A
Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year
to you all
Saturday, 24 December 2016
Tuesday, 20 December 2016
Own work: Life drawing XXXI
Finally, after a delay of nearly two weeks, posting the single drawing done on the life drawing session before Christmas - a single pose for 2hrs.
Monday, 5 December 2016
Birmingham: St Chad's cathedral
Birmingham has suffered a lot in the 20th century from rapacious Modernity. The centre is scarred by arterial roads and ill considered developments. This was illustrated pretty well in the City Museum and Art Gallery where there were two schemes on display from the Midcentury: a great model of the Beaux Arts Centenary Square off Broad St, and a drawing (a rather good one at that) of a suburban tower block development. The former looked as though it was a refugee from the Third Reich and the latter like it was attempting an impersonation of the Karl Marx Allee in the former East Berlin. Neither scheme seemed to have anything to do with character of the city. Were we so unsure of ourselves that we had to ape the urban forms of Totalitarian Modernity?
The area around St Chad's Cathedral (1839-41, and early work by A W N Pugin) is a practical illustration of my point. Pugin designed St Chad's to fit into a tight, dense urban context of narrow streets; it was not designed to be seen, as now, across dual carriageways and open space. And that's why it looks oh-so-slightly disappointing. However in his materials - brick and sandstone - Pugin acknowledges the genius loci, though the design has a sort of North German feel to it as though it was designed not for a canal-side in the English Midlands but the side of the Baltic. Apart from the façade the outside is plain, even frugal: few mouldings and fewer buttresses. As I've said this partly from the fact that it was not really designed for public exposure, but also, I think, for the sake of economy. No English Medieval church of this scale would be quite so parsimonious. Still the mass and grouping of the liturgical east end is quite dramatic, verging on the sublime.
The interior is something else, a sort of hollowing out of the dense early Victorian city fabric to create a soaring numinous space in which to encounter the divine. The sandstone columns are very attenuated; the whole space has a sort of delicacy and fragility. Again Pugin works with incredible economy. There are great vast acres of flat wall surface, contrasting with flashes of rich detail. The fragility extends to the roofs, which have a thinness typical of his work. A medieval roof would be massive in comparison.
The area around St Chad's Cathedral (1839-41, and early work by A W N Pugin) is a practical illustration of my point. Pugin designed St Chad's to fit into a tight, dense urban context of narrow streets; it was not designed to be seen, as now, across dual carriageways and open space. And that's why it looks oh-so-slightly disappointing. However in his materials - brick and sandstone - Pugin acknowledges the genius loci, though the design has a sort of North German feel to it as though it was designed not for a canal-side in the English Midlands but the side of the Baltic. Apart from the façade the outside is plain, even frugal: few mouldings and fewer buttresses. As I've said this partly from the fact that it was not really designed for public exposure, but also, I think, for the sake of economy. No English Medieval church of this scale would be quite so parsimonious. Still the mass and grouping of the liturgical east end is quite dramatic, verging on the sublime.
The interior is something else, a sort of hollowing out of the dense early Victorian city fabric to create a soaring numinous space in which to encounter the divine. The sandstone columns are very attenuated; the whole space has a sort of delicacy and fragility. Again Pugin works with incredible economy. There are great vast acres of flat wall surface, contrasting with flashes of rich detail. The fragility extends to the roofs, which have a thinness typical of his work. A medieval roof would be massive in comparison.
Again rapacious Modernity has been at work inside as well as out, denuding the interior of a number of Pugin's rich furnishings. The greatest loss is the Rood screen which is now happily in Holy Trinity, Reading (an Anglican church, though decidedly on the High side of things). Interestingly Pugin partly furnished St Chad's with architectural antiques such as the German Late Gothic/Early Renaissance pulpit.
The SW chapel is a very sensitive addition dating from the 1930s by S P Powell.
The SW chapel is a very sensitive addition dating from the 1930s by S P Powell.
Saturday, 3 December 2016
Birmingham
The bf and I went over to Birmingham on Wednesday to visit my family. It was the bf's first proper visit. We kicked things off with the City Museum and Art Gallery. It has a fantastic collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, along with an outstanding collection of applied and decorative arts. The gallery itself is an opulent Victorian Renaissance style, part of the Council House designed by Yeoville Thomason. West, over Edmund Street is a huge Edwardian Baroque extension by Ashley and Newman, connected to the original galleries by a massively rusticated bridge rich in sculpture. The whole complex is really worth a visit.
The next morning we had a brief explore of the Jewelry Quarter before getting the train home. Originally a Georgian suburb of the city it was slowly colonized by small scale manufacturing during the 19th century, esp the jewelry trade. The buildings are an interesting mix of the original houses with 19th & 20th commercial buildings. Most the of manufacturing has relocated and the area is undergoing a slow revival. It has a unique spirit of place. A lot of the pavements are paved in hard dark engineering bricks. The scale is low but dense. Hard at times to think you are the midst of a vast sprawling city. St Paul's church and the square around it date from the late 1700s. The architect of the church - rather Gibbsian - was Roger Eykyns, the spire was added until the 1820s. Our goal, however, was St Chad's Cathedral by A W N Pugin, but more of that in my next post.
We ate dinner at 'Otto' the pizzeria on Caroline Street in the Jewelry Quarter (just around the corner from my nephew's flat where we were staying). Coppa, fresh pesto and rocket on a Margarita base for me. We have a lovely sharing platter to begin with with garlic and Rosemary flatbread. The hunter's salami, which was flavoured with fennel, was outstanding. Breakfast was taken next door at 'The Eight Foot Grocer' - the name refers to the width of the premises, not the height of the grocer. Both are housed in a former biscuit factory. Elevenses were taken in Druckers, Great Western Arcade - a good excuse for tea and cake.
