Details of Sculptor

Surname

Carpenter

Alternative Surname

First Name

Samuel, of York

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

1660

Flourished

Year of Death

1713

Biographical Details

A decorative carver in wood and stone, he was probably responsible for a number of modest sepulchral monuments in Yorkshire. He became free of the Masons’ Company of York in 1684 and was made a freeman of the city the following year. He worked at Ripon in 1702 (5) and at Castle Howard in 1705-6, where he provided wood carving in several rooms and extensive architectural ornaments on the exterior elevations (6, 8). In November 1705 he was paid for carving the highly unusual satyr heads on the sides of the Satyr Gate into the kitchen garden, as well as baskets of ornamental stone flowers above (7). The bill includes work on the house (CH Archives G2/2/18).
Carpenter signed the monument with a portrait bust to Lady Elizabeth Stapleton, 1684, at Snaith (1). The bust is described as ‘lovely’ by Gunnis and ‘large and imperious’ by Pevsner. In 1710 he was commissioned by the antiquary, Ralph Thoresby, to provide a monument to Thoresby’s friend, Mr Thomson, for St John’s, Leeds (2), and a bust of his father for Leeds Parish Church (3). On 25 January 1710 Thoresby recorded in his diary that he was ‘with Mr Carpenter about the monument for my dearest father; left his picture & a model with him.’ He visited Carpenter at least thrice in York to watch progress and evidently the two liked one another for he, Carpenter and Thoresby’s cousin, Lumley of York dined together ‘after, at his [Carpenter’s ] request, sitting for my picture in crayons.’ The monument was completed by 3 March 1712 , when Thoresby ‘was all day at church, with Mr Carpenter, setting up a monument for my honoured and dear father.’ In 1714 it was engraved by Sturt in London, and the engraving appeared in Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis 1715 (Thoresby Diary, vol 2, 76, 77, 80, 90, 222).
He died on 27 June, 1713 and was buried at St Lawrence, York. His wife, Frances, died in 1731, aged 69, but for some reason was not buried with her husband but in the church of St Dennis, York.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 82; Saumarez Smith 1990, 62, 122
Archival References: Castle Howard masons/carvers, 1706 G2/2/28; Castle Howard building accts G1/1; G1/2