Lot 90: A fine Coade stone figure of Sybil late 18th

A fine Coade stone figure of Sybil late 18th century 112cm.; 44ins high on 19th century wooden plinth 76cm.; 30ins high (plinth not shown) Eleanor Coade (d.1821) opened her Lambeth Manufactory for ceramic artificial stone in 1769, and appointed the sculptor John Bacon as its manager two years later. She was employed by all the leading late 18th Century architects. From about 1777 she began her engraved designs, which were published in 1784 in a catalogue of over 700 items entitled A Descriptive Catalogue of Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory. Then in 1799, the year she entered into partnership with her cousin John Sealey, she issued a handbook of her Pedlar's Lane exhibition Gallery. The firm became Coade and Sealey from this date and following Sealey's death in 1813, it reverted to Coade and in 1821 with the death of the younger Eleanor Coade, control of the firm passed to William Croggan, who died in 1835, following bankruptcy. Coade's manufactures resembling a fine-grained natural stone, have always been famed for their durability.