Ira D. Sankey: C.1032-1928

Titles

Ira D. Sankey

Maker(s)

Production: Sampson Smith (Perhaps)

Entities

• Figure
• Victorian Staffordshire figure
• Flat-backed figure

Categories

• Lead-glazed earthenware

Description

White earthenware moulded in three parts and pearlware glazed. Painted with black, brown, blue, red, yellow, pink and flesh-pink enamels, and gilt.

Ira D Sankey stands with his right hand on his hip and his left resting on a book atop a short pillar. The oval base is lettered ‘SANKEY’ in relief, black script, capitals; a pink line runs across the front beneath the title. The figure is sparsely coloured. He wears a long coat, edged in blue; a yellow waistcoat decorated in brown; and a black bow tie. His cuffs are lined in blue and gilt, his shirt buttons are gilt. He has black hair, moustache and mutton chop whiskers, and wears black shoes. The pillar is orange brown and the book is outlined in blue and yellow, with black lines to suggest text. The underside is concave and glazed. The upper back is moulded, with a vent hole 9.5 cm from the bottom.

Notes

History note: Goodwin’s shop, Ipswich. Bought as a pair with figure of Dwight Lyman Moody (9 ¾ in) on 3 February 1910 for 6 shillings, by Dr Glaisher, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L.Glaisher Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century, Mid#
Victoria I
Production date: circa AD 1873

Note

Ira David Sankey (1840 – 1908), known as ‘The Sweet Singer of Methodism’, was an American gospel singer and composer. He met the evangelist Dwight L. Moody in 1870, and together they held crowded revival meetings throughout the United States.. In 1873 he and Sankey came to Britain for a two year revival tour that culminated with a four month London Crusade in 1875. It is said that a crowd of 20,000 attended their Edinburgh meeting, held on the slopes of ‘Arthur's Seat’, and they raised £10,000 for the building of a Mission in the Royal Mile. This figure was probably made at the time of the 1873-75 visit.

Rackham (1935) lists this figure as of a type chiefly made by Sampson Smith at Sutherland Works, Longton. Sampson Smith is listed in contemporary directories as a ‘manufacturer of figures in great variety’ in Longton and seems to have begun making figures around 1851. The firm continued to make figures in quantity into the early part of the twentieth century. Sampson Smith figures are rarely marked, but in 1948 a number of original moulds were found on site, and one of these was a mould for a 17 inch figure of Moody. The moulding of the companion figure of Moody is very similar, so it seems likely that this figure and its pair were also made by Samson Smith.

The Fitzwilliam collection also includes another Staffordshire figure of Moody (C.1021-1928), in similar pose, but 13 ¼ in, more sparsely coloured and with some differences in the moulding; it is unlikely to have been made by Sampson Smith.

This figure is a pair ro a figure of Sankey, which is also in the collection.

School or Style

Victorian