|
 The Gosford swans are made of Coade Stone, a ceramic artificial stone. Mrs Coade, a contemporary of Josiah Wedgewood, ran a successful manufactory of decorative works and was certainly in production between 1785 and 1827. Her success lay partly in her recipe for the clay material that was fired to make a very strong, durable, stone like material without shrinking in the kiln, even with very large, delicate and complex pieces. She refers to it herself as lithodipyra from the greek, meaning stone fired twice. Ball clay was mixed with proportions of fine sand, flint, crushed glass and powdered clay which had already been fired.
 As this material is less workable than clay, moulds would have been used for much of the work, although the differences between the two swans suggest that the wings were modeled up. The various parts would be glued together with liquefied clay, joints and seams tidied up and the piece would be left to dry slowly, probably for several weeks.
The firing process took four days at a heat that has been estimated at around 1100 degrees centigrade, no small achievement in a large rudimentary coal fired kiln, stoked by hand. No glaze was necessary due to the tough nature of the material itself.
Capitals, urns, vases, statues, eagles and frieze panels are some of the other items offered and the use of additional moulds would allow a stock urn, for example, to be fitted with lions head handles or foliage  adornment, or a family crest by commission. Manufacturing tolerances must have been very tight as sizes on smaller items are specified to 1/8th inch, allowing architects to design them into buildings on the drawing board.
Coade Stone harbours lichen in the same way as natural stone and in itself has a very mellow buff patina. A broken edge or corner has an appearance very similar to sandstone or coarse limestone. This and the quality and size of many of the objects produced means that they are often mistaken for stone carvings. 
The East swan was hit hard by a wind blown tree and smashed into about fifty pieces. The body is hollow but luckily the front half remained virtually intact which gave me somewhere to start. The pieces were glued together using polyester resin, strengthening the hollow sections internally with firebrick (a very similar material to the original), and the wing and neck sections with brass dowels. No trace  of the head was found so a mould was made from the other swan and a new head cast. One of the legs, which are made from cast iron, was broken and had to be dowelled together with a stainless steel pin. It is the weight of the cast iron legs which balances the weight of the swan above and stabilises the structure. Where pieces were missing altogether small sections of fire brick were cut to shape and glued in to be modeled up and blended in to the finished item.
The West swan had lost the whole rear end and tail section some time before. The broken end had been sealed with cement and painted over. Three big pieces , about one third of the missing rear, were recovered. The remainder was made up in fire bricks of various sizes and shapes glued together and strengthened internally. The whole tail section was then fitted on in one piece and dowelled into the body of the original with two large stainless steel dowels. The bricks were then covered with a repair mortar mix , which was allowed to partially set before cutting back the form of the feathers. |
