was greatly praised when unveiled in a more appropriate external setting in Manchester later the same year. Victoria sat for Ford a number of times for the Manchester monument. At her request, those studies became the basis of several portrait busts of the queen by Ford, in both marble and bronze, which she used as gifts. Ford delivered the last of these early in January 1901, weeks before she died. He subsequently produced a number of small-scale copies, in bronze, of the work which is considered a sensitive and sympathetic study of the elderly Victoria and the last sculptured likeness of her for which she sat. Ford was a founding member of the Art Workers Guild in 1884 and became president of the Guild in 1885. He was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1888 and became a full Academician in 1895. Death and legacy Around 1900, following an extended period of over-work and stress from financial worries, Ford developed heart disease but continued working at pace and died suddenly at his home in St John's Wood on 23 December 1901. Ford's obituary in The Sketch, dated 1 January 1902, states that he died of pneumonia exacerbated by a weak heart. However the suddenness of his death, and his debt issues, led to some speculation about suicide. He was survived by his mother, his wife, four sons, and a daughter. Two of his sons had worked with Ford in his studio and they completed some of his unfinished works, most notably the marble sculpture, Snowdrift. His salt cellar, in silver, ivory, marble and lapis lazuli, of St George and the Dragon was completed by John Seymour Lucas. A monument was erected to Ford's memory which was designed by the architect J W Simpson and sculpted by Ford's former studio assistant Andrea Carlo Lucchesi in St John's Wood, near his home. The monument comprises a stone pillar with a bronze seated figure in mourning at the front, based on Ford's statue The Muse of Poetry, and a wreathed bust of Ford at rear. The Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds holds an archive of Ford's papers and correspondence. Several national collections in Britain hold examples of Ford's work, notably the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Merseyside and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Selected public works