Stone pedestal for spiral-fluted urn
after William Kent (Bridlington 1685 - London 1748)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1750 - 1850
Materials
Stone, Portland stone
Place of origin
Great Britain
Collection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516653.2
Summary
Square pedestal made c. 1930, engraved with inscriptions on two sides and with Fairhaven coats of arms on two sides. For Bath stone 'The Commemoration Urn', British (English) School after William Kent (1685-1748), c. 1750-1850 urn on a 20th century pedestal. The inscriptions read: 'THIS VRN WAS/ PLACED HERE TO/ COMMEMORATE/ THE EIGHT HUNDREDTH/ ANNIVERSARY OF/ THE FOUNDATION OF/ ANGLESEY PRIORY/ BY KING HENRY I/ 1130-1930'; 'O SI HAEC DOMVS/ TANTAS PASSA VICES/ IAMDVDVM QVIESCAT (composed by F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead).
Full description
This urn is taken from John Vardy's 'Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent' (published 1744, plate 25) where it is there described as one of ‘Two Vases with Pedestals for Mr Pope’ designed by William Kent for Alexander Pope's Thames-side villa at Twickenham. Kent is credited with introducing the Palladian style of architecture to Britain with Richard Boyle, the 'architect earl' Burlington, at Chiswick House and Holkham Hall, the truest expression of neo-Palladianism in England. He is considered one of the originators of the English landscape garden, his designs for Stowe, Pope's Villa (1733) and Rousham particularly celebrated. Reproductions of this model in Bath stone were popular from the mid eighteenth century into the nineteenth: see, for example, an equivalent at Croome Park (NT 105009) restored by Cliveden Conservation and at Longford Castle, Wiltshire (reproduced Davis 1991, p. 116 plate 2:58). Alice Rylance-Watson 2019
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
after William Kent (Bridlington 1685 - London 1748), designer
References
Roper 1964: Lanning Roper, The Gardens of Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. The Home of Lord Fairhaven, London 1964, pp. 23-4, frontispiece. Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 169. Davis 1991: John Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, 300 years of creativity: Artists, manufacturers & materials, Woodbridge 1991, p. 116, plate 2:58.