St Bartholomew House, Fleet Street EC4

 

This attractive Arts and Craft block of 1900 is by Herbert Huntly-Gordon, presumably one of that architect's speculative developments.
Letting income is maximised by placing as much shop front as possible at street level. This squeezes the door to the offices a little bit, but Huntly-Gordon makes up for the lack of width by adding a lovely adornment of putti by Gilbert Seale. Both architect and sculptor sign the piece, unusually.
The one on the left is more or less a standard model putto with feathery wings and a bow, carrying a quiver, but the one on the right is decidedly odd with what look like butterfly wings and flowers in its hair. Is it a boy or a girl?
The balcony of the open loggia on the fourth floor is supported by a line of attractive heads of putti. Are they also by Seale or was a journeyman mason brought in?

Caltex House, Brompton Road SW1

Triga is a trio of racehorses made in 1957 by the Czech-born sculptor Frantisek ('Franta') Belsky. They spring out of the corner of the podium of Caltex House in the Brompton Road, commemorating the site's former use as Tattersall's auction yard.
Belsky was born in Brno in 1921 and grew up in Prague, but his family fled to London when the Nazis took over. He studied under Gilbert Ledward at the RCA at intervals dictated by service in the exiled Czech army including the D-day landings.
After the war he returned to Prague but had to leave again when the Communists seized power in 1948. Thereafter he forged a career in London, specialising in commissions for sculpture in specific locations. "I find nothing more enjoyable - and testing - than designing for a specific site and letting the locality, its use and the life in it, condition my sculptural decisions," he wrote. He also executed portraits of many members of the Royal family and statesmen including Churchill.

Triga is made rather unexpectedly of reinforced concrete coated in some sort of metallic plastic. As with all Belsky's sculptures, it contains an empty Guinness bottle, the day's newspaper, a sixpence and a note stating that he was the artist.

Imperial Airways Empire Terminal, Buckingham Palace Road SW1

So this is where the Speedbird logo of British Airways comes from. The sculpture is called Speed Wings over the World and it is by Eric Broadbent, who seems to be known mainly just for this work.
The building, now the National Audit Office, was built to the designs of Albert Lakeman in 1937/9. It was strategically located next to Victoria Station so passengers, mail and cargo could be loaded onto trains and sent to Southampton where they were transferred to the flying boats that took them to India, Australia and Africa. Of course, you didn't need a passport then because it was all British.
The title is a bit ambitious - at the time it took nearly a month to get to Australia. Planes used to land for overnight stops that were excuses for taking tours, shopping and dining on a heroic scale.
After the war, Imperial Airways was merged with British Airways, the then European carrier, to form BOAC. It used the terminal until the 1970s.

137 Long Acre WC2

This Mercers' Maiden is unusual in being made of ironstone ceramic tile to match the finish of the building, a shop dating from 1906 in Long Acre, Covent Garden.

1 Poultry EC2

 

When a range of perfectly respectable Victorian buildings in Poultry including the attractive and appropriate Mappin and Webb building were demolished for no other reason than to enable Peter Palumbo to flex his ego, these charming terracotta reliefs from the shop of Hawes the shirtmakers were happily preserved and erected on the new building.
Made in 1875, they depict Royal Progresses through London. The sculptor was Joseph Kremer, a German who studied in Paris.
The monarchs concerned are:
Top: Edward VI (r1547-1553). The boy king is surrounded by courtiers and preceded by a rather fierce-looking friar on a thin nag, apparently having a confrontation with a citizen. This seems a bit odd - the religious orders had been abolished under his father and he was a staunch Protestant.
Second: Elizabeth I (r1558-1603) carried in a palanquin accompanied by a page carrying something on a cushion.
Third: Charles II (r1660-1685). Charles is announced by trumpeters and welcomed by a lady who seems very obliging. His spaniels frolic at her feet.
Bottom: Victoria (r1837-1901). The Queen rides in a carriage drawn by horses held by top-hatted grooms and escorted by cavalry officers riding very spirited horses.

Curiocity

Curiocity is the counter-revolution against digital maps. It is printed on paper, folded in the way a map should be and contains all the quirky, fun and interesting information that Bing Maps so cruelly omits.
The tiny format slips easily in a trouser pocket for easy referral.
Having said that, you could consult curiocity.org.uk on your mobile phone but that wouldn't be half as much fun and would probably cost you almost as much as the paper map (£2) in data charges.
The current issue (B) is devoted to London's teeming animal population including a very nice roundup of statues of mythical creatures that will be of interest to Ornamental Passions readers, including these merlions on the Citadines Hotel.

Savoy Hotel, Strand WC2

The hoardings have come down on the Savoy to reveal the newly cleaned statue of Peter II, Count of Savoy, by Frank Lynn-Jenkins.
With its gleaming steel and glowing gilding, the statue seems entirely at home on the 1929 Art Deco canopy but it was in fact made in 1904 for the hotel extension seen behind. Reusing it was a brilliant stroke.
Count Peter wasn't a count at all when he came to London in the 1240s. He was the seventh of nine sons of the Count of Savoy so his inheritance prospects cannot have seemed too bright. He was, however, the uncle of Eleanor of Provence, who had just married Henry III. Henry made him Earl of Richmond and gave him the site on the north bank of the Thames where he built the Savoy Palace.
Peter finally became Count of Savoy in 1263, when he was already 60 years old.
Frank Lynn-Jenkins carved one of the statues on the facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Abundance, a group on Thames House in the City. He left for America in 1919 after a furious row with Cardiff council over the commissioning of sculpture for the new City Hall.