Coade stone


Coade stone or Lithodipyra or Lithodipra was stoneware that was often described as an artificial stone in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was used for moulding neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments of the highest quality that remain virtually weatherproof today.
Coade stone features were produced by appointment to George III and the Prince Regent for St George's Chapel, Windsor; The Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Carlton House, London; the Royal Naval College, Greenwich; and refurbishment of Buckingham Palace in the 1820s.
The product was created around 1770 by Eleanor Coade, who ran Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory, Coade and Sealy, and Coade in Lambeth, London, from 1769 until her death in 1821.
It continued to be manufactured by her last business partner, William Croggon, until 1833.
The recipe and techniques for producing Coade stone have been rediscovered by Coade Ltd., which produces sculpture at its workshops in Wilton, Wiltshire.

History

In 1769 Mrs Coade bought Daniel Pincot’s struggling artificial stone business at Kings Arms Stairs, Narrow Wall, Lambeth, a site now under the Royal Festival Hall. This business developed into Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory with Eleanor in charge, such that within two years she fired Pincot for 'representing himself as the chief proprietor'.
Coade did not invent 'artificial stone'. Various lesser quality ceramic precursors to Lithodipyra had been both patented and manufactured over the previous forty years prior to its appearance. She was, however, probably responsible for perfecting both the clay recipe and the firing process. 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.
The company did well, and boasted an illustrious list of customers such as George III and members of the English nobility. In 1799 Mrs Coade appointed her cousin John Sealy, already working as a modeller, as a partner in her business, which then traded as 'Coade and Sealy' until his death in 1813 when it reverted to just 'Coade'.
In 1799 she opened a show room Coade's Gallery on Pedlar's Acre at the Surrey end of Westminster Bridge Road to display her products.
In 1813 Mrs Coade took on William Croggan from Grampound in Cornwall, a sculptor and distant relative by marriage. He managed the factory until her death eight years later in 1821 whereupon he bought the factory from the executors for c. £4000. Croggan supplied a lot of Coade stone for Buckingham Palace; however, he went bankrupt in 1833 and died two years later. Trade declined, and production came to an end in the early 1840s.

Current production

In 2000 Coade ltd started producing statues, sculptures and architectural ornament, using the original eighteenth century recipes and methods.

Material

Description

Coade stone is a type of stoneware. Mrs Coade's own name for her products was Lithodipyra, a name constructed from ancient Greek words meaning "stone-twice-fire", or "twice fired stone". Its colours varied from light grey to light yellow and its surface is best described as having a matte finish.
The ease with which the product could be moulded into complex shapes made it ideal for large statues, sculptures and sculptural façades. One-off commissions were expensive to produce, as they had to carry the entire cost of creating a mould. Whenever possible moulds were kept for many years of repeated use.

Formula

The recipe for Coade stone is still used by Coade Ltd. It is a ceramic, rather than a cementatious material.
Its manufacture required extremely careful control and skill in kiln firing over a period of days, difficult to achieve with its era's fuels and technology. Coade's factory was the only really successful manufacturer.
The formula used was:
This mixture was also referred to as "fortified clay", which was kneaded before insertion into a 1,100 °C kiln for firing over four days – a production technique very similar to brick manufacture.
Depending on the size and fineness of detail in the work, a different size and proportion of Coade grog was used. In many pieces a combination of grogs was used, with fine grogged clay applied to the surface for detail, backed up by a more heavily grogged mixture for strength.

Durability

One of the more striking features of Coade stone is its high resistance to weathering, with the material often faring better than most types of natural stone in London's harsh environment. Prominent examples listed below have survived without apparent wear and tear for 150 years. There were, however, notable exceptions. A few works produced by Coade, mainly dating from the later period, have shown poor resistance to weathering due to a bad firing in the kiln where the material was not brought up to a sufficient temperature.

Demise

Coade stone was superseded by products using naturally exothermic Portland cement as a binder, and appears to have been largely phased out by the 1840s.

Examples

Over 650 pieces are still in existence worldwide.
In 2020, the library of Birkbeck, University of London launched the Coade Stone image collection online, consisting of digitised slides of examples of Coade stone bequeathed by Alison Kelly, whose book Coade Stone was described by Caroline Stanford as "the most authoratative treatment on the subject".

Gallery