1. Early life

2. The first metalwork

3. Monumental works

4. Collections

5. Legacy

6. Singer in Frome today

7. References

8. External links

John Webb Singer was born in Frome, Somerset on 23 February 1819. He created a substantial art foundry in the town, known for its statuary and ecclesiastical products. He had assembled immense collections of antique jewellery, rings, wine glasses, snuffboxes, stamps. He took a prominent part in both local and national politics, founding the Frome Art School and helping to create the Frome Literary and Scientific Institution (now the Frome Museum^[1]).^[2] He worked with the leading bronze sculptors of his day.

Early life

John Webb was the only son of Joseph Singer by his second wife. Joseph was an architect and builder. John Webb was named after his uncle, a farmer at Roddenberry near Longleat, who had been murdered six years before.^[3] His family were not well off, as he received his education from the Frome Blue Coat Charity School^[4], as a ‘hat boy’, meaning he was of charity status. Opposite his family home in the Butts, Frome was a foundry for casting bells. He made an unsuccessful attempt to cast a toy cannon in iron, but failing that made it of lead. In 1834 he was apprenticed for five years to a local watchmaker, Thomas Pitt.^[5] He managed his employer's business in Eagle Lane, just off Bath Street, and took it over in his own right as a watchmaker, clockmaker and jeweller in 1848.

The first metalwork

In 1848 he was asked by a local vicar to make a pair of candlesticks. In 1851 Singer attended the Great Exhibition, observing the range of products and styles available to him; he had his own elaborate and decorative designs on display. In that same year he moved into 25 Market Place^[6], a larger and more public display for his watchmaking business, at the same time as providing workshops for his church work and living quarters for himself and soon afterwards his family. Two forges in nearby Justice Lane and more workshops in Eagle Lane just behind no 25 were established. In 1852 he married Sarah Doswell from nearby Beckington. Between 1853 and 1862, they had three children, sons Herbert and Edgar and daughter Amy.^[7]

In that same period of his family life, his business expanded greatly. A major contract was with the Reverend J W E Bennett, who had taken over the parish church of St John the Baptist in 1852, which was then in a state of disrepair. They both were in favour of ornate church décor in the Gothic Revival style that originated with the [[Oxford_Movement|Oxford Movement] and Pugin. Singer's craftsmen were kept busy for four years; much of the brass is still in the church today.

In 1866 Singer acquired a new permanent site for a factory in Cork Street, setting up a new furnace and recruiting craftsmen from Belgium, France and Switzerland. He re-introduced into England the process of repoussé. Among these new recruits were sand-moulders; their skills were deployed

in castings for the ecclesiastical side of the business, but then proved invaluable when statuary was requested when sand-casting was essential.

"Mr J W Singer, of the Market Place, Froome, has been engaged, for the last twelve years, in the manufacture of medieval metal work, in silver, brass, and iron, which has been principally employed for ecclesiastical purposes. Nearly one hundred places of worship and other public edifices have been supplied by him......Hundreds of candlesticks, etc., of exquisite workmanship, have been sent to Oxford alone, where they are extensively used in the Colleges. Mr Singer is at present engaged in manufacturing enamelled medieval jewellery in silver....From fifteen to twenty hands are generally employed....The articles mostly manufactured are altar-rails and standards, gates, and candlesticks....The great merit of Mr Singer's productions is the variety and taste of his designs, all of which are the result of his own genius...."^[8]

