with favours innumerable it is my desire to glorify him in the following distribution. But first I entreat those of my relatives who will share less than others not to impute the difference to want of affection but to their own different situations and other existing circumstances which give some of them a claim to more special notice and as none of them do rank with the absolutely poor of the land. The Lord's poor and the spread of his Gospel will be allowed by those who know the worth of it so have a powerful demand on the heart of a ransomed sinner.

Coade/Coode Family History, by Joe Flood[10]

Eleanor Coade was a devout Baptist and remained unmarried until her death on 16 November 1821 in Camberwell Grove, Camberwell, London.[5] Her obituary notice was published in The Gentleman's Magazine which declared her ‘the sole inventor and proprietor of an art which deserves considerable notice’. Although it extolled the virtues of Coade Stone it contained no reference to her private life.[1][11]

In her will and testament she left much of her fortune to charity schools and clergymen plus her family. A proponent of women's rights she also left money to a few married women friends, stating that their husbands are to have no control over the funds.[1][2][12]

Her body is buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields cemetery in the London Borough of Islington.[13]

She is commemorated under Westminster Bridge (or Waterloo Bridge) by the Royal Festival Hall, the modern occupant of the Narrow Wall site. The bottom stone of a horse-mill used in her factory, a wheel-shaped millstone with a prominent internal axle lip, is placed on a 30-degree slope beside the under-bridge footpath.[14]

Business life

About 1760, the Coade family moved from Exeter to London, and by the mid-1760s Eleanor was running her own business as a Linen draper in the City of London.[2] Mrs was a courtesy title for any unmarried woman in business at that time.

In late 1769 Eleanor bought Daniel Pincot’s struggling artificial stone business at Kings Arms Stairs, Narrow Wall, Lambeth, a site now under the Royal Festival Hall.[2][15] This business developed into Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory with Eleanor in charge, such that within two years (1771) she sacked Pincot for 'representing himself as the chief proprietor'.[1][2][16] The product was marketed as Coade's Lithodipyra, meaning twice-fired stone, for the next 50 years.[16][17]

It is possible that Pincot's business was a continuation of that run nearby by Richard Holt, who had taken out two patents in 1722 for a kind of liquid metal or stone and another for making china without the use of clay, but there were many start-up 'artificial stone' businesses in the early 18th century of which only Mrs Coade's succeeded.[7][15][18]

John Bacon, a talented sculptor, had worked for Mrs Coade since 1769 so in 1771 she appointed him as works supervisor, he then took over both model-making and design until his death in 1799. His neo-classical models won both awards from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and royal patronage. In parallel Eleanor Coade developed her own talent as a modeller, exhibiting at the Society of Artists between 1773 and 1780. Their joint success meant that the Coade Artificial Stone Manufactory worked for all the eminent Georgian architects, including Robert Adam, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt, Sir William Chambers, John Nash, and John Soane.[1] Throughout this period of the late 18th century Mrs Coade also employed designers and modellers such as John Devaere (John De Vaere (1755–1830)) before he joined Josiah Wedgwood in 1790,[19] John Charles Felix Rossi, Thomas Dubbin, Benjamin West and Joseph Panzetta (1789–1830) who worked for her for over 26 years and whose most prominent work was Lord Hill's Column in Shrewsbury.[7]

After 1780 she was commissioned by King George III to make the Gothic screen (and possibly also replace part of the ceiling[12]) of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.[1]

In 1784 she created a comprehensive catalogue of 746 designs that the company produced. It included statues; busts; whole panels; friezes; fascia; medallions; paterae; coats of arms; balusters; pinnacles; chimneypieces; furniture; interior ornaments and mouldings. An important consequence of the ceramic moulding process was that moulds could be reused, some had a working life of over 50 years.[2]

In 1799 Mrs Coade recruited her cousin John Sealy as a partner in her business, (Her mother’s sister Mary’s son[7]), which then traded as 'Coade and Sealy' until his death, aged 64, in October 1813 when it reverted to just 'Coade'. She also opened a show room Coade’s Gallery on Pedlar's Acre at the Surrey end of Westminster Bridge Road to display her products.[1][2][7][20]

In 1813 she recruited William Croggon, a sculptor from Grampound in Cornwall (a distant cousin by marriage, the brother-in-law of Eleanor's cousin William Oke, the son of her aunt Frances (née Enchmarch))[21][22]), who remained as manager until her death, after which he bought the firm from her estate for circa £4,000 although he had expected to simply inherit it. From 1814 onwards Croggon paid rates for the factory.[23] The business remained successful long after her death, but Croggon went bankrupt in 1833 because of both changing tastes and the failure of the Duke of York to pay his debts.[1][2][7][16][24]

Business methods

Coade's success as a business woman was very rare in the Georgian era. She was a hard-working individual who concentrated on methodical procedures to produce consistently high quality products. She was the first and only person to succeed in the artificial stone business thanks to a combination of managerial skills, entrepreneurial flare and a talent for marketing and public relations.[2]

She closely supervised both the preparation of clay mixtures and the firing process for all her products. Having bought Daniel Pincot's struggling business within two years she took the decision to sack him for disciplinary reasons, and confirmed her decision on September 11 and 14 by adverts in The Daily Advertiser, Gazetteer and The New Daily Advertiser.[2][7]

She cultivated strong business relationships with respected architects and designers, including Robert Adam, James Wyatt, Hunphrey Repton, John Nash and Sir John Soane, because she could produce multiple copies of their designs. Her success may be gauged by Josiah Wedgewood's complaint that he 'could not get architects to endorse his new chimneypiece plaques'.[2][20]

Coade stone business

Main article: Coade stone

The factory produced large ceramic statues and all manner of decorative architectural features, which proved to be extremely durable even in London's corrosive atmosphere brought on by the use of coal. These included the frontispiece of the original Twinings shop (tea merchants) on the Strand; private ornaments in the rear of Buckingham Palace; the lion on Westminster Bridge, the Nelson Pediment at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich (a mural above the terrace's main entrance reckoned by the Coade workers as the finest of all their work), the stone awning and statues at Schomberg House, and the crest on the Imperial War Museum. The plaques at Hammerwood Park were also made of Coade stone.

