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This generously proportioned side table could also serve as a coffee table, depending on your layout and sofa height. The casters make it easy to pull aside when you all want to lie on the floor for movie night, and the three deep drawers make it a really quite practical storage piece (plus LABEL HOLDERS!!!). The top, sides and drawer are entirely metal, and all hand-painted to be crazy cool--it basically looks like we left this out in NYC on 7th st and Avenue C for a few days and it got tagged like mad ;-)

My physics equation dx4/dt=ic graces the swimsuits and bikinis, while the golden gun is designed in proportion with the golden ratio, and the photos are oft cropped in divine proportions!

 

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The Tiny Blue

Aperture: f/5.9

Shutter Speed: 1/80

Camera Used: Canon PowerShot SX160 IS

The Marine Species Population Index provides an assessment of the average changeover time in the populations of 217 species of marine mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish. The index represents the average value of six regional ocean indices. More pronounced declines are seen in the southern oceans, attributed to the fact that major losses and degradation of marine ecosystems in the industrialized world took place prior to 1970. Marine species are generally more difficult to monitor than terrestrial ones. Assessments are therefore based primarily on fishery catches, and the monitoring of land breeding species (e.g. turtles, birds and seals). However, these species are over-represented in the index, which should have a far greater proportion of invertebrate species.

 

For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:

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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, February 2006

Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. As a well proportioned and elegant space, it runs over half of the original Burnham Beeches floor plan. It features two long tables covered in a Miss Havisham like feast of a trove of found dinner table objects from silverware and glassware to empty oyster shells and vases of grasses and feathers.

 

The Dining Room installation I personally found especially confronting. In 1982, I visited Burnham Beeches when it was a smart and select hotel and had Devonshire tea in the dining room at a table alongside the full length windows overlooking the terraces below. I was shocked to see a room I remember appointed with thick carpets and tables covered in gleaming silver and white napery, strewn with dust and leaves, and adorned with Miss Havisham's feast of found dining objects.

 

Melbourne based street artist Rone (Tyrone Wright) used the decaying glory of the 1933 Harry Norris designed Streamline Moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches in the Dandenong Ranges' Sherbrooke, between March the 6th and April 22nd to create an immersive hybrid art space for his latest installation exhibition; "Empire".

 

"Empire" combined a mixture of many different elements including art, sound, light, scent, found objects, botanic designs, objects from nature and music especially composed for the project by Nick Batterham. The Burnham Beeches project re-imagines and re-interprets the spirit of one of Victoria’s landmark mansions, seldom seen by the public and not accessed since the mid 1980s. According to Rone - Empire website; "viewers are invited to consider what remains - the unseen cultural, social, artistic and spiritual heritage which produces intangible meaning."

 

Rone was invited by the current owner of Burnham Beeches, restaurateur Shannon Bennett, to exhibit "Empire" during a six week interim period before renovations commence to convert the heritage listed mansion into a select six star hotel.

 

Rone initially imagined the mansion to be in a state of dereliction, but found instead that it was a stripped back blank canvas for him to create his own version of how he thought it should look. Therefore, almost all the decay is in fact of Rone's creation from grasses in the Games Room which 'grow' next to a rotting billiards table, to the damp patches, water staining and smoke damage on the ceilings. Nests of leaves fill some spaces, whilst tree branches and in one case an entire avenue of boughs sprout from walls and ceilings. Especially designed Art Deco wallpaper created in Rone's studio has been installed on the walls before being distressed and damaged. The rooms have been adorned with furnishings and objects that might once have graced the twelve original rooms of Burnham Beeches: bulbulous club sofas, half round Art Deco tables, tarnished silverware and their canteen, mirrored smoke stands of chrome and Bakelite, glass lamps, English dinner services, a glass drinks trolley, photos of people long forgotten in time, walnut veneer dressing tables reflecting the installation sometimes in triplicate, old wire beadsteads, luggage, shelves of books, an Underwood typewriter, a John Broadwood and Sons of London grand piano and even a Kriesler radiogramme. All these objects were then covered in a thick sheet or light sprinkling of 'dust' made of many different things including coffee grinds and talcum powder, creating a sensation for the senses. Burnham Beeches resonated with a ghostly sense of its former grandeur, with a whiff of bittersweet romance.

