Coade Stone Sphinx

A Coade stone Sphinx.

Stamped “Croggan late COADE 1823”.

 

Height 32in (81.5cm).

Width 16.5in (42cm).

Lenght 42.5in (108cm).

 

Recently cleaned and conserved by Coade, Wiltshire.

Provenance: 

Sold at Sotherbys 14 November 1980, lot no 1100, then displayed in the grounds of  Belcombe Court, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, thence by descent.

 

Eleanor Coade (1733-1821) never refered to her invention or products as Coade stone but as ‘Lithodipyra’, which means ‘twice-fired stone’.

Her cousin and long term business partner John Sealy died unmarried in 1813 (buried, with a Coade stone memorial, in St Mary’s Lambeth).

Eleanor, who was then in her 80s, took on a cousin by marriage to be the overall manager of the works, William Croggan, and it was he who carried on the business after her death in 1821, moving the business to Belvedere Road.

William Croggan passed the business to his son, also William, who finally closed it in 1837.