Notes

  1. ^ There is some modern confusion between Eleanor and her mother (Eleanor, Elinore), as to which one ran the factory. This is primarily due to Miss Eleanor Coade's customary use of the title Mrs because this was a commonplace 'courtesy title' for any unmarried woman in business. However, analysis of the bills shows that Eleanor Coade (daughter) was fully in charge from 1771. (Alison Kelly, Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (ONDB))
  2. ^ Alison Kelly states on page 23 of Mrs Coade's Stone - "Since mother and daughter had the same name, confusion has reigned over the contribution of each of them to the manufactory. The widow Coade was of course Mrs, and it has been assumed that any mention of Mrs Coade must refer to her. Rupert Gunnis, for instance, believed that the widow ran the factory until her death, in her late eighties, in 1796. What is not generally realised is that women in business, in Georgian times, had the courtesy title of Mrs, So Mrs in the Coade records, normally refers to Miss Coade. Bills were usually headed Eleanor Coade, but two, as early as 1771, for Hatfield Priory, Essex, and 1773, for work at Burton upon Trent Town Hall, were made out to Miss Coade, showing that from the early days she was in charge. The only references which specifically concern the mother are the first two entries for the factory in the Lambeth Poor rate books, when the rate was paid by Widow Coade."
  3. ^ It appears that the modern identity confusion dates from 1951 (or earlier) when Sir Howard Roberts and Walter H. Godfrey published the Survey of London: volume 23 - Lambeth: South Bank and Vauxhall, where inadequate research about the Coade family genealogy lead to both gaps and false conclusions. Typically this state of knowledge was then reiterated by Rupert Gunnis in his 1953 Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660-1851. More recently the 'British History Online' website has given credence to the otherwise excellent Roberts and Godfrey Survey of London on their prestigious website (British History.ac.uk) and some other internet sites have repeated the claims.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford National Dictionary of Biography - Eleanor Coade
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Addidi Inspiration Award for Female Entreprenneurs. Eleanor Coade by Dr. Nicola Phillips, Kingston University, May 2009
  3. ^ Landmark Trust
  4. ^ a b c d Rootsweb, George Coade, born 1706, was christened 06 NOV 1706 in Lyme Regis, Dorset UK, and died 1769.
  5. ^ a b c d Roberts, Howard; Godfrey, Walter H. "Coade's Artificial Stone Works". Victoria County History. Vol. 23: Lambeth: South Bank and Vauxhall.
  6. ^ a b History of Tiverton Wool Trade
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Fairweather, History of Coade stone, Synopsised from original research in Mrs Coade's Stone by Alison Kelly.
  8. ^ Devon Freeholders, 1711-1799, QS7/53, Devon Freeholders Book, 1783, Axminster hundred
  9. ^ Past Remains - Belmont House
  10. ^ Coad/Coode Family - History of people from the West Country of England called Coad, Coode and variants. August 7, 2007, by Joe Flood
  11. ^ The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 130 Por John Nichols. Obituary
  12. ^ a b Thomason Cudworth, History of Coade
  13. ^ Find a grave - Eleanor Coade
  14. ^ Local History, Coade Stone, from Coade Stone.doc 9-12-2007
  15. ^ a b Parks and Gardens. Eleanor Coade - artist in artificial stone. By Timur Tatlioglu.
  16. ^ a b c Yale University Library, Coade's Lithodipyra, or, Artificial Stone Manufactory
  17. ^ Lithodipyra
  18. ^ Alison Kelly, Mrs. Coade's stone (1990)
  19. ^ National Portrait Gallery, profile of John de Vaere
  20. ^ a b JStore. Architectural History, Vol. 28, 1985. Coade Stone in Georgian Architecture by Alison Kelly
  21. ^ Archive.org "Survey of London"
  22. ^ British History Online, Chapter 15, Coade's Artificial Stone Works
  23. ^ Parks and Gardens. Eleanor Coade - artist in artificial stone. By Timur Tatlioglu. Sourced from (Roberts & Godfrey 1951, 58-61)
  24. ^ Parks and Gardens UK, William Croggon

Sources

  • Kelly, Alison (1988). "Coade Stone in Georgian Gardens". Garden History. 16 (2): 109–133..
  • Kelly, Alison (1990). "Mrs Coade's Stone". Upton-upon-Severn: Self-publishing Association. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)}
  • Kelly, Alison, Coade, Eleanor (1733–1821), rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) accessed 22 Jan 2009.
  • Sir Howard Roberts and Walter H. Godfrey (editors) (1951). "Coade's Artificial Stone Works". Survey of London: volume 23: Lambeth: South Bank and Vauxhall. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 22 January 2009. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  • Havill, John. Eleanor Coade: Artificial Stone Manufacturer : Born Exeter 1733 and Died London 1821.

Gallery of images.

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