 

Throughout the twelve rooms, magnificent and beautifully haunting floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall portraits of Australian actress Lily Sullivan, star of the Foxtel re-make of Picnic at Hanging Rock, appear. Larger than life, each portrait is created in different colours, helping to create seasonal shifts as you move from room to room.

 

Although all the rooms are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. The Study is the other. It features walls of books covered with a portrait of Lily Sullivan, and the entire room is partially submerged in a lake of black water with the occasional red oak leaf floating across its glassy surface.

 

I feel very honoured and privileged to be amongst the far too few people fortunate enough to have seen Rone's "Empire", as like the seasons, it is ephemeral, and it will already have been dismantled. Rone's idea is that, like his street art, things he creates don't last forever, and that made the project exciting. I hope that my photographs do justice to, and adequately share as much as is possible of this amazing installation with you.

 

 

Varian House is an admirably proportioned two-story house with a central hall. The building is constructed of rough dressed, cut fieldstone with characteristic wood details of the period, which give it documentary importance. Built about 1775, it exemplifies at the medium scale the Georgian building tradition as practiced here. As part of the architectural history of the region, the Varian House has great interest for us when compared with the Van Cortlandt Mansion of 1748 and the Dyckman Farmhouse of about 1783. Taken together this trio presents a graphic picture of living conditions in this country in the second half of the Eighteenth Century. Varian House has been moved to a permanent site and is destined to be preserved for posterity as the new home of the Bronx County Historical Society beginning some time in 1966.

 

Varian House is important historically because it is one of a small group of Eighteenth Century residences remaining in New York City. The Varian family was of note in the annal of our City where Isaac L. Varian served as Mayor from 1839 to 1841 and George W. Varian served as Alderman in 1856. The family name is further perpetuated in Varian Avenue in the Bronx.

 

Source: "Varian House Designation Report", NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, 15 March 1966

Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. As a well proportioned and elegant space, it runs over half of the original Burnham Beeches floor plan. It features two long tables covered in a Miss Havisham like feast of a trove of found dinner table objects from silverware and glassware to empty oyster shells and vases of grasses and feathers.

 

The Dining Room installation I personally found especially confronting. In 1982, I visited Burnham Beeches when it was a smart and select hotel and had Devonshire tea in the dining room at a table alongside the full length windows overlooking the terraces below. I was shocked to see a room I remember appointed with thick carpets and tables covered in gleaming silver and white napery, strewn with dust and leaves, and adorned with Miss Havisham's feast of found dining objects.

 

Melbourne based street artist Rone (Tyrone Wright) used the decaying glory of the 1933 Harry Norris designed Streamline Moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches in the Dandenong Ranges' Sherbrooke, between March the 6th and April 22nd to create an immersive hybrid art space for his latest installation exhibition; "Empire".

 

"Empire" combined a mixture of many different elements including art, sound, light, scent, found objects, botanic designs, objects from nature and music especially composed for the project by Nick Batterham. The Burnham Beeches project re-imagines and re-interprets the spirit of one of Victoria’s landmark mansions, seldom seen by the public and not accessed since the mid 1980s. According to Rone - Empire website; "viewers are invited to consider what remains - the unseen cultural, social, artistic and spiritual heritage which produces intangible meaning."

 

Rone was invited by the current owner of Burnham Beeches, restaurateur Shannon Bennett, to exhibit "Empire" during a six week interim period before renovations commence to convert the heritage listed mansion into a select six star hotel.

