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John Doubleday (restorer)

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John Doubleday
Black and white photograph of John Doubleday with the Portland Vase and an 1845 watercolour by Thomas H. Shepherd showing the shattered fragments
John Doubleday with his restoration of the Portland Vase, and an 1845 watercolour of the shattered fragments
BornAbout 1798
New York
Died(1856-01-25)January 25, 1856
NationalityEnglish
Occupation(s)Restorer, dealer
Years active1936–1856
Known forReconstructing the Portland Vase

John Doubleday (about 1798 – 25 January 1856) was a British craftsperson, restorer, and dealer in antiquities who was variously employed by the British Museum for the last 20 years of his life. He engaged in several roles with the museum, not least as a witness in criminal trials, but was primarily their specialist restorer, perhaps the first person to hold the position. His "greatest triumph" was his 1845 restoration of the smashed Portland Vase,[1] suggesting that Doubleday was among "the forefront of the craftsmen-restorers of his time."[2]

At the same time that he was employed at the British Museum, Doubleday was also a dealer selling copies of coins, medals, and ancient seals. Doubleday took casts in sulphur and white metal from both national and private collections, and sold them for a fraction of the price that the originals would command. Thousands of his copies filled out the collections of institutions and individuals. The very realism for which he was lauded also occasioned the confusion of his casts with originals; after his death he was labelled a "Forger", but with the caveat that "[w]hether he did copies with the intention of deceiving collectors or not is open to doubt".[3]

Little is known about Doubleday's upbringing or personal life. Multiple sources describe him as an American, and the 1851 census records him as a New York-born British subject. An obituary noted that he worked at a printer's shop for more than 20 years during his youth, which gave him the experience of casting type that he would employ in his later career as a copyist. Doubleday's early life, family, and education are otherwise unknown. His death in 1856 left behind a wife and five daughters, all English, the eldest daughter born around 1833.

At the British Museum

From 1836 to 1856 Doubleday worked in the Department of Antiquities at the British Museum.[4] He appears to have been employed as a freelancer, who also seems to have occasionally acted as an agent in sales to the museum.[1] At times he presented the museum with items himself, including coins, medals, and Egyptian objects.[5] Among other donations, his 1830 gift of 2,433 casts of medieval seals was the only significant donation recorded by the museum that year,[6] he offered several coins and another 750 casts the following year,[7] and in 1836, he presented the museum with a Henry Corbould lithograph of himself.[5] He also appears to have been the museum's primary specialist restorer, and perhaps its first;[1] his death was described as vacating the museum's post of restorer.[8] At his death, it was noted that "[h]e was chiefly employed in the reparation of innumerable works of art, which could not have been intrusted to more skilful or more patient hands",[9] and that he "was well known as one of the most valuable servants of that department".[10]

Portland Vase

Watercolour painting by Thomas H. Shepherd showing the unrestored fragments of the Portland Vase
The shattered fragments of the Portland Vase, as painted in 1845
Main article: Portland Vase

The highlight of Doubleday's career came after 7 February 1845 when a young man, having spent the prior week "indulging in intemperance", smashed the Portland Vase, "a masterpiece of Roman cameo glass" that is "probably the most famous glass object in the world",[11] into hundreds of pieces.[12] After being selected to undertake the restoration, Doubleday started by commissioning a watercolour painting of the fragments by Thomas H. Shepherd.[13] No account of his restoration survives,[14] but by September 10 of that year Doubleday had glued the vase whole again.[13] Only 37 small splinters, most from the interior of the vase, were left out, and the cameo base disc, which was found to be a modern replacement, was set aside for separate display.[15][16] A new base disc of plain glass, polished outside and matte inside, was diamond-engraved "Broke Feby 7th 1845 Restored Sept 10th 1845 By John Doubleday".[13]

At the time the restoration was termed "masterly";[17] Doubleday was lauded for demonstrating "skilful ingenuity" and "cleverness ... sufficient to establish his immortality as the prince of restorers,"[16] and in 2006 William Andrew Oddy, a former keeper of conservation at the museum, noted that the achievement "must rank him in the forefront of the craftsmen-restorers of his time."[2] Doubleday's restoration would remain for more than 100 years.[18][14] The vase was next restored by J. W. R. Axtell in 1948–1949, and then by Nigel Williams in 1988–1989.[18][19]

