Edward Carter Preston-The Unsung
Craftsman
Mention the name.........and most
people will have no knowledge of a man whose sculpture was
commissioned on such a monumental scale. He entered a competition
with 800 other submissions for which he received £250. The chosen
design for the Death Penny, is called Pyramus
Maybe its because most of Carter
Preston's work was for memorials and testaments to others, that his
work has never been fully investigated.
Or it could be that his memento-mori's
were of such heart rendering, that the public conception of death,
and the glorious nature of conflict at the time, meant that they did
not want to know the names of the people who recollected the
memories of those glorious dead. There were so many grieving memories
at a time when people wished to forget the horror of the carnage of
World war I.
The perceived idea of art was to think
of the classics as work passed down from an other age. To us.
Preferring to think that it was the
work of an ancient age. Of Greek hero's, or Roman myths brought up to
modern times. Death is all the same. But perhaps the classical style
was why he, and many other unsung, hard working sculptors were so
successful. People needed dignity, they had lost a lot.
That he gave, through his work, the
dignity of death, to people, in treacherous times, and reinvented it
on behalf of the top brass, the heavy establishment, those that
cloaked the war, in glory, and gave reasons with which to justify the
mass slaughter of a nations sons.
A justification.
The conflict that gave way to killing
on a scale of mass production , that also gave us mass produced
weapons of destruction, of a whole generations soul.
We wanted to mythologise the way those
brave hero's went to the deaths.
Many without a wish to understand more
than the basic of human instincts of self defence and proud
nationhood, that would later be lost in a muddy field in a distant
land.
What other cause can create the image
of an old General saying “Your Country needs You”.
And they believed him. Maybe it would
not happen today. The masses wouldn't let them get there. History
would of course, in hindsight immortalise all those who who would not
give way, and fight to the tyranny. That would defend their minds
image of freedom.
These were the creation of the scarred
generation that went on to create the horrors of World War II. But
during the first World War they sang songs of freedom and home while
being led to their deaths, on both sides, by the hands of Queen
Victoria's privileged, but deadly offspring.
Who clung on to childish playground
games, now played out with deadly consequences, for their subjects,
that they sent over the top.
Gone were the lead soldiers, replaced
by real flesh and blood, that tore.
Those in power counted a war in terms
of how many more of the other side that you killed rather than the
endgames. Those deadly games of starvation, and in the killing of
civilians, many of who had had the fateful postman's knock themselves.
Just as many would die of broken
hearts.
Could civilisation invent such a
hatred for each other with a pretence of glory without even looking
at the reasoning of why so much was wrong.
Or that the very Monarchs whose honour
that they were upholding were the very cause of the disaster in the
first place. They were the laughing assassins of war.
The faces that led the march. These
tin pot dictators who had no concept of peasant life.
Just before the conflict began. The
Tsar was seen to have gone out to a ball, the very night that
hundreds of his subjects had been trampled in a stampede for images
of him and the Tsarina....Did he really care about them?
So should they fight for him. For a
time at least, they would. Before the Revolution.
Queen Victoria who gave birth to most
of the ignorant spoilt fools, who were married off to congeal the
Empires prowess. This small group of in-breeds spawned the generation
of monarchs who sent us all of to war.
It really is a long way to Tipperary
and most of them never would come back.
Paul Nash recorded the slaughter, with
his, at times pretty emotionless depictions of bomb craters. And
planes, that for me don't really show the true horrors of war.
I was at a local auction when a
lithograph by Paul Nash of Hill 60 crater 11, made £23,000, for me it
lacked the attachment, it just looks like a hole.
It also lacked attachment for the pathetic Runcorn Auction Centre who valued it at £300.
Nash was there, but it is shame, that his
stylised depictions get all the credits, with retrospective
exhibitions and epilogues, from the likes of Alastair Cook of the
BBC, the next in the long line of peddlers of myths, they are the new
establishment. The BBC.
So what we get from the establishment
is an upgraded story from a new commentator who is too scared to go
against the grain of the, said establishment, to say that the likes
of Paul Nash is someone who couldn't really look, for fear because he
was too scared himself.
That he did not record the true
horrors, is true, because it is un-recordable.
I once found a Death Penny in a house
that I was renovating when I was quite young. I did not know what it
was then. But I kept it for a while until a military dealer spelt out
the meaning to me. I recall admiring its detail but felt humbled, by
its presence.
It was only worth about £30 at the
time, there were a lot of them around.
It was not for a general or a Colonel,
although there was no mention of rank, on the bronze plaques as there
was no distinction to be made of the sacrifice of individuals.
They are frequently traded.
A few years later when I had learnt more
about the facts that led to the deaths of so many across Europe. The
same war would even bring in Americans, Canadians and Australians, it
really was a World War.
And so what of the man whose initials
E.Cr.P were cast into the bronze roundels that where sent to the next
of kin.
The Death Penny is 5inches (120mm)
across cast in bronze by the memorial factory of Acton road London.
With its brave lion walking with Britannia holding a trident in the
centre, as a depiction of the strong and noble British spirit. In her
other hand she has a oak wreath just above the tablet that would bear
the deceased name. Two
dolphins swim around Britannia, symbolising Britain's sea power, and
at the bottom a second lion is tearing apart the German eagle. The
reverse is blank.
He didn't show the donkey symbolising
those that drove the brave soldiers to death, for it would not have
been right to pour scorn on all those that never returned from the
fight for King and Country.
He just give it to them straight. As
they would have wished, as they deserved .
He would have been proud to have been
commissioned.
And he should be rewarded for it. For
without the approach of dignified sculptors such as Edward Carter
Preston, who knew their trade and did it well, we would not have
been able to remember the many. And as bronze lasts it is now
possible to look back into the individual stories behind the lives of
those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. The lives of the Lords and the
labourer were to both be remembered equally.
They made that sacrifice hoping it
would give us our freedom.
What price a Dead Mans Penny............Immortality.
I was one of the last people to see the
culmination of the collection of her fathers work by Julia Carter
Preston at her house in Canning Street here in Liverpool. The whole
of hers and her fathers work and their memories too, went off to Hope
University, to probably be lost for now.
We need an exhibition of his work a
retrospective he was a very clever, and dignified man who does not
get enough recognition, in my opinion.
I had been invited on to the show to
talk about the etched glass door panels by Hector Whistler that were
originally fitted in the doors in the foyer of The Liverpool
Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street.