 

Rone initially imagined the mansion to be in a state of dereliction, but found instead that it was a stripped back blank canvas for him to create his own version of how he thought it should look. Therefore, almost all the decay is in fact of Rone's creation from grasses in the Games Room which 'grow' next to a rotting billiards table, to the damp patches, water staining and smoke damage on the ceilings. Nests of leaves fill some spaces, whilst tree branches and in one case an entire avenue of boughs sprout from walls and ceilings. Especially designed Art Deco wallpaper created in Rone's studio has been installed on the walls before being distressed and damaged. The rooms have been adorned with furnishings and objects that might once have graced the twelve original rooms of Burnham Beeches: bulbulous club sofas, half round Art Deco tables, tarnished silverware and their canteen, mirrored smoke stands of chrome and Bakelite, glass lamps, English dinner services, a glass drinks trolley, photos of people long forgotten in time, walnut veneer dressing tables reflecting the installation sometimes in triplicate, old wire beadsteads, luggage, shelves of books, an Underwood typewriter, a John Broadwood and Sons of London grand piano and even a Kriesler radiogramme. All these objects were then covered in a thick sheet or light sprinkling of 'dust' made of many different things including coffee grinds and talcum powder, creating a sensation for the senses. Burnham Beeches resonated with a ghostly sense of its former grandeur, with a whiff of bittersweet romance.

 

Throughout the twelve rooms, magnificent and beautifully haunting floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall portraits of Australian actress Lily Sullivan, star of the Foxtel re-make of Picnic at Hanging Rock, appear. Larger than life, each portrait is created in different colours, helping to create seasonal shifts as you move from room to room.

 

Although all the rooms are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. The Study is the other. It features walls of books covered with a portrait of Lily Sullivan, and the entire room is partially submerged in a lake of black water with the occasional red oak leaf floating across its glassy surface.

 

I feel very honoured and privileged to be amongst the far too few people fortunate enough to have seen Rone's "Empire", as like the seasons, it is ephemeral, and it will already have been dismantled. Rone's idea is that, like his street art, things he creates don't last forever, and that made the project exciting. I hope that my photographs do justice to, and adequately share as much as is possible of this amazing installation with you.

 

I am indebted to John Fielding (www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/) for posting an aerial shot of Holy Trinity, and my interest was piqued by the timber-framed building with the triple gable at the east end. Turned out this was the Lady Chapel, and more of that later. So, on my way back home to Kent, I called in to see if it looked as remarkable in the flesh as in photographs.

 

I arrived at Long Melford, after being taken on a magical mystery tour in light drizzle from Wortham, down narrow and narrower lanes, under and over railway lines, through woods, up and down hills until, at last, I saw the town laid out beyond the church.

 

I parked at the bottom of Church Walk then walked up past the line of timber framed houses, the tudor hospital and the tudor manor house.

 

Holy Trinity sits on top of the hill, spread out, filling its large churchyard and the large tower not out of proportion.

 

Inside it really is a collection of wonders, from brasses, the best collection of Medieval glass in Suffolk, to side chapels, and behind, the very unusual Lady Chapel.

 

------------------------------------------

 

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford is a Grade I listed parish church of the Church of England in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It is one of 310 medieval English churches dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

 

The church was constructed between 1467 and 1497 in the late Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a noted example of a Suffolk medieval wool church, founded and financed by wealthy wool merchants in the medieval period as impressive visual statements of their prosperity.

 

The church structure is highly regarded by many observers. Its cathedral-like proportions and distinctive style, along with its many original features that survived the religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, have attracted critical acclaim. Journalist and author Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, included the church in his 1999 book “England’s Thousand Best Churches”. He awarded it a maximum of 5 stars, one of only 18 to be so rated. The Holy Trinity Church features in many episodes of Michael Wood's, BBC television history series Great British Story, filmed during 2011.

 

A church is recorded as having been on the site since the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–1066). It was originally endowed by the Saxon Earl Alric, who bequeathed the patronage of the church, along with his manor at Melford Hall and about 261 acres of land, to the successive Abbots of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmund’s. There are no surviving descriptions of the original Saxon structure, although the roll of the clergy (see below) and the history of the site extend back to the 12th century.

