Another Engraver in South Molton Street

I recently purchased the engraved trade-card of John Claude Nattes, (c 1765-1839), topographical draughtsman, drawing master, print dealer, and occasional print-maker, who lived in South Molton Street from c 1787 to some time after 1795. The card  shows a monument with two hooded figures on top flanking a group of art-related objects including a palette and brushes, a pyramid behind; trees in the foreground to the left. The plinth of the monument is inscribed "Mr Nattes, 49 South Molton Strt.".

The card has been trimmed to the image  (50 x 79 mm.) but other copies now in the British Museum supply an imprint: "C.N. [i.e. Claude Nattes] del.    W. Angus sc.".

The Whore Next Door: William Blake’s Neighbours in South Molton Street.

I write in South Molton Street, what I both see and hear

In regions of Humanity, in Londons opening streets.

William Blake, Jerusalem (E 180)

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In September 1803, after an absence of three years in the coastal village of Felpham in Sussex, William and Catherine Blake returned to London. Initially they lodged with William's brother and sister, James and Catherine Elizabeth Blake, at 28 Broad Street, later Broadwick Street, Carnaby Market. Less than a month later, William and Catherine moved into a two-room flat on the first floor of 17 South Molton Street, off Oxford Street. During their 17 years of residence there, the Blakes printed and coloured their most ambitious illuminated books.

The house was shared with their landlords, successively the tailor William Enoch (c 1803-4) and his family, and the staymaker Mark Martin (c 1805-21), his wife Eleanor and their family. There were presumably other lodgers on the upper floors.

In 1958 the Westminster voters’ list records the following persons as resident at 17 South Molton Street: Ida Golz, Anthony S. Gotlop, Frank Holland, Leah Laden, Minnie Sandground, and Stanley V. Sandground. I believe at this time the residents occupied cold-water flats on the upper floors, with commercial premises on the ground floor and basement.