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This page is part of a website based
on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. Please email site controller Eric Alexander
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IMAGES OF HENRY
CORT
All those seen show profile,
facing left.
Mezzotint
Now in British Museum annex
near Olympia, open one morning every two weeks.
Probably the original
likeness.
Inscribed with quotation from The Times.
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To the Iron Trade of Great Britain This Portrait of the late HENRY CORT The TUBAL CAIN of our century & of
our country THE FATHER OF THE BRITISH IRON TRADE - Times July 29th 1856 Caption below mezzotint |
Henry Cort b 1749 d 1800 Iron Master inventor of the puddling process Caption,
reverse side of mezzotint |
The stamp on the reverse side
shows the picture was given to the museum in 1931.
Lithograph 1
Also in British Museum annex.
Probably derived from
mezzotint, though the appearance is quite different. Caption also quotes the 1856 Times article.
Adam White, I have learned from the Web, “was an Assistant in
the Zoology Department of the British Museum from 1835 to 1863, specializing in
Crustacea and insects.” The year, 1859,
in which he donates the lithograph to the museum is towards the end of the
period of controversy about Henry Cort. Although there is no mention of the Society of Arts (the main source of this controversy)
in White’s biography, it is likely he knows many of its members. In particular, William Benjamin Carpenter,
who has married Cort’s granddaughter, works in a
related field.
Lithograph 2
Discovered on the Web in October
2008. In National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich.
Provenance and derivations
unknown.
Steel engraving
Present whereabouts
unkown. Possibly in archives, Institute
of Materials.
Probably derived from
mezzotint.
According to Mott's notes in the Coalbrookdale collection, it was
presented by William Fairbairn and others to the
Cort Memorial Fund set up in 1856.
According to a letter from Charles H. Morgan (to H.H. Suplee, January 24, 1906),
it was subsequently “presented to the Iron and Steel Institute by Windsor
Richards in 1901". The Institute
was later subsumed into the Metals Society, then into the Institute of
Materials.
The letter also says Morgan
has "a good enlarged copy of the Steel Engraving of Henry Cort which I
would be glad to donate to the A.S.M.E." (American Society of Mechanical
Engineers). Does ASME now hold this
copy?
Model and bronze
bas-reliefs
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We owe the tablet to an eminent
American engineer, who is much impressed with the value of the work Cort did
for the world and wishes to rescue his name from an undeserved oblivion. It is a bronze tablet showing Cort's head
in good relief. The American donor,
who desires to keep his own name back, intends to place a replica of the
tablet in Lancaster Parish Church. At
the unveiling ceremony he was represented by Mr. J.P. Bedson, of Manchester.
From Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1905. |
We now know that the American
engineer is Charles H Morgan.
One bronze is at St Johns
Hampstead, where Cort is buried.
The other is at St Marys Lancaster. near where he is said to have
been born. Weale
quotes his birthplace as Ellell, which Mott
discovered is in the parish of Cockerham near Lancaster.
Mott says the two bronzes
were developed from the original steel engraving. According to the Morgan-Suplee
letter, an intermediate stage was "the model from which the Copham
Manufacturing Company made the Bronze Tablets", which was then in Morgan's
possession.
Plaster cast
At Manchester Materials
Science Centre.
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The Manchester side of the 1905-6 operation took place on
Tuesday 6th February 1906 in the Schunck laboratory, when Mr. Bedson
presented to the University a plaster cast of the original bronze
tablet. This cast, which is now in
room F1 of the new Metallurgy Building, shows Henry Cort in profile and is
inscribed IN MEMORY OF HENRY CORT BORN AT LANCASTER 1740 INTERRED AT HAMPSTEAD 1800 TO WHOM THE WORLD IS INDEBTED FOR THE
ARTS OF REFINING IRON WITH MINERAL COAL BY PUDDLING AND ROLLING METALS IN GROOVED ROLLS. From
commemorative leaflet for University of Manchester Open Day, 20 May 1978. |
Evidently also developed from
steel engraving.
Book cover
The image on the front cover
of the Mott/Singer book Henry Cort: The Great Finer
was probably taken from the original steel engraving, since the book was
published by The Metals Society
Fareham images
The image used on the flags
for Fareham's commemoration of Henry Cort,
April-June 2000, was evidently taken from the book: probably from the
photograph of the Hampstead tablet rather than the cover.
Website image
The image used in the banner on
this and several other pages off this website was developed from a photograph
by Eric Alexander of the Lancaster tablet.
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Related pages |
henrycort.net
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