 

The church was substantially rebuilt between 1467 and 1497. Of the earlier structures, only the former Lady Chapel (now the Clopton Chantry Chapel) and the nave arcades survive.

 

The principal benefactor who financed the reconstruction was wealthy local wool merchant John Clopton, who resided at neighbouring Kentwell Hall. John Clopton was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses and in 1462 was imprisoned in the Tower of London with John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford and a number of others, charged with corresponding treasonably with Margaret of Anjou. All of those imprisoned were eventually executed except John Clopton, who somehow made his peace with his accusers and lived to see the Lancastrians eventually triumphant at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

 

The dates of the reconstruction of the church are derived from contemporary wills, which provided endowments to finance the work

 

In 1710 the main tower was damaged by a lightning strike.[3] It was replaced with a brick-built structure in the 18th century and subsequently remodelled between 1898 and 1903 to its present-day appearance, designed by George Frederick Bodley in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. The new tower was closer to its original form with stone and flint facing and the addition of four new pinnacles.

 

The nave, at 152.6 feet (46.5 m), is believed to be the longest of any parish church in England. There are nine bays, of which the first five at the western end are believed to date from an earlier structure.

 

The interior is lit by 74 tracery windows, many of which retain original medieval glass. These include the image of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk, said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenniel's illustration of the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

The sanctuary is dominated by the large reredos, of Caen stone and inspired by the works of Albrecht Dürer. It was installed in 1877, having been donated by the mother of the then Rector Charles Martyn.

 

On the north side is the alabaster and marble tomb of Sir William Cordell who was the first Patron of the Church after the dissolution of the Abbey of Bury St Edmund's in 1539. On either side of the tomb are niches containing figures that represent the four Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude.

 

The sanctuary also holds one of the earliest extant alabaster bas relief panels, a nativity from the second half of the 14th century. The panel was hidden under the floor of chancel, probably early in the reign of Elizabeth I, and was rediscovered in the 18th century.[6] The panel, which may be part of an altar piece destroyed during the Reformation, includes a midwife arranging Mary's pillows and two cows looking from under her bed.

 

The Clopton Chapel is in the north east corner of the church. It commemorates various Clopton family members and was used by the family as a place of private worship.

 

The tomb of Sir William Clopton is set into an alcove here, in the north wall. An effigy of Sir William, wearing chain mail and plate armour, is set on top of the tomb. Sir William is known to have died in 1446 and it is therefore believed that this corner of the church predates the late 15th-century reconstruction. There are numerous brasses set in the floor commemorating other members of the Clopton family; two date from 1420, another shows two women wearing head attire in the butterfly style from around 1480, and a third depicts Francis Clopton who died in 1558.

 

There is an altar set against the east wall of the chapel and a double squint designed to provide priests with a view of the high altar when conducting Masses.

 

The Clopton Chantry Chapel is a small chapel at the far north east corner of the church, accessed from the Clopton Chapel. This was the original Lady Chapel and is the oldest part of the current structure. After John Clopton's death in 1497, his will made provision for the chapel to be extended and refurbished and for him to be buried alongside his wife there.[10] The chapel was then renamed, while the intended Chantry Chapel became the Lady Chapel.

 

The tomb of John Clopton and his wife is set in the wall leading into the chapel. Inside, the canopy vault displays faded portraits of the couple. Also displayed is a portrait of the risen Christ with a Latin text which, translated, reads Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. A series of empty niches in the south wall most likely once held statues of saints. Around the cornice, John Lydgate's poem "Testament" is presented in the form of a scroll along the roof, while his "Lamentation of our Lady Maria" is along the west wall.

