John Doubleday (restorer)

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John Doubleday and the Portland Vase
Doubleday's signature on the Portland vase

John Doubleday (* between 1796 and 1799; † January 25, 1856 in London ) was a British restorer and antique dealer. He became known for restoring the previously destroyed Portland Vase .

Life

John Doubleday (1836)

Doubleday's origin and life dates are unclear. According to the English Cyclopedia , he came from America. According to a census done in 1851, he was a British citizen who was born in New York . If so, he could not have been a man of the same name who was born on February 26, 1798, baptized on April 22, 1798 at St. Mary Marylebone's Church in London, and was a son of John and Sarah Doubleday.

Doubleday probably married a woman named Elisabeth in 1732, with whom he had five children, the youngest of whom named Elisabeth was born in 1733. He lived at 5 Hyde Street in London from 1832 to 1833, at 32 Little Russell Street from 1834 to 1840 and at 5 Little Russell Street from 1845 to 1856. In the 1851 census, he was named as a 53-year-old artist named John Doublday , who was born in New York City .

On January 19, 1856, Doubleday wrote his will, which opened on February 28 of the same year. He bequeathed all of his fortune to the maid Elizabeth Bewsey, whose father and bookbinder James Bewsey had died. It is unusual that he did not consider his wife and their daughters. His library was sold to Sotheby’s in 1857 .

According to an obituary, Doubleday died after a prolonged, serious illness. Before his death he was so seriously ill that he could not be contacted for months. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery . His wife lived at 5 Little Russell Street for several years after his death, where she and two daughters were listed in an 1861 census.

Act

Doubleday initially worked in the office of a printing company for more than 20 years. In the meantime, he supervised the manufacture of the letters and acquired extensive knowledge in the area of ​​forming metals and other materials. These later helped him identify counterfeits and deal with antiques. He then copied medals, historical seals and coins, inventing new methods of coin production. He poured for the Royal Mint and was a founding member of the Royal Numismatic Society .

In 1830, Doubleday donated a collection of casts of medieval seals to the British Museum, which he lived near. In an address book created two years later he was listed at 5 Hyde Street as a dealer in curiosities, pictures and bowls, and was mentioned in the following year as a dealer in historical seals. According to a report by an American visitor from 1834 in the American Journal of Science and Arts , Doubleday was allowed to copy all items in the British Museum and the Paris Bibliotheque Royale . At that time, he offered copies of 6000 Greek, 2050 bronze, 1000 silver, 500 gold Roman coins and 300 Roman medals. The University of London only obtained his casts for study purposes and thus saved an enormous amount of money in teaching. In 1851 he had templates for more than 10,000 seals.

Working for the British Museum

From 1836 to 1856 Doubleday worked for the British Museum. He worked as a freelancer and was supposed to restore antiques in the relevant department of the museum. He was considered the museum's first professional restorer, for which he also worked as a sales agent.

Doubleday's best work as a restorer was repairing the Portland vase, which a vandal destroyed on February 7, 1845. He was able to restore the vase, with the exception of 37 fragments. The British Museum paid him an additional £ 25 for this. The London Morning Post of July 11, 1845 wrote that Doubleday had done so well that even experts would not notice that the vase had been repaired.

Between 1850 and 1855, Doubleday worked again as a restorer for the museum. Under the direction of the Egyptologist Samuel Burch , he was supposed to prepare excavation pieces from Mesopotamia and tried several methods. In doing so, however, he destroyed their surfaces and inscriptions or the panels themselves. EA Wallis Budge described Doubleday's work as "disastrous".

Web links

Commons : John Doubleday  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Knight: The English Cyclopaedia: A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge, Volume 2 . 1856. page 378
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Jacob Simon: John Doubleday . Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b The Athenæum (1475): Our weekly gossip of February 2, 1856, page 140.
  4. ^ Weston S Walford, Albert Way: Examples of Mediæval Seals in: The Archaeological Journal, Volume 13, London 1856, pp. 70-71
  5. ^ A b Sylvanus Urban: Obituary: Mr. John Doubleday . The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 45, London, 1856, page 431.
  6. ^ Henry Winkles, Benjamin Winkles: Winkles's Architectural and Picturesque Illustrations of the Cathedral Churches of England and Wales . London 1851. page 192.
  7. ^ RAG Carson: A History of the Royal Numismatic Society 1836-1986 . London: Royal Numismatic Society. ISBN 978-0-901405-24-1 . Page 3.
  8. ^ Benjamin Silliman: Miscellaneous Communications from an American Naval Officer, traveling in Europe; forwarded from the Mediterranean, May, 1834 . in: The American Journal of Science , Volume 27, Jan. 1835, New Haven, 75.
  9. ^ Benjamin Winkles, Hablot Knight Browne: Winkles's Architectural and Picturesque Illustrations of the Cathedral Churches of England and Wales . David Bodue, London 1851. Page VII.
  10. ^ John Doubleday (Biographical details) on the British Museum homepage. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
  11. ↑ Colin Dunkerley: 7th February 1845. Portland Vase. A Date with History blog.
  12. ^ London Morning Post of July 11, 1845. Page 6.
  13. ^ EAW Budge: Rise and Progress of Assyriology . 1925. Pages 148-149.
personal data
SURNAME Doubleday, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British restorer and antique dealer
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: between 1796 and 1799
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1856
Place of death London