Wood Carvings in English Churches: I. Stalls and Tabernacle Work. II. Bishop's Thrones and Chancel Chairs.Bond, Francis
History
Wood Carvings in English Churches: I. Stalls and Tabernacle Work. II. Bishop's Thrones and Chancel Chairs.
Bond, Francis
Choir stalls; Church decoration and ornament; Wood-carving
No such wholesale example of foreign design occurs in England; nevertheless
there are two important instances in which Flemish design is to be
suspected; viz., in the Royal chapels at Windsor and Westminster. As
regards the stalls in St George's chapel, Windsor, it is known that the
tabernacled canopies were begun in 1477 and were completed in 1483; thus
they took six years to make (69).[34] The canopies are known to have been
made in London; the carvers being Robert Ellis and John Filles, apparently
Englishmen. On the other hand the great Rood, with the statues of St George
and St Edward and others, was made by Diricke Vangrove and Giles
Vancastell, who are just as evidently Dutchmen; for four images the two
Dutchmen were paid at the rate of 5s. per foot; for six canopies the two
Englishmen received £40, say £480; _i.e._, about £80 of our money for each
canopy. Now here we have Dutch and English carvers engaged together on what
was practically one work: moreover the more artistic and difficult part of
the work, the figure sculpture, is entrusted to the Dutchmen. It is to the
latter probably that the general lines of the design are due. The detail is
sufficiently English; not so the general design. For the Windsor stallwork
is intermediate between that of Chester (_c._ 1390) and Carlisle (1433) on
the one hand, and Ripon (_c._ 1490) and Manchester (1508) on the other. But
it is not a development arising out of either of the earlier designs, nor
was the stallwork of Ripon and Manchester in any way a development from
that of Windsor. {71}
[Illustration: Windsor]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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