W. J. Coffee

William John Coffee (1774–1846) was an English artist and sculptor who worked in porcelain, plaster, and terra cotta.

[1] Little is known of his early life, but from 1790 to 1792 he worked for Eleanor Coade in her large sculpture yard in the Lambeth district of London.

Coffee also produced a terra cotta copy of the Florentine Boar (1806) and a number of terra cotta statues of Greek figures representing medicine and healing for the garden of Joseph Strutt.The Boar was moved from Strutt's garden to the Derby Arboretum, which Strutt donated to the town.

Coffee also made a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m) terra cotta statue of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, for William Strutt's Derby Infirmary, which was mounted above a dome at the very pinnacle of the newly designed hospital.

[4] In 1816, Coffee emigrated from England to New York City,[5] where he became famous as a sculptor of American historical figures such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.