Details of Sculptor

Surname

Saunders

Alternative Surname

First Name

Richard

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

- 1735

Biographical Details

The orphaned son of Jeremiah Saunders of Ampthill, Beds, he was apprenticed to Jonathan Maine (or Mayne) in 1675 and became free of the Joiners’ Company in 1682. He lived in King Street, Cheapside. He did much work for the corporation of the City of London and also served as a captain in the City trained bands. In 1705 his name occurs in the minutes of the committee appointed to undertake repairs to the Guildhall (3).
Saunders’ most famous works were the statues of the mythical giants Gog and Magog, carved in fir, which stood in the Guildhall until they were destroyed in the Second World War (2). They were ordered on 17 December 1709, and though it is generally supposed that the Stationers’ Company presented them to the city, an entry in the City Cash Account for 1713 indicates that it was the corporation who paid Saunders for them. The entry reads as follows: ‘To Richard Saunders Carver in full of his Bill for Making and Carving the Giants and other work in Guildhall and his time and Expenses in and about the Same by Order of the Committee for repairing and beautifying Guildhall dated 17 December 1709’ (City Cash Accts 01/27 fol 239r). In 1711 he also received money for further carved work (5). In 1717 Saunders was unsuccessful in the competition to choose a sculptor for the statue of George I in the Royal Exchange (see Edward Stanton). Saunders’s wife, Dorothy, was buried in St Laurence, Jewry on 17 December 1719 and Saunders himself was buried in the middle aisle on 2 January 1735. He left four children.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 340; Douglas Stewart 1978, 219
Archival References: Joiners, Freedoms, vol 1, fol 124r