page_title: Robert Mawer
section_title: Moorlands House, 48 Albion Street, Leeds, 1852-1855
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Mawer / Works / Moorlands House, 48 Albion Street, Leeds, 1852-1855
caption_attribution_description: Stone Carvings on Moorlands House, Albion Street, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. As of November 2016 the building was occupied by Starbucks. The photograph was taken from the scaffolding, which was erected for stone-cleaning. The carving is credited to Robert Mawer. This character could be Zeus, garlanded by Europa ... or perhaps Dionysius (Bacchus) without the grapes, in deference to the Temperance Movement.
context_page_description: Robert Mawer was an architectural sculptor, based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. He specialised in the Gothic Revival and Neoclassical styles. He created the Neoclassical keystone heads on St George's Hall, Bradford and on Moorland's House, Leeds, and was working on the keystone heads at Leeds Town Hall when he died. He was a founding member of the Mawer Group of Leeds architectural sculptors, which included his wife, Catherine Mawer, his son Charles Mawer, and his apprentices William Ingle, Matthew Taylor and Benjamin Payler, who all became sculptors with their own careers. Many of the buildings enhanced with sculpture by Robert Mawer are now listed by Historic England.
context_section_description: This is a Grade II listed building at 48 Altion Street, Leeds, West Yorkshire, occupied by Starbucks since 2016. It was designed in Venetian palazzo style by William Bruce Gingell, for the Leeds and Yorkshire Assurance Company. It was built and carved in millstone grit from three different sources. Work began in 1852, and it was opened in 1855. 
  
  Robert Mawer carved most of the masks and the flower swags; they are similar to his work on Leeds Town Hall and St George's Hall, Bradford. However he died on 10 November 1854, before the building was completed. The goat's head, the sheep's head, and the delicately undercut leaves above the entrance door are in William Ingle's style, which ceased to be produced when he died in 1870. The portrait of Robert Mawer as a playing card joker is in Catherine Mawer's observant style. At the opening in 1855, the Leeds Intelligencer reported: 
  "... the rich but tasteful character of its decorative work ... The carved stone decoration on the exterior of the building, so universally admired, was almost the last work of the late Mr. Robert Mawer, a man whose taste and judgement (for much of it was his own design) were such that his place in Leeds cannot readily be supplied." (Leeds Intelligencer 17 March 1855)
   Media related to Moorlands House, Albion Street, Leeds at Wikimedia Commons
caption: Sculpture on Moorlands House
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