Ball, Thomas (1819-1911)Henry Clay

Born, Charleston, Massachusetts; youthful apprenticeship to Abel Bowen, a wood engraver, followed by work at Moses Kinball's Boston Museum and Fine Arts Gallery where he first encountered waxwork figures; 1851-1853 developed a series of "cabinet busts" of famous musicians followed by a work of Daniel Webster; in Florence, Italy, where he worked as an associate of Kentuckians Joel T. Hart and Hiram Powers; in America 1857-1865, where he completed a monumental equestrian figure of George Washington for the Boston Public Gardens; in Florence 1865-1897, sculpted and executed figures for popular pointing reproduction; published two autobiographical works, Three Score Years and Ten and My Fourscore Years; 1897, returned to New York; 1908, retired to Montclair, New Jersey, where he died. Henry Clay (1777- 1852) Parian figure (a ceramic compound of marble dust and porcelain) 1938.16