He travelled extensively on the continent throughout his working life, partly to add to his magpie collections of jewellery, partly to study alternative techniques and designs. His work was shown at international exhibitions to general acclaim: Paris 1855, Manchester 1857, London 1862, Paris 1867, London 1871 and 1872.^[9] In 1864 he founded the Frome Art School, using his own home for the first classes, visiting the South Kensington Art Schools in London for guidance on syllabus and exams. He wanted to apprentice pupils from the Frome Blue Coat School, needing artist craftsmen, skilled in creative design and not just in mechanical production. The project ultimately failed under economic pressures; he was well in advance of the Arts & Crafts Movement under the leadership of Morris and Ruskin. All of his children went to the South Kensington Art Schools, studying under the sculptor, Dalou. Herbert won several prizes: Paris 1878, London 1881 and Melbourne 1881.^[10] His daughter studied further in Paris at the Académie Colarossi. Amy shared a studio with Camille Claudel who came to stay with the Singer family in Frome in 1886. Rodin was Amy and Camille’s patron. He gave them lessons and critiqued their work. There is a letter from Singer to Rodin in the Musee Rodin^[11] archive thanking him for this. There is a photo of Camille and the Singer family outside North Hill Cottage^[12] where they lived from the early 1880s; Amy was probably the photographer.^[13] Amy exhibited five times at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition from 1882 - 1887. In 1889 in St John’s Church Amy married another sculptor, Fountain Elwin;^[14] he was a direct descendant of Pocahontas. Sadly, none of Amy's sculptures are known today.

Monumental works

In 1888 Singer was invited to attend a meeting of leading sculptors, including Hamo Thornycroft, Onslow Ford and Thomas Brock, who were concerned about the quality of work of British foundries compared with those of France or Belgium. He told them he had recently added a new statue area to his existing works. He was capable of creating large sand castings. Critically he could offer the 'lost wax' or cire perdue method of casting which was needed for detail - a method then almost unknown in England - which he had learned from the continent and from the craftsmen he had brought to Frome.^[15] This method of reproduction allowed for fine delineation of faces and hands as well as feature work.^[16] Almost immediately his order book expanded.

Thornycroft asked Singer to cast a panel for a statue of General Gordon destined for Melbourne. This was exported in March 1889. Singer then cast a large equestrian statue by Hems of William III for the Clifton Street Orange Hall in Belfast. Even taller was a statue of General Gordon on a camel, an ambitious project which necessitated raising the roof of the workshop. Thereafter it was known as the 'Camel Shed'. Onslow Ford created the plaster form; it had highly complex elements: a refined face, ornamented jacket, a rattan cane, intricate saddlebag tassels and the camel's harness, all requiring the 'lost wax' method. It stands at the Royal Engineers Barracks at Chatham Dockyard. A copy by another bronze founder once stood in Khartoum; shortly after Sudan achieved its independence, the statue was removed and reinstalled at Gordon's School, near Woking in 1959.

"The Sluggard" by Frederic Leighton became very important for Singer. A life-sized bronze, also known as "Athlete awakening from sleeping", was first exhibited in 1886 at the Royal Academy.^[17] From 1890 Singer produced reduced-scale versions in bronze, organised by Arthur Collie, one of the first people to sell reductions of large works. It became one of the most reproduced statuettes of the time; it was still in the Singer trade catalogue of 1914.^[18]

Brock's statue of Richard Owen (1895) still occupies a space in the Natural History Museum that Owen created; once in the Main Hall, it was moved in 2009 to accommodate one of Darwin, his scientific rival.^[19]

Another major statue was that of "Cromwell", again by Thornycroft, placed outside the Palace of Parliament. Singer delivered the statue on time in 1898, but the then Prime Minister, Lord Roseberry delayed the unveiling till the following year, concerned about demonstrations. Instead, it proved to be exceptionally popular.^[20] In the same year Alfred Drury's controversial eight Leeds nymphs were installed.^[21] Then Thornycroft's massive statue of "King Alfred" was unveiled in Winchester for the millennial commemoration of his death, 17 foot high from the base to the top of his arm.^[22]

"Boadicea and her Daughters", Singer's most well-known piece has a complex history. The project was begun back in 1850 by Thornycroft's father, Thomas. By 1870 it was largely complete, special attention being paid to the outlines, avoiding drapery that would confuse the outline at a distance. Both Hamo Thornycroft and his mother, Mary also worked on it. His father died in 1885. When the London County Council decided to open the supposed tumulus of her burial on Parliament Hill in 1894, Thornycroft proposed that a statue be erected on the site, submitting his father's plaster model as evidence:

"I should like to point out that the group is not only a monument to Boadicea, but also to 'British pluck', which in this group is shown with so much force as to appeal at once to all who examine it.....My father's group has a tale to tell to men unborn....".

