George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
colour and nervousness of drawing he does not yet by any means equal
the old school of painters on glass. The altar-cloth is of red velvet,
embroidered in the old manner by Mrs. G. Murray.
I referred, in the earlier part of this paper, to the similarity
between the detail of the work at Stone and that of the earlier
portions of Westminster Abbey; and before I conclude I will, as well
as I can, explain the extent of this similarity. Few subjects are of
more interest to me, and I suppose to all students of our ancient
architecture, than this of the extent to which the work of the same
artist may be traced in different buildings. I have been able, in a
considerable number of cases, to prove pretty clearly what I now wish
to prove about Stone and Westminster;[75] but I need hardly say that
the evidence is always of a kind which it is extremely difficult to
give in writing; though it is difficult to resist its force if the two
works are examined one after the other, and their special peculiarities
carefully noted. I will endeavour however to show the existence of
something more than the ordinary likeness of all works of the same date
and style, between Westminster Abbey and some portions of Stone church.
I. _The Arcades round the Chapels_ of the choir at Westminster are
almost identical in shape and design with that round the chancel at
Stone. The proportions of their trefoil cusps are very peculiar, and
as nearly as possible the same. The spandrels are filled with foliage
carved exactly in the same spirit. The labels are terminated upon
small corbels level with the capitals: a very unusual arrangement. The
arcades rest upon a stone chamfered seat; and the arch-moulds, though
not the same, are of the same character, and both of them undercut at
the back.
II. _Window Tracery._--The original window tracery at Westminster is
the same as at Stone. The windows in the south triforium of the nave
(four eastern bays) are of precisely the same character as the window
discovered in the chancel at Stone. The latter are remarkable for the
great width of the light (3 ft. 1 in. and 3 ft. 10 in. in the clear),
and this is very characteristic of the Westminster windows. The Stone
windows are remarkable also for very broad chamfered tracery-bars on
the outside, corresponding with very rich mouldings on the inside. The
triforium openings at Westminster are treated just in the same way on
the side next the triforium, and a comparison of the triforium of the
choir and north transept there with the east window of the north aisle
at Stone would well illustrate the identity of character. The stone
cusping in both is let into grooves in the way common in early tracery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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