The next morning we had a brief explore of the Jewelry Quarter before getting the train home. Originally a Georgian suburb of the city it was slowly colonized by small scale manufacturing during the 19th century, esp the jewelry trade. The buildings are an interesting mix of the original houses with 19th & 20th commercial buildings. Most the of manufacturing has relocated and the area is undergoing a slow revival. It has a unique spirit of place. A lot of the pavements are paved in hard dark engineering bricks. The scale is low but dense. Hard at times to think you are the midst of a vast sprawling city. St Paul's church and the square around it date from the late 1700s. The architect of the church - rather Gibbsian - was Roger Eykyns, the spire was added until the 1820s. Our goal, however, was St Chad's Cathedral by A W N Pugin, but more of that in my next post.
We ate dinner at 'Otto' the pizzeria on Caroline Street in the Jewelry Quarter (just around the corner from my nephew's flat where we were staying). Coppa, fresh pesto and rocket on a Margarita base for me. We have a lovely sharing platter to begin with with garlic and Rosemary flatbread. The hunter's salami, which was flavoured with fennel, was outstanding. Breakfast was taken next door at 'The Eight Foot Grocer' - the name refers to the width of the premises, not the height of the grocer. Both are housed in a former biscuit factory. Elevenses were taken in Druckers, Great Western Arcade - a good excuse for tea and cake.
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
Monday, 21 November 2016
Own work: The Green Man IV
Another exploration of the Green man - a variation on my earlier Green Man II
Sunday, 20 November 2016
Own work: The Green Man III
I've been continuing with my exploration of the enigmatic Green Man. Not sure this is up to much, but here goes....
Monday, 31 October 2016
Thorney
The theme continued. Wednesday saw us in the fenland town of Spalding and the newly restored Ayscoughfee Hall. Alas, they had ridded themselves of the immense flock of stuffed birds that haunted one of the rooms, but there was however a lovely temporary exhibition on William Stukeley and his garden designs - he planted circles of trees in imitation of megalithic circles apparently. I recommend a visit.
Anyway the real subject of this post is the visit we made on Thursday to Thorney, in the Fenland just east of Peterborough. I had been there before as a child to the zoo that then existed there. I haven't been back since, except passing through on the top of a double decker heading for King's Lynn, but it has always intrigued me.
Anyway the real subject of this post is the visit we made on Thursday to Thorney, in the Fenland just east of Peterborough. I had been there before as a child to the zoo that then existed there. I haven't been back since, except passing through on the top of a double decker heading for King's Lynn, but it has always intrigued me.
Like Crowland to the north, Thorney is built on a fen 'island' and is the site of an ancient monastic community. Its oldest recorded name is 'Ancarrig' - the isle of the anchorites - referring to the community founded by Saxulf Abbot of Peterborough c.662. In 870 it was sacked by the Vikings and three of the hermits there, Tancred, Tothred & Tova, were martyred. The island reverted to wilderness and the name changed over time to Thorney to reflect its abandonment - the island of thorns. In 972 a new monastery, benedictine, was founded by St Ethelwold. It soon began to amass a massive collection of relics, and became a place of pilgrimage. In the 1530s the monastery was dissolved and abandoned, the stone being quickly carted off to use in Cambridge.
I was not a disappointed pilgrim. The village and the church are especially attractive, more like a village in the Great Limestone Belt to the west than a fenland community. This is due mainly to the fact that Thorney was an estate village, owing its appearance to the Dukes of Bedford. Rows of pretty cottages line the main street. Around the remains of the abbey are rather muscular Victorian Gothic cottages and shops, and to the south of the church is a village green lined with older, grander houses. The church itself is basically Norman (1085-1128), built under Abbot Guenther. Sadly all that remains of the church are the west front and the five western most bays of the nave. The church originally was nearly 300ft long. The nave has been stripped of clerestory and aisles. In 1638, when the local fens were being drained to form the Bedford Level, the church was restored to use, apparently by Inigo Jones. The attribution though might be apocryphal. The west window and door, and the plaster vault inside date from that period. In the 1840-1 Edward Blore added a chancel of sorts - a crossing and transepts in a monumental, rather Germanic, Romanesque - making the church 'T' shaped in plan. The churchyard is crammed with monuments, the Georgian ones very distinctive, the relief sculpture being deeply cut and often bearing a representation of the Lamb of God.
I was not a disappointed pilgrim. The village and the church are especially attractive, more like a village in the Great Limestone Belt to the west than a fenland community. This is due mainly to the fact that Thorney was an estate village, owing its appearance to the Dukes of Bedford. Rows of pretty cottages line the main street. Around the remains of the abbey are rather muscular Victorian Gothic cottages and shops, and to the south of the church is a village green lined with older, grander houses. The church itself is basically Norman (1085-1128), built under Abbot Guenther. Sadly all that remains of the church are the west front and the five western most bays of the nave. The church originally was nearly 300ft long. The nave has been stripped of clerestory and aisles. In 1638, when the local fens were being drained to form the Bedford Level, the church was restored to use, apparently by Inigo Jones. The attribution though might be apocryphal. The west window and door, and the plaster vault inside date from that period. In the 1840-1 Edward Blore added a chancel of sorts - a crossing and transepts in a monumental, rather Germanic, Romanesque - making the church 'T' shaped in plan. The churchyard is crammed with monuments, the Georgian ones very distinctive, the relief sculpture being deeply cut and often bearing a representation of the Lamb of God.
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