A Pair Of English Cast Iron Tazza Urns By Andrew Handyside

A wonderfully weathered pair of No.9 Tazza urns by renowned foundry Andrew Handyside. A wide and shallow saucer shaped bowl edged in egg and dart sits above the gadrooned body supported by a fluted spreading socle. Both urns supported by a stone pedestal.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1805, Handyside worked in his uncle Charles Baird’s engineering business in St. Petersburg before taking over the Brittania Foundry in 1848. It had first been opened around 1820 by Weatherhead and Glover to cast ornamental ironwork, and had achieved a high reputation, partly from the skill of the workers, but also because of the quality of the local moulding sand. By the 1840s it was diversifying into railway components. Among the early customers was the Midland Railway’s Derby Works for which it supplied cylinder blocks and other castings.

His output ranged from garden ornaments to railway bridges. He produced lamp posts for the new gas street lighting (one of which still exists on Silk Mill Lane in Derby) and was one of the first to produce the new standard Post Office letterboxes.[1] Nearly two thousand different window frames designs were produced. The company even supplied a dome to the steel maker Henry Bessemer for the roof of his conservatory.