Jane Shadel Spillman, Curator of American Glass at CMoG shared some surprising pictures with me when I was at CMoG last week. Two are attached. They represent a stone archway in England that was recently unassembled. The first picture is a section of the stone work with Mr. Carder’s signature. The second picture is the entire archway laid out on the ground. The salvager, a , Mr. Wilkes isn’t sure what to do with it. He contacted Jane Spillman to see if the Museum would like to buy it. Jane says, “He seemed willing to send it to us for not much more than his costs. However, we have no place to build it in, so that’s out of the question. I suggested that he offer it to Broadfield House Glass Museum and he might do that. But, in the meantime, I thought that the Carder Collectors would like to see the arch.
“Peter Wilkes, who lives in Staffordshire, and makes his living
as a subcontractor to demolition companies. As part of the deal for his
work, he usually salvages the materials, bricks, tiles, etc. and sells
them. For this building, the local government had let the building fall
apart (I’m not sure if it was a school, but I think so), and he was
hired to take it down. The government wanted some of the decoration
saved, but thought the archway would cost too much. Mr. Wilkes thought it was beautiful, so he built a wooden template for the arch and got a friend to help him chisel it off of the building . In so doing, they discovered the names of Frederick Carder and his brother, George, on the base, presumably as designers. I notice that Gardner mentions that Fred and George designed terra cotta panels for the Wordsley School of Art, and the picture in Gardner’s book (p.23), shows a nearly identical arch over the entrance. The Wordsley school is closed and was boarded up when I was there last, in 1999, but I thought it had been saved. In any case, this arch is dated 1897 so it can’t be from that building as it was built in 1899.”
Interesting? Someone might have a thought on salvaging this or some other thought. If you may contact Jane Spillman for more information. In any event another piece of information on the enormous diversity of Mr. Carder.