1803-1847 - Queen Street (Bloomsbury)
Modeller and plaster figure maker Matthew Mazzoni was born Giovanni Matteo Mazzoni in 1781 in Barga, Tuscany. He moved to England around 1803. He started work as a journeyman being employed by statuary and mason John Hamilton who operated from no. 162 Sloane Street, Chelsea. By 1808 he was working for himself from no. 18 Queen Street, Bloomsbury. He first appears in London directories in 1815 as I.M. Mazzoni at no. 27 Princes Street, Leicester Square. He seemed to have been on the move continuously. Mazzoni was imprisoned for debt in 1831 as a plaster figure maker, formerly of no. 44 Drury Lane, then of no. 6 York Street, Covent Garden, and subsequently of no. 3 New Church Court, Strand. In November 1815, Benjamin Robert Haydon commissioned him to make moulds of some of the Elgin Marbles. He was then employed for several years by Richard Westmacott in making plaster casts of classical marbles in the British Museum. In about 1828 Mazzoni modelled the massive terms supporting the staircase at Stafford House (now: Lancaster House). In 1835, he contributed a model of a statue of David Garrick to the vestibule of Drury Lane Theatre. He died in 1847 in the St Giles district.
