Architectural sculptor, letter-cutter and restorer, born Anthony John Poole in Birmingham. Precociously gifted, he gained entrance to the local Moseley Road Junior School of Art at the age of 12, moving on to Birmingham School of Art in 1940, where he specialised in sculpture. In order to refine his letter-cutting skills he transferred to William Bloye’s design studio in 1943. His time in Bloye’s studio was brought to an abrupt halt when, in December 1944 (the Second World War now in its fourth year), he was called up, going on to serve in France and Germany, and later, Egypt and Palestine. In 1946, he married Daphne Buscall, a fellow student at Moseley Road and Birmingham. In 1948, following his demobilisation, he resumed his studies at Birmingham School of Art, leaving in 1949 with a National Design Diploma High Merit Award for letter-cutting and stonework. At first taking on freelance jobs from Bloye and various stonemasons’ yards, from 1952 Poole supplemented his income by teaching part-time at the Mid-Warwickshire College of Art and the Walsall School of Art. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (RBS) in 1958, and a Fellow in 1969. He also served as Chairman of the Society of Church Craftsmen, and was a member of the Arts League of Great Britain. In 1961, Poole moved from Birmingham to Bishampton, Worcestershire. He had gained his first significant commission in 1957, a seven-feet-high figure in Belgian granite for the Central Library, Cannock, Staffordshire; entitled The Sower, the figure, installed in 1959, was intended to represent ‘the dissemination of knowledge through books’. His other important commissions include the City of Coventry Coat of Arms, stone, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum (exterior wall), Coventry (1960); Rotunda Relief, ciment fondu, Lloyds Bank, Birmingham (1963; Grade-II listed by English Heritage in 2000 and retained, following the building’s 2005–08 redevelopment, within one of its new retail units); St Francis’s Canticle to the Sun, lunette relief in oak, south door, Church of St Francis of Assisi, Bournville (1964), a work which continues the arts and crafts tradition of the lunette relief over the north door, Sermon to the Birds, by his former master, Bloye (1933); St John’s Precinct mural, Liverpool (1965); Abstract relief, concrete, Ladywood Community Centre (exterior wall), Birmingham (1967), an example of Poole’s more experimental work incorporating impresses of machine parts including springs, nuts and square-ended tubes; Crown Court Royal Coat of Arms, Leicester (1969); the Risen Christ, welded steel, St Dunstan’s Church, King’s Heath, Birmingham (1969), and the high altar and ambo for St Helen’s Cathedral, Brentwood, Essex (1974), for each of which Poole was awarded an RBS Otto Beit medal; bronze doors for Brown, Shipley & Co, Moorgate, City of London (1973–75); and the Home Front Memorial, Coventry Cathedral (2000).
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; D. Buckman, ‘A. John Poole: Sculptor, letter-cutter and restorer …’, Independent, 16 November 2009 (obituary); Coventry Society: ‘Coventry Coat of Arms by John Poole’; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham (ed. J. Beach), Liverpool, 1998, pp. 71, 79–80, 81–82, 202; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry & Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 164–65, 266; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 46–47, 177, 239, 280; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 269–70, 474–75; West Midlands Arts, Artists, Craftsmen, Photographers in the West Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent, 1977.
Terry Cavanagh, July 2024