At first Thornycroft contributed £100 to the estimated cost of £6000. In the end he paid £2000 for the whole casting by Singer. When the Society of Antiquaries rejected the tumulus as Boadicea's burial place, a new site was proposed on the Embankment, on the south-west end of Westminster Bridge where the statue stands today, after the final assembly on site in 1902.^[23]

The Iceni queen is now more properly named Boudica, or Boudicca as Tacitus wrote her name, rather than Boadicea. This was a complex piece for Singer: Boudica herself with a spear, her other arm upraised, two crouching daughters with bared breasts, two horses reinless, a chariot, scythes on both wheels. As part of Queen Victoria's Jubilee celebrations in 1897, Albert Parrott, a manager at Morris Singer, recalled his memories as a nine year old in Frome:^[24]

"I was fascinated by the team of five horses trying to pull the bronze casting of one of the horses up the steep incline leading from the centre of the town......On a wagon in the same procession one of the casters from the J. W. Singer & Sons foundry was busy pouring molten zinc into a steel die carrying an impression of Her Majesty to produce medallions. The die was mounted on a platform.....as fast as the medals were poured, down came the guillotine to cut off the runners. The medals slid down a chute at the back of the wagon, the natives of Frome burning their hands scrambling for them as souvenirs."

Collections

J W Singer was a phenomenal collector of all kinds of things: rare and antique jewellery (15 collections in total, three of which he gave to the Kensington Museum, now the Victoria & Albert), rings (some 400 from 17th - 18th centuries), wine glasses (700+), snuffboxes, stamps, china, pottery, bookplates, chatelaines. He had a fine collection of cacti, winning a prize in 1894 at the Royal Horticultural Society for a display of 160 plants.^[25]

The V & A have examples from the jewellery collection he bequested to them, and examples of metalwork that they bought from him on display in the Jewellery and Metalwork galleries (the metalwork is older and not cast by Singer’s but from his collection). Apart from "The Sluggard" (see illustration above), the V & A have three fine examples of products from his workshops: an alms dish^[26], a wall sconce designed by Herbert and Edgar^[27] and a large brass pricket candlestick^[28]; these are not currently on display, except in the online catalogue.   

Legacy

After the death of J W Singer in 1904, his two sons, Herbert and Edgar took charge of the firm, under the continuing and colourful chairmanship of William Bull. The statuary work continued, including noteworthy castings: Thornycroft's "Gladstone" in the Strand,^[29] Pomeroy's "Justice" on the Old Bailey, Fehr's fantastical Welsh Dragon on the top of Cardiff's City Hall and eight large lions for the Cecil Rhodes Memorial in Capetown, South Africa. 150 lion's head bronze mooring rings, designed by Gilbert Bayes, were installed in 1910 along the Thames Embankment beside the County Hall.^[30] Other works include "Hampden" in Aylesbury (1912) marking the Civil War,^[31] and gates at the Bowes Museum^[32] and Cliveden^[33][34].

Church work fell away during this period, fashions were changing. In 1914 Singer & sons amalgamated with a rival, Spital & Clark^[35] of Birmingham. Herbert and Edgar Singer took back seat positions on the board, still chaired by William Bull, knighted in 1905, MP for Hammersmith. Statuary production was put on hold; the company struggled.