Other work

Beyond his work on the Portland Vase, several other of Doubleday's responsibilities at the British Museum have been recorded.[1] Between 1850 and 1855 the museum received many clay tablets from excavations in Babylonia and Assyria, which through poor packaging had developed crystalline deposits rendering the writing illegible.[20] Under the direction of Samuel Birch, then the keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, Doubleday was granted leave to attempt to remove the deposits.[21] The results were described by E. A. Wallis Budge, onetime keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the museum, as "disastrous."[22] Doubleday first attempted to fire the unbaked tablets to make them hard, but instead saw the surfaces flake off, forever destroying the inscriptions.[23] His second attempt, submerging the tablets in special solutions, caused them to disintegrate, at which point Birch suspended the efforts entirely.[24]

In 1841 and 1849 Doubleday also had occasion to serve as a witness in criminal matters.[1][25] In 1841, he testified during a trial over the theft of a gold medal to his analysis of the medal.[25][26] Eight years later, in March and April 1849, Doubleday again testified in a matter concerning the theft of coins from the museum.[1][27] Early in February, Timolean Vlasto, a moustachioed twenty-four-year-old from Vienna of fashionable appearance and good family,[28][29][30] had been introduced to Charles Newton (later Sir) and described as a person interested in coins, after which he was given unfettered access to the museum's collection.[27][29][note 1] Suspicions were aroused on 24 March, and on Monday the 26th a label was found on the floor, and the coin that it described was missing.[27] Upon inspection many more coins were found to be missing, some of which were recovered when a search warrant for Vlasto's lodgings was obtained on Thursday.[27][30] Doubleday was called to testify on Thursday or Friday; he stated that some of the coins exactly matched sulphur casts which he had made before the theft, and that the market value was between £3,000 and £4,000.[27] Vlasto, who was remanded without bail, claimed that the majority of the coins discovered were not the museum's.[27][32] On 17 April Doubleday again testified, identifying two more coins as belonging to the museum.[33][34][35] In early May Vlasto pleaded guilty to the theft of 266 coins from the museum, valued at £500, and another 71, valued at £150, from the house of General Charles Richard Fox.[29][36] His lawyer termed him a monomaniac who was only interested in collecting, not selling.[29] The pleas met little sympathy.[37] Vlasto was sentenced by the Central Criminal Court to seven years transportation to Australia,[29][38][39] and in early 1851 he was placed on board the Lady Kennaway for the journey.[40]

As a dealer

In private life Doubleday was a dealer, and a copyist of coins, medals, and ancient seals.[9] He sold sulphur and white metal casts at his establishment,[41] which, located near the British Museum, may have helped facilitate his employment there.[9] He also sold curiosities,[1] such as snuff boxes and lead seals that he claimed to come from materials taken from the charred ruins of the Palace of Westminster,[42][43][44] and pieces of wood said to be from a tree planted by Shakespeare.[45] In 1835 Doubleday advertised for sale copies of 6000 Greek coins, 2050 bronze, 1000 silver, and 500 gold Roman coins, and 300 Roman medallions,[41] in addition to other antiquities and what Doubleday termed "the most extensive Collection of Casts in Sulphur of ancient seals ever formed".[46] At his death, it was said that he "possessed the largest collection of casts of seals in England, probably in the world."[47] This comprehensiveness led to his contribution to the 1848 Monumenta Historica Britannica of a descriptive catalogue of Roman coins relating to Britain.[48] Doubleday's casts came from a range of places;[49][50] on good terms with a variety of institutions and collectors, he was permitted to take casts at will from the collections of the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.[49][51][52]

Doubleday's casts were inexpensive, and sold widely.[41][53] He sold to collectors and lyceums; University College London filled out their collection with his casts, finding that they worked well for study, yet cost significantly less than would originals.[41] This same appearance of realism saw some of Doubleday's copies passed off as real.[54] Doubleday himself was cast as a "Forger" in Leonard Forrer's 1904 Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, though with the caveat that "[w]hether he did copies with the intention of deceiving collectors or not is open to doubt".[3][note 2]

Personal life

Lithograph of Doubleday, by Henry Corbould
1836 lithograph of Doubleday, by Henry Corbould

Little is known about the life of Doubleday,[1] and nothing about his family or education.[2] An 1859 edition of The English Cyclopædia described him as American,[56][57][note 3] and the 1851 census as a New York-born "artist" who was nonetheless a British subject, married to one Elizabeth and father of five daughters,[1] all Londoners.[58] His eldest daughter, named after her mother, was born in 1833, suggesting that Doubleday and his wife had married by then.[1]

