CasTing the World: The Story of J.W. Singer & Sons, Frome launches on Friday 28th June between 5–7pm, and all are welcome to attend.
The exhibition is the key element to a new project, delivered by Rook Lane Arts Trust and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It will tell the story of the J.W. Singer & Sons foundry and the iconic monuments and statues it produced during the Victorian era and beyond, including the figure of Justice on top of the Old Bailey and Boudica on the Thames Embankment.
The exhibition will take place at Rook Lane Chapel, Frome, and is based on years of research. It will focus on large-scale images taken from conserved Victorian glass plate negatives that are held at Frome Museum. The negatives were nearly lost to history but for the quick thinking of one employee at the Singer foundry who, in the 1970s, stopped boxes of glass plate negatives from being thrown into a skip and arranged for them to be donated to Frome Museum. Over 3,000 glass plate negatives and photographs survive, holding images of hundreds of artworks, large and small that were produced at the foundry, as well as some of the local people involved in their production. The exhibition will bring to light this incredible archive of images and tell the fascinating story of John Webb Singer and the legacy he created in Frome and beyond.
As well as the exhibition at Rook Lane Chapel, during June and July there will also be talks, town trails and workshops, including a series of casting workshops, held at Black Swan Arts. Later in the year, there will be a Casting The World entry at Frome Carnival on 21st September, and themed lanterns as part of Light The Night Lantern parade on Friday 29th November.
John Webb Singer, who would go on to become a pioneering example of Victorian industry and enterprise, was born on 23rd February 1819 in The Butts area of Frome. His father died when he was three years old, leaving his mother to provide for five children. After a charitable education at the Blue House School, he was apprenticed to a watchmaker on Cheap Street for five years. With no financial backing, but a keen eye for what was happening around him and what people were interested in, he left to open his own jewellery shop at 25 Market Place.
An interest in casting that he had nurtured since childhood led Singer to jump at the chance to try his hand at casting candlesticks for a local church and, when successful, he never looked back. Founded in 1848 from the humble beginnings of a small forge on Eagle Lane and a workshop above his shop, and employing just eight men and six boys, the J.W. Singer & Sons foundry at Waterloo grew to employ at its height a skilled workforce of 700.
Singer shaped, embellished and enriched Frome through his development of the foundry and also through his lifelong work with St. John’s Church, the founding of an art school on Park Road, his support of the Blue Coat School Charity that provided his own education, and in helping to establish the Scientific and Literary Institution. It is a legacy that lives on today in Frome and beyond, with the many iconic statues, monuments and civic works that adorn public and civic sites across the country and around the world.
Casting the World: The Story of J.W. Singer & Sons, Frome takes place at Rook Lane Chapel from Saturday 29th June until Sunday 28th July. Monday – Sunday 10am – 4pm. (Closed 13th & 20th July)
Exhibition preview is 5pm-7pm on Friday 28th June. Admission is free.
To keep up to date with the project and find opening times for the exhibition, and all other related events please visit www.rooklanearts.org.uk or follow Rook Lane Arts on Facebook, @RLATFrome on Instagram and Twitter.