In July 1915, after Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions, contracts were won to support the war effort. New equipment was brought in. From July 1916 to December 1918, the work force grew to 700 men and women.^[36] The firm produced 1.6 million shell cases plus 71.5 million .303 cartridges plus gun mountings, parts for aeroplane engines, fuze body stampings and submarine mines, 23,400 tons of metal. After the war, with a reduced staff, orders for metal stampings, wrought iron work, war memorials, ecclesiastical metalwork and statuary resumed.^[37]

After WWI, statuary work resumed, memorials of all kinds were in demand, from home and abroad: statues, wreathes, emblems, friezes, tablets, all in bronze. Two of the largest commissions were Fehr's 1924 Shanghai Allied War Memorial^[38] (the Angel and all of the other bronzes were removed by the Japanese in 1943) and friezes for the Scottish National War Memorial (1927) at Edinburgh Castle by Alice Meredith Williams. Among the many monuments Singer & Sons created were Thornycroft's "Peace" in Luton,^[39], Fehr's Keighley memorial with its rare depiction of a sailor^[40] and the simple infantryman at Trowbridge by Bentham,^[41] typical of many war memorials cast by Singer & Sons: "beauty of design, appropriateness and excellence of execution".^[42]

During the 1920s, Singer & Sons lost some trade and craftsmen to a new business, Morris Art Bronze Foundry^[43] in Lambeth. From May 1927 the statuary and art metalwork side of Singers was gradually transferred to London, along with some craftsmen, under a financial arrangement, to create the Morris Singer Company.

During WWII, the factory switched to making war material:. Jim Garrett, as an apprentice, observed:^[44]

I went to work at Singers, that would have been about 1943...The siren would go, and we all had to move somewhere else in case they dropped a few bombs, or something. But, in the event, it didn't happen, so they abandoned that idea, because it stopped the production. Making shell-noses...for the army.

Metal stampings continued in Frome. The company was absorbed by the Delta Metal Group in 1956^[45]. In 2000 production was relocated to Handlemaker Road in Frome and the old site was sold for housing.  The factory now concentrates on water sprinklers for fire protection in the ownership of Tyco^[46].^[47]

Singer in Frome today

The work of the foundry can be seen in several different locations. The Frome Museum has iron handrails to the circular staircase leading to the third floor and window balustrades. His house at 25 Market Place has window balustrades on the first floor. The Church of St John the Baptist has a brass screen to the Chancel and a forged metal one to the Lady Chapel.^[48] There is a brass lectern and brass candlesticks in the church, but it is uncertain that these are Singer products; he did make such items for the church, but there has been some clearance of excess Victorian items. Within the site of the former factory, off Waterloo, the large gantry and crane from the Camel shed has been placed.^[49]

A Singer's Trail has been created: a walk round key sites related to J W Singer and his foundry.^[50]

On 3 August 2014 a memorial to Frome Servicemen^[51] was installed outside the Memorial Theatre,^[52] opposite the Town Hall on Christchurch Road West. This is dedicated to the fallen of WWI, WWII and the Falklands conflict.^[53] The statue on the memorial is a lifesize cast of Charlie Robbins, an employee of Singer both before his enlistment in WWI and after his demobilisation. He retired from Singer in the late 1950s and died in 1981 aged 89.^[54] The plaster was modelled by Edgar Thomas Earp^[55] and cast in 1922. After being rediscovered in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, it was placed in front of the Singer Factory in Waterloo, close to the centre of the town. In 1999, while the factory was being relocated, the statue was sent to Morris Singer in Basingstoke to have its rifle strap and other elements repaired or added. On its return it was placed outside what became the Tyco site in Handlemaker Road.^[56] It is the only statue cast by Singer that never really left Frome.

References

External links

• [https://www.frometowncouncil.gov.uk/ Frome Town Council]
• [https://fromemuseum.wordpress.com/ Frome Heritage Museum, Singer exhibits]
• [https://www.discoverfrome.co.uk/ Discover Frome, visitor information, Singer walk]
• Victorian sculptors
• [https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-1/ National Portrait Gallery: British bronze founders]

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