Well, friends, I am officially out of my depth! We met as a seminar today, and I am undoubtedly surrounding by folks who know far more than I do and have far more specific research agendas while they are here. My plan is simply to follow others around and ask lots of questions. I will learn so much. I am very grateful for one of the seminar organizers, who offered tomorrow to run a \u201creview\u201d session on Gothic architecture. (Ha! I don\u2019t need review! I need an introduction.)<\/p>\n
Today we had our first tour of the York Minster, by Sarah Brown, who has literally <\/em>written the book on the cathedral.<\/a> She knows everything there is to know about every detail of this amazing structure, so she obviously makes an excellent tour guide. I\u2019ll try to say more about various aspects of the cathedral in future posts, but today I will focus on the renovation to the stained glass of the Great East Window which is currently taking place. The Great East Window is the largest stretch of medieval stained glass in northern Europe (possibly in all of Europe). The top tier depicts God the Father and the company of heaven (angels and saints), the second tier depicts OT scenes, including the creation, the patriarchs and the prophets, the third tier is an Apocalypse cycle, and the bottom tier represents historical figures, including Bishop Skirlaw, who donated the money for the window. (Having yourself depicted in a wall painting or a stained glass window is the medieval equivalent of having a campus building named after you.) So the entire window provides an image of \u201call that is\u201d\u2014eternal realties and human history all in one. You can\u2019t see any detail, but you can get a sense of the scope here<\/a>, in a picture of the printed screen that currently hangs where the window should be.<\/p>\n The conservators have removed the entire <\/em>window, and the York Glaziers Trust<\/a> is working on restoring it. The restoration project is overseen by Sarah Brown and a team of other scholars, who have a series of lively conversations about how invasive or involved the restoration team should be. They\u2019ve made the decision to be fairly hands-on, replacing pieces that are missing and damaged, but painstakingly documenting at every stage the pieces they add, so future generations can understand exactly what\u2019s been added and what is original. I\u2019ll give you an overview of the process here.<\/p>\n They remove the panels one by one, and then remove all the lead (the dark material that holds all the glass in place). Lots of lead has been added after the Middle Ages, in an effort to patch up cracks and continue holding the window together. Once the lead has been removed, they can determine whether the glass pieces are original or more recent based on the glass cutting techniques used, and on whether adjacent pieces were cut to fit together, like puzzle pieces. (More recent additions are simply patched together, less-than-perfect fits.) They clean the original pieces of glass, and then create new pieces to replace more modern additions or missing pieces. At times, this process requires the conservators to provide their best guess at what would have been in place in the Middle Ages, extrapolating from other panels in the windows what faces would have looked like, or what heraldry would have been used. (You can see an example of this here<\/a>. The harp on the left side of the panel was, as of the 1950s, a face that was clearly a more modern replacement. The York Glaziers have recreated the harp.) The medieval artist in charge of the window, John Thornton, would have had an entire workshop\u2019s worth of artists at his disposal, to help provide all the vivid detail in the window, including the \u201ccartooning\u201d (bits that are drawn on, as in the faces and the decorative embellishment provided in the borders of panels), as well as scribes to add all the written bits (often names are provided, especially for the historical figures, and spoken biblical text is depicted on scrolls). He and his team worked from 1405-08 on the window, one of last piece of the Minster construction to be completed.<\/p>\n We got to visit Bedern Hall, where a number of folks were busy at work restoring various bits and pieces of the window, including a number of grad students from York and one from Virginia, all of whom are studying preservation. (You can check out pictures at our seminar Flickr group<\/a>. I’m having trouble getting good photos and posting images, but one of the other seminar participants, who has a much nicer camera than I do is kindly sharing. Note the giant light boxes they work on, and also the outlines they draw to document where each piece goes.)\u00a0You can’t see it in any of these images, but\u00a0the team documents any pieces they have added with minuscule writing and dating, so that future scholars can be absolutely clear about what\u2019s medieval and what\u2019s been added. The techniques that they use are, for the most part, entirely medieval, so an entire team of, I think, eleven people have completely re-acquired this medieval skill. The York Glaziers trust has lots of images you can look at of how the restored glass is coming along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, friends, I am officially out of my depth! We met as a seminar today, and I am undoubtedly surrounding by folks who know far more than I do and have far more specific research agendas while they are here. My plan is simply to follow others around and ask lots of questions. I will … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-kerilyn","4":"post-11","6":"format-standard","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![here<\/a>, in a picture of the printed screen that currently hangs where the window should be.<\/p>\nThe conservators have removed the entire <\/em>window, and the York Glaziers Trust<\/a> is working on restoring it. The restoration project is overseen by Sarah Brown and a team of other scholars, who have a series of lively conversations about how invasive or involved the restoration team should be. They\u2019ve made the decision to be fairly hands-on, replacing pieces that are missing and damaged, but painstakingly documenting at every stage the pieces they add, so future generations can understand exactly what\u2019s been added and what is original. I\u2019ll give you an overview of the process here.<\/p>\nThey remove the panels one by one, and then remove all the lead (the dark material that holds all the glass in place). Lots of lead has been added after the Middle Ages, in an effort to patch up cracks and continue holding the window together. Once the lead has been removed, they can determine whether the glass pieces are original or more recent based on the glass cutting techniques used, and on whether adjacent pieces were cut to fit together, like puzzle pieces. (More recent additions are simply patched together, less-than-perfect fits.) They clean the original pieces of glass, and then create new pieces to replace more modern additions or missing pieces. At times, this process requires the conservators to provide their best guess at what would have been in place in the Middle Ages, extrapolating from other panels in the windows what faces would have looked like, or what heraldry would have been used. (You can see an example of this here<\/a>. The harp on the left side of the panel was, as of the 1950s, a face that was clearly a more modern replacement. The York Glaziers have recreated the harp.) The medieval artist in charge of the window, John Thornton, would have had an entire workshop\u2019s worth of artists at his disposal, to help provide all the vivid detail in the window, including the \u201ccartooning\u201d (bits that are drawn on, as in the faces and the decorative embellishment provided in the borders of panels), as well as scribes to add all the written bits (often names are provided, especially for the historical figures, and spoken biblical text is depicted on scrolls). He and his team worked from 1405-08 on the window, one of last piece of the Minster construction to be completed.<\/p>\nWe got to visit Bedern Hall, where a number of folks were busy at work restoring various bits and pieces of the window, including a number of grad students from York and one from Virginia, all of whom are studying preservation. (You can check out pictures at our seminar Flickr group<\/a>. I’m having trouble getting good photos and posting images, but one of the other seminar participants, who has a much nicer camera than I do is kindly sharing. Note the giant light boxes they work on, and also the outlines they draw to document where each piece goes.)\u00a0You can’t see it in any of these images, but\u00a0the team documents any pieces they have added with minuscule writing and dating, so that future scholars can be absolutely clear about what\u2019s medieval and what\u2019s been added. The techniques that they use are, for the most part, entirely medieval, so an entire team of, I think, eleven people have completely re-acquired this medieval skill. The York Glaziers trust has lots of images you can look at of how the restored glass is coming along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, friends, I am officially out of my depth! We met as a seminar today, and I am undoubtedly surrounding by folks who know far more than I do and have far more specific research agendas while they are here. My plan is simply to follow others around and ask lots of questions. I will … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-kerilyn","4":"post-11","6":"format-standard","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joshuafkrieger.com\/kerilyn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/specialtyfabricsreview.com\/repository\/1\/365\/full_0109_sw1_1.jpg\"){kind=link}