the young girl in a night-dress holding a plucked flower,

This figure was known to have been bought from H. Crowthers in the early years of the foundry and has remained in the garden of a family house near Haslemere in Surrey since.

H Crowther Ltd was founded in a small workshop in Chiswick, South West London in 1908. Henry Crowther was self-taught and was a key figure in reviving a venerable tradition of English figurative and decorative architectural leadwork that had all but disappeared in Victorian times.

The famous lead-foundries of Hyde Park Road that had seen the work of Van Nost and John Cheere, among many others, in a late 18^th Century heyday had then declined and disappeared by the time of The Great Exhibition. With the rise of the Decorative Cast-Iron foundries – Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, Carron in Falkirk and Val d’Osne near Paris lead-casting was perhaps considered a bit old-hat and couldn’t compete.

By Edwardian times though Crowthers found an enthusiastic market and brought back old designs and introduced new models – the small foundry also found themselves increasingly in-demand for restoration work for the Great Houses that needed repairs to their Georgian statues – Castle Howard and Chatsworth being prime examples.

Henry Crowther passed these restoration and casting skills to his son Jim and grandson Paul.