Geoffrey Beard

This excerpt from the history of Harlaxton Manor, its construction, interiors and inhabitants, is reproduced from the Harlaxton Manor Guide Book (©Harlaxton College 1984).

The impressive Victorian Baroque facades of Harlaxton do something to prepare a visitor for the overwhelming richness of the stucco decoration within its Ancaster-stone walls. But it is this same prodigious display of decorative virtuosity, unparalleled in nineteenth-century England, which tends to sweep away consideration of how it was done, and by whom. It is easier to gaze in wonder at putti carrying large cockle-shells, or swinging on a cascade of bellying stucco drapery, tasselled cords and festoons, than to be concerned with footnote minutiae. It is also harder to give such concentration when not all the questions can be answered, as yet, by reference to any firm documentation.

Decoration of interiors with a plaster composed of gypsum, or quicklime, sand and water, with animal hair as a binding agent has had a long and illustrious history in England. Even so, the desire to make the ornament cheaper to produce, lighter in weight, and capable of being turned out with greater rapidity from wooden moulds led to several improvements, and to stucco.

The most famous 'composition' was the material which John Liardet claimed to have invented in 1773. Described in his specification of patent as 'A Composition or Cement...' it contained drying oil, absorbent matter, solid material such as gravel, sand, white or any coloured lead, but principally gypsum and size. The Adam brothers, Robert and James, obtained a private Act of Parliament in 1776 which vested in them the exclusive right to make and sell the Liardet composition. In this Act the specification of the material was left imprecise, allowing the brothers to prosecute anyone selling a composition resembling Liardet's. It gave the Adam firm a tight hold - which they protected in law - on the ready market for panels and bas-reliefs, festoons, mask-heads and all the trappings of the prevalent Classical style. The many surviving fragments of the Harlaxton decoration, kept in a room in the Kitchen Tower, show that it is also a form of moulded gypsum and size 'composition', made popular by the earlier Adam monopoly.

Who used it at Harlaxton in the early 1840s? The answer to this question can only be speculative, despite an extensive search for confirming evidence. There are two theories: first, that on his trip to Bavaria in 1835 Gregory Gregory's original architect, Anthony Salvin, may have arranged for stuccoists to come to England, and that these were still employed despite the patron later changing his architect. He turned to William Burn, and his talented assistant David Bryce, to supervise the Harlaxton work from 1838. The second theory is that the accomplished London-based firm of' Francis Bernasconi & Son, who had been active as a family in England from the 1770s, did the work. This latter proposal is the most attractive for we know that Francis Bernasconi (1762-1841) who originated from Riva St Vitale in the Swiss Ticino, made a speciality of working in 'Gothic compo' for among others James Wyatt and Sir Jeffry Wyatville. His Louis Quatorze decoration at many houses is only rivalled by what he did in emulating medieval Gothic. His commissions - of which at least twenty are known - included work at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. The Bernasconi firm was the only one in England in the 1840s capable of dealing with Gregory's neo-Baroque decorative requirements, however demanding. It had the greatest experience of working in composition plaster, and had the correct artistic background - a group of eighteenth-century drawings by the Bernasconi family in the collection of Professor Alistair Rowan gives an indication of the wide decorative repertory (including portrayal of shells) the firm relied on. Furthermore, the conjoined atlantes forming part of the great console brackets which support the upper landing of the Cedar Staircase are based, approximately, on those nymphaea decorating the fountains in the garden of the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, executed in 1672-3 under the direction of Carlo Rainaldi. It was a favourite motif for stuccoists, being used on the later staircases of the Schloss Bruhl and Scholl Schlesshlim in Germany. It provides a slender link in attributing the Harlaxton work to a stuccoist like Bernasconi, who trained in a tradition which relied on knowledge of such motifs.

In its over-all design the bravura of the Cedar Staircase is held to fit more comfortably with the personality of David Bryce than with William Burn. Bryce was well capable of proposals of the Harlaxton sort, as demonstrated by the Mausoleum he designed for the Duke of Hamilton at Hamilton Palace in 1848 and the interior of the Head Office of the British Linen Bank in Edinburgh of 1846.

In conclusion, however, we must rest content with the terse catalogue description:

"Harlaxton, composition stucco decoration, Great Hall, Family Dining Room, Ante-room, Cedar Staircase, probably by Francis Bernasconi & Son, London, to order of Gregory Gregory, early 1840s, over-all supervision by David Bryce, and/or William Burn."

We can but hope that the speculation may one day be resolved by the discovery of documentation.

Geoffrey Beard