DECEMBER 2009 » book review

Metalwork for the Ages

Zinc Sculpture in America, 1850 to 1950
by Carol A. Grissom
University of Delaware Press, Newark, DE; 2009
706 pp; 354 color and 200 b&w illustrations; $65
ISBN 978-0-87413-031-7

Reviewed by Eve M. Kahn

Carol A. Grissom, a conservator at the Smithsonian, seems to have crawled all over America, applying magnets to metal statues indoors and out. If the magnet does not cling, one telltale sign of the presence of zinc, she can also check if the sculpture surface has resisted rust and scratches, and if any cracks have formed that reveal what she calls "the bright silver facets typical of zinc crystals."

This exhaustive, at times fascinating study, complete with more than 1,000 footnotes, explains how the metal has been shaped since the Bronze Age. And the depth and breadth of research into zinc's U.S. manifestations is astonishing. Grissom documents how Americans have displayed and maintained some 320 models of zinc statues – whether Civil War soldiers, firemen, Venuses, griffins or greyhounds – at sites ranging from cemeteries to offices, condo complexes, campuses and antiques galleries.

Yet she is careful to point out how much remains to research. No one is sure, for instance, where the word zinc comes from. Athenian plates made from hammered zinc have turned up in archaeological sites dating from the 2nd century BCE, and by the 10th century CE, Indian sculptors had developed a zinc-mercury amalgam. But the "first certain reference to metallic zinc," Grissom writes, shows up in a Swiss-German alchemist's text dated 1526. "The word is thought to be adapted from the old German word zinke, meaning pointed, which describes the appearance of zinc crystals," she explains. Zinc was not applied on a monumental scale until the 1830s, when German foundries started producing Prussian state architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel's designs for the likes of zinc column capitals, fountains and warriors on horseback.

Virtually every European capital soon began keeping up with the German trend, and high-relief zinc gods and saints spread from Budapest museum pediments to Helsinki church domes. The products were also exhibited at expositions worldwide, influencing American tastes. In the 1850s, a German immigrant, Moritz Seelig, set up a zinc foundry in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and imported European statues and ornament to copy for the booming U.S. market. "A taste for elaborate, eclectic, and exotic decoration was fulfilled by statuary, cornices, crestings, and finials made of zinc," Grissom notes. The Civil War gave American zinc another huge boost: through the 1910s, Grissom calculates, as many as a dozen towns a year dedicated commemorative zinc figures of Union or Confederate soldiers on pedestals in public parks.

Through the 1920s, zinc foundries touted the material's virtues "with hyperbolic zeal," Grissom writes. The metal is indeed lighter, cheaper and easier to keep clean than bronze, iron or stone, and zinc does not corrode or shrink much. It endures best when plated or painted; the foundries advertised simulations of "bronze, gold, marble, brownstone, granite, or polychrome wood," Grissom explains. But that proved the material's downfall, as 20th-century highbrow architects, critics and other tastemakers started advocating honesty in materials rather than what one metallurgist scorned as "shams and paints and varnishes."

By 1927, Seelig's Brooklyn foundry was out of business. The last owner, Grissom laments, "smashed remaining zinc statues to bits for scrap." Just a few contemporary uses for architectural zinc remain; it appears in Belgian and French roofing, and in the creepy blade-shaped façade of Raimund Abraham's 2002 Austrian Cultural Forum in midtown Manhattan.

Belle Epoque zinc, fortunately, has held up well. Damage – due to vandalism, pollution, falls, storms or sagging – is usually relatively easy to undo. Grissom devotes a 22-page chapter to repair and conservation advice, even detailing where to apply Araldite gray epoxy or Organic Soldering Flux Sticks. (Just don't ever pump concrete into dented or crumpled zinc statues – they will never drain properly again, and eventually blow apart at the seams.) Grissom also describes how thousands of individual statues have survived. With examples organized into chapters like "trade figures" or "famous men," she gives their current street addresses and details where they have traveled. A typical entry, for a polychromed Puck figure in Sandusky, OH: "Installed in a museum; previously atop the hot dog stand; before that in the window of the cigar store."

Not every tale of zinc in America is heartwarming, though. She mentions pieces that have eroded to the point that they have been brought indoors, and others pushed off roofs or lost in fires or hurricanes (destroyed examples have often been replicated by modern-day zinc suppliers like Alabama's Robinson Iron and Cincinnati's Eleftherios Karkadoulias). But overall this book provides indisputable proof that 19th-century engineering marvels do not burden town budgets. With little maintenance, zinc statuary keeps entertaining and enlightening passersby, and adds flavor to American streetscapes. TB

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