Nicholas Stone

Nicholas Stone 1586-1647, English sculptor and mason, b. Devonshire. He rose to a position of highest importance as a decorative sculptor, working after designs by Inigo Jones. His independent productions include the gate at St. Mary's, Oxford, and numerous tombs, such as that of the Viscount Dorchester, Westminster Abbey. His notebook and account book are preserved in the Soane Museum, London, and give much information about his trade. He also wrote a work on fortifications (1645).

Stone, Nicholas (1587–1647). English sculptor and architect. He worked for Isaac James (fl.1600—after 1624–5), sculptor, of Southwark, London, and then Hendrick de Keyser in Amsterdam from 1606, whose daughter he married. He settled in London in 1613 and established his reputation as a monumental sculptor, much influenced by the Antique. He was also a master-mason, and was employed by Inigo Jones to build the Palladian Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–22). In 1626 Stone was appointed Master-Mason and Architect at Windsor Castle, and in 1632 Master-Mason to the Crown. His works include the impressive gateways at the Botanic Gardens, Oxford (1632–3), and the remodelling of the north front of Kirby Hall, Northants. (1638–40). He may have designed the York Water Gate on the Embankment, London (1626), but his connection with the Baroque south porch of St Mary's Church, Oxford (1637), is tenuous, as it is now known to be by John Jackson. His primary sources came from the works of Serlio. He possibly designed Lindsey House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London (c.1640). He made (1617) the punning monument of William Curl (d. 1617), Auditor of the Court of Wards to Queen Elizabeth I, shown curled up in his shroud in the Church of St Etheldreda, Hatfield, Hert. (1617).

Bibliography

AH, xiv (1971), 30–9;
Bullock (1908);
Colvin (1995);
Harris et al. (1973);
Jane Turner (1996);
Walpole Society, vii (1918–19);
Whinney (1964)

Stone, Nicholas (b nr. Exeter, c.1587; d London, 24 Aug. 1647). English sculptor, mason, and architect. The son of a Devon quarryman, he trained in London, where he met Hendrick de Keyser, who visited the city in 1606–7. Stone went to Amsterdam with de Keyser and worked for him until 1613, when he married his daughter and returned to England. He quickly established himself as the outstanding tomb sculptor in the country, surpassing his contemporaries in technical skill as a marble cutter and outdoing them in introducing new ideas: the monument to Francis Holles (d 1622; Westminster Abbey), for example, has the first English example of a figure in Roman armour.

In 1619 Stone became master mason for Inigo Jones's Banqueting House in Whitehall, and in 1632 master mason to the Crown. His contact with the court gave him a knowledge of the antique sculpture in Charles I's collection and his work after c.1630 shows a change in style, marked by an attempt to imitate antique drapery, as in the monument to John and Thomas Lyttelton (1634, Magdalen College, Oxford). His large workshop produced monuments of many types, and we are unusually well informed about its activities, as an office notebook covering the period 1614–41 and an account book for the period 1631–42 still survive (Soane Mus., London). Much less of his work as an architect is extant (and it is sometimes not clear whether he was the designer as well as the mason of the buildings on which he worked), but he is recognized as the creator of ‘a vernacular classical architecture of considerable charm and accomplishment’ ( Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 1978). The outbreak of civil war in 1642 seems to have brought his career to an end. Stone may have been the author of Enchiridion of Fortification, or a Handfull of Knowledge in Martiall Affairs, published anonymously in London in 1645, but the book has also been attributed to the youngest of his three sons, John Stone (1620–67), who ran the family practice after his father's death (even though he does not appear to have been a sculptor himself).