Details of Sculptor

Surname

Allcott

Alternative Surname

Alcot

First Name

Joseph

Initial of Surname

A

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1799-1811

Year of Death

Biographical Details

An anecdotal account in the Builder relates that he began life as a carpenter and was sent to Stoke Park to prepare wooden pillars for the Italian artists to cover with scagliola, but being an ingenious man he watched the workmen and soon learnt the secret of the process. ‘He then obtained a piece of marble and imitated it so well as to please the architect [Wyatt], more than what had been done by the Italians’ (Builder, 1845, 50). Allcott's name as a supplier of scagliola appears in the accounts of numerous country houses and a letter from him to a patron, written in 1799, survives in the Newdigate archives. In it Allcot tells Sir Roger Newdigate that he has ‘received an order from his Grace the Duke of Bridgewater for an imitation of a very fine porphyry table in his Grace’s possession’(Newdigate Archives CR 136/B2635d). He was also involved in rebuilding work that included extensive carving for Newdigate at Arbury (1-4).
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 16; Baird 1998, 84-7