Garden Ornaments by Design

The decoration of cast-iron fountains and benches was all in the details.

By Catherine Siskos

	The scrolling crests and oval medallions of Gothic and Renaissance architecture featured prominently in curtain benches, so named because they resembled lace curtains. Photo Courtesy of Sylvia Falcon

In so far as history can be defined by a metal, the Victorian era was the cast-iron age because here was a material that allowed Victorians to indulge their two greatest passions: gardens and elaborate, even extravagant, ornamentation. Affordable, durable, and malleable, cast iron could be shaped into intricate patterns and designs that withstood the rigors of the outdoors. For much of the 19th century, cast iron upstaged wrought iron and stone as the material of choice for garden ornaments, a category that included everything from the simplest urn to the grandest pavilion. But where cast iron could really shine, metaphorically speaking, was with fountains and lawn furniture, the ornaments that decorated the gardens of upper and middle classes alike.

If fountains (often surrounded by a profusion of flowers) were the showy centerpieces of Victorian gardens, then benches were the cornerstones, strategically placed so that they provided a comfortable spot from which garden gazers could enjoy the view. An ample canvas for decorative artwork came in the form of fountain pedestals and basins, bench legs and seats. Although the designs often became more elaborate as the century advanced, they had common motifs drawn from three spheres: mythology, nature, and Gothic or Renaissance architecture-sometimes all three muddled into one ornament, and not always to great effect. Recreating those gardens for an old house today can be as simple as incorporating fountains and benches with one or more of these motifs.

Prominent Tastemakers
Cast iron wasn't a 19th-century invention, but it might as well have been in the United States. Powerful furnaces developed in England in the mid-18th century could heat large quantities of iron until molten, whereupon it was poured into molds and fashioned into different designs. While the furnaces made cast iron possible, the Industrial Revolution with its mass production methods made it affordable. In the United States, capitalizing on this technology had to wait until the 1840s, when rich deposits of anthracite and bituminous coal, fuel for the furnaces, were discovered in Pennsylvania along with iron ore in Michigan. Meanwhile, Americans were enjoying greater wealth and leisure than ever before, granting them both the means and the time to devote to their gardens, which had become a kind of national obsession thanks to two separate influences, one of which would be a most unlikely source of inspiration today, the American cemetery.

In the 1800s, cemeteries were the first public parks, explains Barbara Israel, a garden antiques dealer and author of Antique Garden Ornament, Two Centuries of American Taste. The cemeteries were landscaped and absolutely beautiful, with so much style and topography. They also had garden ornaments, particularly ornate cast-iron benches. The American public went to these cemeteries and decided they wanted those benches at home, says Israel. Andrew Jackson Downing, the man who taught Americans how to landscape, was another source of inspiration. To describe Downing as the Martha Stewart of his day doesn't really do him justice because he was also Frank Lloyd Wright and Jack Eden all rolled into one. Single handedly and through prolific writings of books and a periodical he edited called The Horticulturalist, Downing raised the consciousness of Americans so that they began to see how architecture and gardens were related.

One of the most striking defects is the want of union between the house and the grounds, wrote Downing in his 1841 book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. He believed that it was an abomination for architecture to end abruptly at the back door, just where the lawn and flowerbeds began. Instead, Downing advocated incorporating architectural elements in the form of garden ornaments with the outdoors. The further away you got from the house, the fewer elements were needed, but the transition from house to garden had to be gradual, starting with a terrace that led into a garden. After the terrace came the grounds, throughout which ornaments-a statue here, a fountain there-were placed.

Gods, Lace, and Leaves
From this bit of encouragement 19th-century Americans unleashed their creative impulses on garden ornaments, and ironworks giants, such as J.L. Mott and Janes, Kirtland & Co., were happy to oblige with a steady stream of pirated designs. American manufacturers stole shamelessly not only from each other but also from the British who pirated from the Scots who in turn copied from the French and the Germans. Those designs had strong classical influences, particularly for fountains, which had basins with fluted edges and Doric columns for pedestals. Graceful figures from mythology, including Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, such as Mercury and Hera, stood poised at the top. Cherubs and nymphs were also popular, and if the fountain had more than one tier, the middle pedestal supporting the top tier often had figures around it. Downing particularly approved of tazza fountains, large Grecian vases that overflowed with water.

Classical motifs didn't lend themselves as well to bench designs, where nature themes reined supreme, often as a floral or leaf pattern. At the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851, British manufacturer Coal-brookdale unveiled a cast-iron settee with nasturtium leaves, stems, and flowers intertwined to form the backrest, arms, and legs; only the seat was made from wood slats. (Coalbrookdale still makes this bench today.) Many settees came in a cast-iron honeycomb or latticework seat. Grapevines, ferns, and lilies of the valley also graced the arms and backrests of benches and chairs, often in exquisite detail, with tiny buds or grapes and slight ridges on the leaves. Nature motifs even migrated to fountains, where swans and birds of paradise flocked alongside classical figures.

As the century wore on, Renaissance and Gothic motifs took hold. Curtain benches, made popular by cemeteries, consisted of a triple-segmented backrest festooned with scrolls, medallions, and rosettes that crested in one or more peaks at the top. The overall effect was of an exquisite lace curtain. By the 1870s and '80s, when demand for cast-iron ornaments was at its peak, scrolls and rosettes had even turned up on fountains, which were sometimes a hybrid of design elements from all three spheres of influence. Because ironworks companies sold their designs from pattern books, consumers could mix and match, choosing, in the case of a fountain, one design for the base, another for the pedestal, and a third for the basin. It was as if the Victorians couldn't bear to part from any single theme, and instead kept adding on more design elements until no square inch of furniture or fountain was left unadorned.

By the late-19th century, the Victorians were gilding the lily-literally in the case of floral motifs. With their penchant for dark colors, the Victorians had always painted cast-iron ornaments black, forest green, or chocolate, but then bronzing became all the rage. They would highlight certain ornaments within the design using a gold or green color over the finish coat, says Scott Howell, vice president of Robinson Iron, which manufactures reproductions of cast-iron fountains and settees.

Nothing it seemed tempered the Victorian passion for the ornate, but passions have a way of burning out, as this one did. Fickle consumers, tired of fanciful, busy designs, gravitated toward the simpler lines of the Arts & Crafts movement beginning in the 1890s. Many cast-iron pieces were melted down for munitions, first for the Spanish American War and later for World War I. Yet, stroll through towns from Salt Lake City to Savannah, and you'll glimpse a fluted rim, a graceful nymph, an elegant swan from the fountains claiming center stage in a public square or park, the legacy of cast iron's golden age.

Start a discussion on this article in our old house forum!

Subscribe to our email newsletter!