John Bridgeman

His work was popular with both private and municipal patrons and he contributed particularly to the regeneration of Birmingham after the war through the creation of a number of iconic pieces of public art. He also created play sculptures for children in the new council estates which were being built – an innovative idea that was ahead of its time in the 1950s. The last known surviving example was grade II listed in 2015. Always experimenting with new materials, his cement fondue Mother and Baby for Birmingham Maternity Hospital (now Birmingham Hospital for Women) and the over-life-size bronze group Compassion for Dudley Road Hospital (now City Hospital) re-sited on an internal wall in 2004 after having originally been placed on the outside of the building. are typical of his large scale commissions. The Mater Dolorosa in the Lady chapel of the then recently rebuilt Coventry Cathedral is perhaps the most powerful of his religious works, which he created throughout his life. His life-size bronze statue now dedicated to the Unknown Refugee, originally commissioned in the 1980s only found a home after his death in 2004 and was installed in Jephson Gardens, Royal Leamington Spa on 11th March 2025. The plaster for this sculpture was kept at the studio he shared with Nick Jones in St Leonard's Church, Spernall, Warwickshire and was later transferred to Pangolin Foundry where it awaited casting for many years before it was put into bronze in 2024. Towards the end of his life he concentrated on smaller female figures proving himself to be one of the last great practitioners of the art of lost-wax modelling. His philosophy of art and his interest in methods and materials are embodied in the book he co-wrote with his wife, the author and journalist Irene Dancyger, Clay Models and Stone Carving, 1974. His son Paul Bridgeman who died in 2007 was a water colour painter and ceramicist.