Wizard / Victor Alexander Sederbach

3D Model

1755-56

27 figures were commissioned in 1755 by John Ivory Talbot to decorate the interior of his newly built Gothick Great Hall. The figures were made and fired in the grounds of Lacock Abbey by Austrian sculptor Victor Alexander Sederbach.

Pevsner // On these brackets and in these niches stands the extraordinary statuary of Victor Alexander Sederbach, a pleasant, modest man and a cheap sculptor. Beyond that we know absolutely nothing about him. His Christian names sound North-East German, his surname South German or Austrian, and the statues in Austrian abbeys are indeed perhaps the nearest comparison to these wild, violent, and unrefined mid-C18 pieces. They are made of terracotta, and it has been suggested that Sederbach was perhaps a Hafner, i.e. stove-maker, and not a sculptor. (The Buildings of England: Wiltshire)