Doe and Hope

Description

The well-proportioned cast iron campana urn, almost certainly by the Andrew Handyside foundry, the whole dry scraped back to its original lemon coloured painted finish, with a semi-lobed tapering flared body with grape vine swags and masks to the loop handles, on a square pedestal base and surviving from the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

The whole is in well-aged condition with the paint now flaking commensurate with age and weathering with no losses or cracks. The urn came to us covered with thick white emulsion paint which we have dry scraped back to reveal the beautiful original painted surface. The whole is stable and useable.

Cast iron urns were produced in large quantities, the most noteworthy from the Coalbrookedale foundry. This particular example is almost certainly by the Handyside foundry which was also a top maker Andrew Handyside and Company was an iron founder in Derby, England, in the nineteenth century.

His output ranged from garden ornaments to railway bridges and he produced lamp posts for the new gas street lighting and was one of the first to produce the new standard Post Office letterboxes. Handyside died in 1887 and the firm gradually declined until it closed early in the twentieth century. The foundry was demolished to be replaced by a housing estate, the only remaining traces being the Furnace public house and the name of a road: Handyside Street.

An urn with a beautiful texture and stunning surface that would look just as impressive inside as it would out.