Doubleday worked at a printer's shop for more than 20 years "during his youth," according to his obituary in The Athenæum, giving him experience, through making type, in the casting of metal and other materials.[10] Subsequently he began copying medals, ancient seals, and coins,[9][1] occasionally devising new methods of doing so;[59] these vocations saw him also prepare castings for the Royal Mint, and become a founding member of the Royal Numismatic Society.[1][9][60] By 1832 he was listed in directories as under the header "Curiosity, shell & picture dealers", and as a dealer in ancient seals.[1] In addition to his work at the British Museum, he may himself have been a collector.[4]

Doubleday died "after a long illness" on 25 January 1856, "in the fifty-seventh year of his age,"[10] and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.[1] His will was made only six days before.[1] His entire estate was left to Elizabeth Bewsey, the daughter of a deceased bookkeeper; she was apparently an Elizabeth other than his wife, making it "an unusual bequest" that left nothing for his wife or daughters.[1] His library was sold by Sotheby's in April of the same year.[1][61]

Notes

  1. ^ Sixteen years later, while writing about catching a servant in the act of stealing from him, Newton would declare that "I have not seen so livid and hideous a complexion since the day when Timoleon Pericles Vlastò was detected stealing coins from the British Museum."[31]
  2. ^ By the 1923 edition, references to Doubleday being a forger were removed from the dictionary.[55]
  3. ^ Doubleday was also noted as being one of two with the same surname employed at the British Museum at the same time; the other, Edward Doubleday, was an unrelated English entomologist.[56][57]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Simon 2018.
  2. ^ a b c Panzeri & Gimondi 2006, p. 109.
  3. ^ a b Forrer 1904.
  4. ^ a b British Museum Doubleday.
  5. ^ a b British Museum acquisitions 1848.
  6. ^ British Museum benefactors 1883, p. xxvii.
  7. ^ British Museum acquisitions 1833, pp. 155, 212.
  8. ^ Budge 1925, p. 150.
  9. ^ a b c d e Gentleman's Magazine 1856, p. 431.
  10. ^ a b c Athenæum 1856a, p. 140.
  11. ^ Journal of Glass Studies Foreword 1990.
  12. ^ Painter & Whitehouse 1990, p. 65.
  13. ^ a b c Painter & Whitehouse 1990, p. 69.
  14. ^ a b Williams 1989, pp. 5–6.
  15. ^ Painter & Whitehouse 1990, pp. 69–71, 82–83.
  16. ^ a b Gentleman's Magazine 1846, p. 41.
  17. ^ Morning Post 1845.
  18. ^ a b Painter & Whitehouse 1990, pp. 82–84.
  19. ^ Williams 1989.
  20. ^ Budge 1925, pp. 147–148.
  21. ^ Budge 1925, pp. xviii, 148.
  22. ^ Budge 1925, pp. ii, 148.
  23. ^ Budge 1925, p. 148.
  24. ^ Budge 1925, pp. 148–149.
  25. ^ a b Westgarth 2009, p. 89.
  26. ^ Old Bailey Proceedings 1841.
  27. ^ a b c d e f Morning Post 1849.
  28. ^ Pembrokeshire Herald 1849.
  29. ^ a b c d e Akerman 1850.
  30. ^ a b The Spectator 1849a.
  31. ^ Newton 1865, p. 17.
  32. ^ Morning Chronicle 1849.
  33. ^ The Era 1849.
  34. ^ Bury and Norwich Post 1849.
  35. ^ The Spectator 1849b.
  36. ^ The Examiner 1849.
  37. ^ Thomas 2008, p. 64.
  38. ^ Maitland Mercury 1849.
  39. ^ Old Bailey Proceedings 1849.
  40. ^ Pickup 2017.
  41. ^ a b c d Silliman 1835, p. 75.
  42. ^ Shenton 2015.
  43. ^ Millett snuff box.
  44. ^ Millett lead seal.
  45. ^ Millett Shakespeare's tree.
  46. ^ Akerman 1834.
  47. ^ Sims 1861, p. 299.
  48. ^ Petrie, Sharpe & Hardy 1848, pp. clii–clxxiii.
  49. ^ a b Silliman 1835, pp. 75–77.
  50. ^ Green 1857, p. 148 n.3.
  51. ^ British Museum Select Committee 1836, p. 490.
  52. ^ Mechanics' Magazine 1837.
  53. ^ Rose 1850–1851, pp. 158–159, 165.
  54. ^ Numismatic Chronicle 1849, p. 136.
  55. ^ Forrer 1923.
  56. ^ a b Knight 1859, p. 378.
  57. ^ a b Knight 1866, p. 378.
  58. ^ English Census 1851.
  59. ^ Burgon 1841.
  60. ^ Carson 1986, pp. 3, 5–6, 59.
  61. ^ Athenæum 1856b.

Bibliography


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