Details of Sculptor

Surname

Alken

Alternative Surname

Alkin

First Name

Sefferin

Initial of Surname

A

Year of Birth/Baptism

1717

Flourished

Year of Death

1782

Biographical Details

Alken is best remembered as a carver of sophisticated neoclassical decoration for furniture, but he also worked in marble and stone. He appears to have been a member of the Alken family of sporting painters. He was a political refugee from Alken in North Jutland, Denmark and was in England by 1744, when he provided decorative carving for the saloon at Stourhead (14). His name continues to appear in the Hoare account books as a carver of wood and marble until the mid-1750s. Items provided included gilt picture frames charged at 8 guineas each, as well as a support in the shape of a unicorn for a German mannerist silver dish, still at Stourhead. Much of Alken’s work at Stourhead was lost in a house fire early in the 20th century.
During the period when he worked for Henry Hoare he lived in the parish of St James, Westminster. In 1746 he took as an apprentice Richard Lawrence, who may subsequently have become his partner, for the business is referred to as ‘Alken and Lawrence’ in the Shardeloes accounts for 1763 (21, 22).
Alken worked extensively for Robert Adam, who employed Alken from c1761 as a wood and stone carver at some of his most important buildings. On many occasions from 1758 onwards Alken was entrusted with the carving of furniture supplied by William Vile and John Cobb, at Croome Court and elsewhere (19, 23, 24, 41-45, 47-49, 51, 53, 55, 56). Adam also employed him on a stone pediment for a greenhouse at Croome (18). Alken later subscribed to Adam’s Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro (1764).
In 1757 Alken provided a relief for St Margaret’s, Westminster (16). A pamphlet of 1761 discussing repairs to the church notes that ‘directly under the window is placed in a square moulding our Saviour at Emaus [sic], represented in basso-relievo and well executed by Mr. Alkin, of St. Anne’s Westminster, from the famous painting by Titian’ (quoted in Gunnis 1968, 16). In 1760 he took Thomas Engleheart as an apprentice.
Alken also had a long working relationship with Sir William Chambers and subscribed to the architect’s Designs for Chinese Buildings (1757) and Treatise of Civil Architecture (1759). In 1764 he carved a bookcase to Chambers’s design (23), and in 1767 he was employed by Chambers on work for Lord Charlemont’s Casino at Marino (26). Chambers admired Alken’s work, but also felt it was expensive and wrote to Lord Charlemont on 12 September 1767, ‘Alken has carved one of the little heads for the corner of the doors of the medal-cases. It is very fine, but as he tells me that he cannot do them under three guineas and a half a head, I have stopped his further progress till I hear from your Lordship.’ Later in the same letter Chambers writes: ‘Alkin I have set about a head of Plato to match that of Homer and also about a pattera for to supply the places of the heads’ (HMC 1891, l, 284). One of his medal-cases, formerly at Elveden Hall, Suffolk, is now in the Courtauld Institute in London. In 1770 Chambers employed the carver again at Blenheim (29).
Mortimer’s Director for 1763 lists Alken as a ‘Carver in Wood and Stone’ giving his address as ‘Dufour’s-court, Broad-Street, near Golden Square’ (Mortimer 1763, 3). His only known monument, to Ann Littlejohn, was carved for export after 1771, to a design by the architect James Arrow (1). It is an assured and competent wall-monument, making use of the traditional motif of flying putti pulling back a tassled curtain to reveal an inscription. This baroque formula is combined with neoclassical details, such as paterae and a serpent-handled fluted vase.
In his last years Alken was much employed by Chambers on wood and stone carving for Somerset House (28, 30-32, 54). It is likely that Alken worked on this commission with one of his sons, Samuel Alken, who continued to receive payments after his father's death in 1782. In his will Sefferin Alken, ‘Carver of St James Westminster’, bequeathed his estate to his wife Ann. He also left a ring to ‘his much esteemed good friend’, the architect John Oldfield, of Scotland Yard (PROB 11/1090/143). Beard has described him as ‘one of the most important neo-classical carvers’.
MGS
Literary References: HMC 1891, l, 284; Shaw Sparrow 1931, 247-53; Lewis 1965-67, 11, 297; Thornton 1968, 419-20; Gunnis 1968, 15-16; Beard 1981, 242; Beard 1985, 693-4; Beard and Gilbert 1986, 8; Murdoch 1992, 44-7; Grove 1996, 1, 647 (Alexander); Coleridge 2000, 8-19; Beard 2004, 81-3
Archival References: Hoare private accounts, 1734-49, 1750-66; TNA AO 1/2495 (Somerset House)
Will: PROB 11/1090/143, proved 8 May 1782