Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wilton

Alternative Surname

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

1768

Biographical Details

An ornamental plasterer, nothing is known of his early life or training, except that he took a wife, Elizabeth, before 1722, when his first son, Joseph Wilton was born. In 1737 he worked with Thomas Carter I providing plasterwork for a building belonging to William Pulteney in Chandos Place, London and he was also responsible for the elaborate rococo plasterwork ceilings of the Foundling Hospital (4).
By the 1740s Wilton must have been relatively affluent since he paid for an expensive Continental training for his son in the Nivelles workshop of Laurent Delvaux. Delvaux and Wilton may have had business dealings for in his notebooks of 1740-1 the Flemish sculptor refers to ‘Mr Wllm. Wilton,’ then living in Margaret Street, near Cavendish Square (Jacobs 1997, 58).
Wilton founded a highly-profitable factory producing papier-mâché ornaments for chimneypieces and mirror frames. J T Smith wrote that the workshops employed ‘hundreds of people, including children’ (Smith 1828, 2, 167). In addition to his Cavendish Square premises, Wilton also had works on the south-west corner of Hedge Lane, Charing Cross. He later retired to Wanstead, Essex, and he was buried in Wanstead parish church, Essex on 27 January 1768.
In his will he left three residential properties in Cavendish Square jointly to his friend, the architect William Chambers, and to his son Joseph. From the profits made on leasing them, the beneficiaries were instructed to pay an annuity of £50 to another son, William Wilton II, and to support the education of Wilton’s three grandchildren, Frances Wilton, and two boys. He also left three guineas to his nephew and former pupil Thomas Collins to buy a ring. Administration of the trust occasioned some spirited correspondence between Chambers and Joseph Wilton.
MGS
Literary References: Builder 1859, 849; Survey of London 1970, vol 36, 264; Allen 1983, 196; Coutu 1996, 175-85
Archival References: Chambers’s Letter-Books Add MS 41133, fols, 94
Miscellaneous Drawings: Three designs for unidentified monuments VAM E 1185-87-1965
Will: PROB 11/935/316-318