Cathedral Font Restored to Former Glory

Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
3 Mar 2010

When the owner of Australia's last surviving firm of traditional silversmith manufacturers inspected the heavy silver dome covering St Mary's Cathedral's baptismal font, he instantly suspected it had been dropped at sometime in the past, splitting the metal and damaging the silver in several places.

Weighing a hefty 40 kilos of solid silver, the font's domed cover would not have been easy to move, and lifting it to reveal the sterling silver bowl beneath in the days before runner tracks were added, involved a complicated pulley system which had obviously been fraught with difficulties.

And the domed cover, the largest and most spectacular of its kind in Australia built in the early part of last century, had not escaped unscathed. Nor had the carved figure of John the Baptist which sat atop the dome.

"When we first looked at the dome, we saw that some of the ribs had come adrift and there were also dents and quite a bit of damage. While repairs had been made, they were badly done and even worse, carried out using lead solder, which no reputable silversmith would ever use," says Dennis de Muth, owner of W.J. Sanders, the company which has spent the past several months meticulously restoring the font's sterling silver dome and bowl to their original glory.

In addition to the damaged ribs and dents, the silver had also oxidised and the remarkable dome, believed to be the largest single piece of silver in Australia, was in urgent need of repair.

The sterling silver bowl beneath the font's domed cover hadn't fared much better and at some point in its history, had a metal division crudely inserted across its diameter and lead-soldered in place.

In addition, the set of parallel tracks and wheels, which were added sometime in the 1940s enabling the dome to be easily removed for a baptism, was no longer operational.

"And hadn't worked for many years," says Dennis.

As project manager of the Cathedral's ongoing Conservation and Restoration Plan, Ralph Morris commissioned Dennis' company, W.J. Sanders to repair and restore the font's damaged dome and bowl as well as restore the track system.

As the only traditional manufacturing silversmiths still operating in Australia, the Sydney-based firm is well known in the secular world for creating cups and trophies for most of the country's big sporting events, as well as crafting the bronze, silver and gold Logies for Australia's annual TV fest.

But the company is equally renowned in religious circles and its silversmiths were responsible for crafting the exquisite gold and silver ecclesiastical set used by Pope Benedict XVI as part of World Youth Day 2008. What was not known and only discovered by co-incidence when work on restoration of the font began, is that the company was responsible for crafting the solid silver bowl and dome its craftsmen were now repairing.

"But with only the sketchiest of records, we were keen to find out more, we contacted John Sanders, the son of the company's founder, William Sanders who has been extremely generous and shared many details of the firm's history with us over the years," says Dennis.

Although now 80-years-old, John Sanders, who was also a silversmith and metal worker,  remembered the Cathedral's font well and wrote back to Dennis explaining that the sterling silver dome had been crafted to commemorate the World Eucharist Congress which was held in Sydney in 1928.

"It was made in the workshop of and under the supervision of my father, William John Sanders, and was reputed to be the largest piece of silver work ever undertaken in Australia...and probably still is."

Although no records exist about who designed the dome, it is believed to be either the work of  19th century architect William Wardell, who designed St Mary's Cathedral, or that of Jack Hennessy, the Sydney architect who with his father, John Hennessy, completed the Cathedral 100 years after  Wardell's death.

There are also no records of who exactly commissioned the work.

But while such details are lost in time, the font itself is now back to its full beauty. The lead soldering has been removed and replaced with silver soldering. The dents have gone and the oxidised stained silver chemically cleaned then polished and buffed back to a gleaming finish.

The bowl has had its drain hole filled as the font is now emptied by hand and metal division removed and repaired. The figure of John the Baptist has also been repaired and the dome itself can now be easily moved back and forth on smart new brass runners covered with silver.

The fully restored font, which sits on its handsomely carved Royal Sienna marble base, is once more one of the crowning jewels of the Cathedral.

To find out more about the ongoing conservation and restoration works at St Mary's Cathedral and how you can help, log on to www.stmaryscathedral.org.au