Foundry formerly based at 39a Consort Road, Peckham, south-east London, established by Leonard Grist (1879–1964) in c.1925. Grist was born near Frome, Somerset. He is first recorded as a bronze statuary moulder, in 1901 in Thames Ditton (presumably working for Hollinshead and Burton) and in 1911 in Warminster, Wiltshire (presumably, J.W. Singer & Sons). When in 1921 William Morris & Co (Westminster) Ltd set up the Morris Art Bronze Foundry in Lambeth, south London, Grist as taken on as manager; he left in c.1925 to set up The Corinthian Bronze Co Ltd. Initially listed in the telephone directories as producers of ‘Architectural Bronzework’, the company was voluntarily wound up in 1948 but, with all creditors having been paid in full, it was reformed as the Corinthian Bronze Foundry, specialising in art bronzes. Duncan James, in his 1970 survey of bronze foundries, noted that the firm was ‘using traditional sand moulding techniques’. Its then manager, Stanley Knee, who had begun as an apprentice with J.W. Singer, told James that the sculptors using their services included Michael Ayrton, Elisabeth Frink, T.B. Huxley-Jones, Henry Moore, Maurice Lambert and Charles Wheeler. The company’s heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s; it was wound up in 1972. Moore used Corinthian (although not exclusively) between 1952 and 1963, the foundry’s casts for Moore including Stringed Reclining Figure, 1939 (10+1 artist’s copy, cast c.1956); Upright Internal/External Form, 1952–53 (1 cast of an edition of 3+1, 1958–60); Reclining Figure: External Form, 1953–54 (1 cast of an edition of 6+1, 1957); Upright Motive No. 1: Glenkiln Cross, 1955–56 (4 casts of an edition of 7, 1958–60); Upright Motive No.8, 1955–56 (edition of 7 + 1, c.1958-62); Seated Woman, 1957 (edition of 6+1); and Three Piece Reclining Figure No. 2: Bridge Prop, 1963 (3 casts of an edition of 6+1). The foundry’s public sculpture casts include Ralph Brown’s Meat Porters (1959), Market Square, Harlow, Essex; Franta Belsky’s Shell Fountain (1960–61), Shell Centre, London (dismantled c.2014; in store at time of writing); R.J.R. Thomas’s Mother and Child (1963) Coalville, Leicestershire; and T.B. Huxley-Jones’s Joy of Life Fountain (1962), Hyde Park, London. In 1957 Corinthian were commissioned to make a second cast (using the recently rediscovered plaster model) of Edward Davis’s 1863 statue of Josiah Wedgwood (original at Winton Square, Stoke-Upon-Trent) for Barlaston, Staffordshire (now outside the Wedgwood Visitor Centre). Other important casts include Maurice Lambert’s statue of Dame Margot Fonteyn (1956, Royal Ballet School, Richmond Park) and David Evans’s 1929 bust of John Galsworthy (1961, for the National Portrait Gallery).
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 287, 289, 334; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 30, 31, 362; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. xvii, 30, 31, 53, 430; Corinthian Bronze Foundry estimate, dated 25 September 1956 (London Metropolitan Archives: HI/ST/NTS/A16/8/19); Henry Moore Foundation: ‘Corinthian Bronze Co. Ltd, London’; D. James, ‘Foundries’, Arts Review, 13 February 1970, (pp. 70–71, 87), p. 71; Kelly’s Post Office London Directory (edns, 1924–1972); National Portrait Gallery: ‘British Bronze Sculpture Founders …’; D. Olsen (ed.), Sculpture in Harlow, Harlow, 2005, pp. 32, 108; South London Press, 23 August 1962, p. 1 (‘Secret sculpture castings from a Peckham foundry’); Tate: ‘Henry Moore OM, CH, Upright Motive No.1: Glenkiln Cross’; The Times, 29 November 1948, p. 10 (Notice of winding-up of Corinthian Bronze Co. Ltd); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 85, 86.
Terry Cavanagh, 2007; revised, August 2024