- Artist
- Alan Bridgewater 1903–1962
- Medium
- Stone
- Dimensions
- Object: 270 × 540 × 70 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Transferred from the Victoria & Albert Museum 1983
- Reference
- T03710
Catalogue entry
T03710 INSCRIPTION ‘REMEMBER JANE SNOWFIELD’ 1927
Portland stone, the letters painted 10 5/8 × 21 1/4 × 2 3/4 (270 × 540 × 70)
Inscribed ‘Remember/Jane
Snowfield/1854÷1927’
Transferred from the Victoria and Albert Museum 1983
Prov: Purchased from B.J. Fletcher, Director of the Central School of Arts & Crafts, Birmingham, by the Department of Circulation, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1927 (Circ. 636–1927)
Exh: Travelling exhibitions of Department of Circulation, Victoria and Albert Museum
Bridgwater was a student at the Central School of Arts & Crafts, Birmingham, from 1923–1933. The text of this inscription was one of several suggested by B.J. Fletcher, the Director of the School, in a letter of 30 March 1927 to the Circulation Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There is no information in this letter about Jane Snowfield. Shortly afterwards the Museum chose this text, and received the inscription itself in October of the same year, paying the school for it.
The letters of the name are painted red, and the rest black. The letter forms resemble the style of Eric Gill, and are comparable to his ‘Roman Capitals ... and Arabic numerals’ published as plate 16 of Edward Johnston's Manuscript and Inscription letters (1909, and many later editions). The letters at the start of each line are exaggerated, as Gill's often are, and the numbers are very similar, particularly in the characteristic placing of the 4 on the line.
This inscription is not typical of Bridgwater's work as it is a student piece, to a set text, and he subsequently became a figure sculptor. Another and more elaborate inscription, made in the early 1930s, belongs to his widow.
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986