Cast Lead 
DETAIL OF A LEAD CISTERN (1732) 
Formerly at No. 12 Hanover Square, London ; noiv in the Victoria and Albert Museum 
became apparent under exposure to the air 
and permitted an infiltration of moisture. 
Moreover this rolled lead of medieval 
France was liable to be attacked bv insects 
which in time perforated the sheet. When 
leaves of lead were fastened to the stone 
capitals of columns, the pecking of birds 
making their nests there wrought a havoc 
that plainly indicates how thin the sheets 
were. The cast work was much heavier, and 
the new method 
quickly rose in popu¬ 
larity. Bronze statues 
and other garden or¬ 
naments which were 
brought from Italy 
were copied in lead, 
both in France and 
England, and still ex¬ 
ist. The lead statuary 
yard, kept until 171 i, 
in Piccadilly, Lon¬ 
don, was a source 
from which outdoor 
ornaments of lead 
made their way all 
over England. 
Housesmiths emigra¬ 
ting to America em¬ 
ployed the metal to a 
limited extent for ar¬ 
chitectural details. If 
the reader should 
scrape with his knife A leaden bas-relief by bouchardon 
the ornaments upon some of 
the old Colonial buildings, he 
will find them to be not 
always of paste composition, 
as is commonly supposed, but 
frequently of lead. The em¬ 
blems of the earlv American 
insurance companies, such as 
“The Green Tree” and 
“ T he Four-in-Hand,” were 
made of lead, while of the few 
isolated cases of the material 
being used for statuary, per¬ 
haps the most celebrated was 
the statue of King George, 
a familiar object at the 
Battery, New York, and 
which was melted up for Rev¬ 
olutionary bullets. 
LEADWORK AT VERSAILLES 
Of all the decorative work which has ever 
been done in lead, by far the most beautiful 
and those which remain a source of delight 
and study, are the fountains and urns of Ver¬ 
sailles. These were undoubtedly gilded when 
they were made, imitation of gold being but 
one form of Bourbon ostentation. M. Pierre 
Roche, the French sculptor who has cast a 
number of his works in lead, says of them : 
Upon an Urn at Versailles 
38 
