Restoration of Historic Ornamental Lead

Pictured here is a lead bowl in a very sorry state. The second of the 2 pictures is one that Lawrence Weaver used in the 1909 book English Leadwork, its Art and History Ornamental lead craftsman, Brian Turner has been commissioned to repair restore and conserve this challenging work of art.

The Plumber that made this bowl was A B Laidler; it was made by bossing it out of a 6 foot 6 inches code 10 sheet of lead.

This is the first time that Brian has seen such a fine piece of craftsmanship and working with it gives him an opportunity to learn from a master.

Although he has started work on restoring the pieces, it is a very slow process. Progress is reduced because of the thickness of the lead which varies from code 10 to code 3. The reason for the variation is the chasing in the repousse work.

Pictures below show the progress of the horns which have about 50mm of metal corroded and crumbled away. They will need to be reformed with new lead. On one horn, for example, there are up to ten repairs needed.

Brian expects it will be several months before the bowl is complete.

Brian has been commission to make a similar bowl and we will be following progress and showing images as the projects develops.

A plea here to the experts out there reading this article.

There is an image of the master piece in lead in a book published at the turn of the 20th Century which can be viewed here and entitled, English Leadwork, its Art and History by Lawrence Weaver.

Brian would like to find a way of accessing L Weaver’s archives of pictures that were not printed in producing the book believing there would be other pictures of this bowl and other lead master pieces that have long remained hidden.

He would also dearly like to find out more about the craftsman who created the original work, A B Laidler.

We look forward to your comments, which can be emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
You can see examples of Brian’s work via www.turners-lead-collection.co.uk.