This Jonathan Sanders bronze sculpture ‘Girl Reading Book’ was hand cast by Nelson & Forbes in a British foundry, in a limited edition of just 250 castings.

Depicting a delightfully carefree child reading a book, this beautiful sculpture is presented in a high quality English hand made gift box and is accompanied by a numbered booklet of information, signed by the artist, Jonathan Sanders. This booklet is your guarantee that this is an original foundry casting of Jonathan Sanders’s work that he has personally approved.

Jonathan Sanders was invited by The Wedgwood Museum to create a range of contemporary bronze sculpture, inspired by its collections.

The Wedgwood Museum Collection is a unique record of the history of the Wedgwood company and of high quality English manufacturing. It includes a large range of manuscripts, correspondence, factory equipment, trials and original models as well as fine art by the likes of George Stubbs and Joshua Reynolds and, of course, ceramics. The basis of the collection can be traced back to the founder, Josiah Wedgwood I, who, conscious of the experimental nature of the work he was undertaking, kept his trials and experiments for posterity.

When Jonathan Sanders visited the museum, he says that he was ‘Utterly bowled over by the quality and beauty of so much of the collection, which represents the best in English design and production over the past 250 years’.

He was particularly entranced by the Domestic Employment series of Jasperware, depicting young children going about their day to day life, typically engaged in ‘domestic employment’. The depictions are a beautiful and some might say a slightly romantic view of how ordinary children experienced life in the 1780s, from the point of view of the aristocrat, Lady Elizabeth Templetown.

“I couldn’t help but compare those scenes with the lives of my own children”, he says, “and was inspired to sculpt a collection of pieces of them going about their every day life today.”

The resulting pieces are a depiction, by a contemporary artist, of the domestic life of today’s English child and Nelson & Forbes are proud to have the opportunity to produce them by hand in England, just as Wedgwood have done for many generations.

This bronze casting is a perfect recreation of Jonathan Sanders’s orignal sculpture and took two weeks to create. It bears the artist’s signature and its own unique edition number. As every piece is cast by hand, each one is an original and so will be very slightly different to the last.

 ‘The Wedgwood Museum’ is a trade mark belonging to the Wedgwood Museum Trust Limited.