Resumen de Samuel Watson, Not Grinling Gibbons at Chatsworth
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries England produced a number of highly competent carvers who drew inspiration from the genius of Grinling Gibbons and sometimes worked alongside him. In some instances their work has wrongly been attributed to Gibbons himself, as has been and still is the case with Samuel Watson (1662-1715) of Heanor, who worked in wood and stone, alabaster and marble at Chatsworth House between 1691 and 1711. Although Samuel Watson's name occurs regularly in the payments made by the 1st and 2nd Dukes of Devonshire during these years, his work soon became associated with the name of Grinling Gibbons which appears nowhere in the Chatsworth accounts. It was not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that Samuel's son and grandson, Henry and White, both of whom worked as carvers and masons at Chatsworth, revealed Samuel's drawings, accounts and contracts in a bid to honour his achievements.'
