Details of Sculptor

Surname

Blashfield

Alternative Surname

First Name

John Marriott

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

- 1882

Biographical Details

An enterprising business man, he was involved in a number of ventures connected with ceramics, sculpture and architecture. He was Minton’s representative in London and a partner in the firm of Wyatt, Parker & Co of Millwall, manufacturers of cement, scagliola and mosaic pavements, which he took over in 1846. As a property developer he built a number of grand houses in Kensington Palace Gardens, but was unable to sell most of them and was declared bankrupt in 1847. He is best known as a manufacturer of sculpture and architectural decorations in terracotta. He first became interested in the material around 1839 when he engaged James Bubb on experimental terracotta work for model cottages at Canford, Dorset, but only turned to terracotta production after seeing pieces by M H Blanchard at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Blashfield soon won a prestigious contract, to cast a series of colossal terracotta statues representing Australia, California, Birmingham and Sheffield for the Crystal Palace (4). John Bell provided the models for these figures and for various other works produced by the firm (5-7, 21, 36). To publicise his works Blashfield published An Account of the History and Manufacture of Ancient and Modern Terra Cotta (1855) and several catalogues, including A Catalogue of Five Hundred Articles (1857). The items available included replicas of classical statuary and vases, such as the Niobe group in the Uffizi and the Borghese and Medici vases (13, 22, 23). Blashfield was proud of the fact that his products were hand-finished and taken from the best moulds. His version of the Apollo Belvedere, for example, was made from a cast taken from the original for the ‘gallery of the late Mr Nash’ (10). Other plaster figure makers sold inferior copies of broken casts.
In 1859 production was transferred from London to Stamford in order to exploit a bank of Jurassic clays. The opening of the new works attracted considerable public interest. The local aristocracy attended the drawing of the first kiln and one of the busts of the Queen that had been fired was presented to her the following day (18). In 1865 the firm made a statue of Prince Albert from a model by William Theed II for the infirmary at Bishops Waltham, Hants (8). It was of ‘clays from the estate of Mr Arthur Helps, at Bishops Waltham, and clay from the Marquis of Exeter’s celebrated pit at Wakerley, mixed with feldspar and Lynn sand’ and was assembled inside the kiln and fired in one piece. It emerged from the kiln ‘without flaw’ and ‘as hard as black marble’ (Builder 1865, 709-10). This use of complex blends of ingredients and the highly wrought finish were typical of Blashfield’s scientific approach to terracotta production. By contrast, other manufacturers, including Blanchard and Gibbs and Canning, favoured the use of a simple homogenous clay body and a notional approach to modelling, to produce a less refined but more spontaneous effect.
In 1870 Blashfield secured an important American contract, to supply architectural ornaments for the new Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (33). He seriously underestimated the logistical difficulties involved in shipping large consignments of fragile blocks across the Atlantic. He soon realised that he had accepted an uneconomic contract and his company began to incur serious debts when payments were delayed. Delivery of one consignment was held back when a ship had to turn back to England and other payments were delayed when the building contractors were unable to relate the pieces supplied to the intended spaces on the building. From the beginning of 1873 Blashfield was requesting money from his American clients with increasing desperation and by December 1874 the Stamford works, including models, moulds and machinery, was offered for sale. In the following month Blashfield announced that the firm was being wound up and he was declared bankrupt in 1878. After the collapse of the business a number of Blashfield’s former employees emigrated to America, where they played an important role in the introduction of architectural terracotta. He died ‘after a short illness of bronchitis followed by paralysis’ on 15 December 1882 (Builder, Dec 1882, 826).
EH
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 56; Girouard 1971, 1268-1270; Penny 1977 (1), 13; Haskell and Penny 1981, passim; Kelly 1990, 51, 54, 223, 227, 313; Stratton 1993, passim; Barnes 1999, 47-9, 92