Details of Sculptor

Surname

Mainwaring

Alternative Surname

First Name

Daniel, of Carmarthen

Initial of Surname

M

Year of Birth/Baptism

1776

Flourished

Year of Death

1839

Biographical Details

Mainwaring was the pre-eminent stone and marble mason of his day in West Wales. He was born in 1776, but nothing is known of his parentage, early life or apprenticeship. In March 1803 he married Mary Rees, a well-connected widow with three children and a sizeable inheritance, at St Peter, Carmarthen. Mainwaring advertised his business in the Carmarthen Journal in September 1810, reminding customers that ‘he continues to work black and other marble chimney pieces, monuments, tombstones etc in a neat and expeditious manner, equal if not superior to those manufactured in London and Bristol’ (Dale-Jones 1989, 64). In 1804-26 he lived in King Street, Carmarthen, and he owned or leased a number of other properties. He was rated in 1804 on a building on the quay, formerly the property of his wife’s deceased husband, and in June 1818 he purchased Parade House, a substantial property in the town.
Mainwaring won a number of major commissions for building work in the region. He was employed at St David’s College, Lampeter, and was chosen in 1824 to build John Nash’s church of St Paul, Carmarthen, a project that aborted. That year he won the commission to build the town’s monument, with a statue on a column, to Sir Thomas Picton. This was designed by Nash and E H Baily was responsible for the statue and reliefs. Mainwaring laid the foundation stone on 16 August 1825, and was paid £1,500 for his work, which was completed two years later. The Gentleman’s Magazine carried news of the structure's erection, which ‘in its general design. resembles Trajan’s Pillar in Rome: and for the durability of the materials (black marble) promises to survive the wreck of as many ages as that mouldering but interesting relic of antiquity’ (GM 1828, 2, 264-5). In fact the work deteriorated within a few years, largely because Baily used a sub-standard Roman cement for the figurative work. The structure was demolished by David James, Mainwaring’s foreman, in 1846.
Mainwaring died of water on the lungs on 29 March 1839 in his house in Spilman Street, where he had lived since 1827, a property with stables, a garden, outhouses and five cottages to the rear. He left his marble business to his nephew John, together with his ‘working tools … saws tables books plans desks chests trucks scales and all other implements … and all my stock of marble stone and other materials.’ His estate was worth over £2,000. Two workmen were mentioned in his will, David James and John Thomas. The Carmarthen Journal carried his obituary, describing him as a man ‘of the strictest integrity and probity.’ He was buried in St Peter’s churchyard and his gravestone was inscribed ‘Daniel Mainwaring, Statuary and Marble Sculptor of this town’ (Dale-Jones 1989, 72-4).
Mainwaring’s monumental work consisted almost exclusively of elegant tablets, such as that to John Laugharne, which has an urn, swags and Adamesque details (27). The monument to John Picton has a lion and appears to be his only attempt to carve in the round (8). Gunnis regarded his work as ‘above the usual provincial average’ (Gunnis 1968, 250-1) and a substantial account of Mainwaring’s life and work was published by Edna Dale-Jones in 1989.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 250-1; Dale-Jones and Lloyd 1989, 52-54; Dale-Jones 1989, 61-75