 

The Lady Chapel is a separate building attached to the east end of the main church. In an unusual layout, it has a central sanctuary surrounded by a pillared ambulatory, reflecting its original intended use as a chantry chapel with John Clopton's tomb in its centre. Clopton was forced to abandon this plan when his wife died before the new building was completed and consecrated; so she was buried in the former Lady Chapel and John Clopton was subsequently interred next to her.[12]

 

The stone carving seen in the Lady Chapel bears similarities to work at King's College Chapel, Cambridge and at Burwell Church in Cambridgeshire. It is known that the master mason employed there was Reginald Ely, the King's Mason, and although there is no documentary proof, it is believed that Ely was also responsible for the work at Holy Trinity, Long Melford.[13]

 

The chapel was used as a school from 1670 until the early 18th century, and a multiplication table on the east wall serves as a reminder of this use. The steep gables of the roof also date from this period.

 

The Martyn Chapel is situated to the south of the chancel. It contains the tombs of several members of the Martyn family, who were prominent local wool merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries, and who also acted as benefactors of the church. These include the tomb chest of Lawrence Martyn (died 1460) and his two wives. On the floor are the tomb slabs of Roger Martyn (died 1615) and his two wives Ursula and Margaret; and of Richard Martyn (died 1624) and his three wives.

 

Originally, the Martyn chapel contained an altar flanked by two gilded tabernacles, one displaying an image of Christ and the other an image of Our Lady of Pity. These tabernacles reached to the ceiling of the chapel, but were removed or destroyed during the English Reformation in the reign of King Edward VI.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Trinity_Church,_Long_Melford

 

---------------------------------------------

 

The setting of Holy Trinity is superlative. At the highest point and square onto the vast village green, its southern elevation is punctuated by the 16th Century Trinity Hospital almshouses. Across the green is the prospect of Melford Hall's pepperpot turrets and chimneys behind a long Tudor wall. Another great house, Kentwell Hall, is to the north. Kentwell was home to the Clopton family, whose name you meet again and again inside the church. Norman Scarfe described it as in a way, a vast memorial chapel to the family.

 

Holy Trinity is the longest church in Suffolk, longer even than Mildenhall, but this is because of a feature unique in the county, a large lady chapel separate from the rest of the church beyond the east end of the chancel. The chapel itself is bigger than many East Anglian churches, although it appears externally rather domestic with its triple gable at the east end. There is a good collection of medieval glass in the otherwise clear windows, as well as a couple of modern pieces, and a very mdern altarpiece at the central altar. Jacqueline's mother remembered attending Sunday School in this chapel in the 1940s.

 

The intimacy of the Lady Chapel is in great contrast to the vast walls of glass which stretch away westwards, the huge perpendicular windows of the nave aisles and clerestories, which appear to make the castellated nave roof float in air. An inscription in the clerestory records the date at which the building was completed as 1496. Forty years later, it would all have been much more serious. Sixty years later, it would not have been built at all. A brick tower was added in the early 18th Century, and the present tower, by GF Bodley, was encased around it in 1903. As Sam Mortlock observes, this tower might seem out of place in Suffolk, but it nevertheless matches the scale and character of the building. It is hard to imagine the church without it.

 

I came here back in May with my friend David Striker, who, despite living thousands of miles away in Colorado, has nearly completed his ambition to visit every medieval church in Norfolk and Suffolk. This was his first visit to Long Melford, mine only the latest of many. We stepped down into the vast, serious space.. There was a fairly considerable 19th Century restoration here, as witnessed by the vast sprawl of Minton tiles on the floor, although perhaps the sanctuary furnishings are the building's great weakness. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this that fails to turn my head eastwards, but instead draws me across to the north aisle for the best collection of medieval glass in Suffolk. During the 19th century restoration it was collected into the east window and north and south aisles, but in the 1960s it was all recollected here. Even on a sunny day it is a perfect setting for exploring it.

 

The most striking figures are probably those of the medieval donors, who originally would have been set prayerfully at the base of windows of devotional subjects. Famously, the portrait of Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk is said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenneil's Duchess in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, although I'm not sure there is any evidence for this. Indeed, several of the ladies here might have provided similar inspiration.

 

The best glass is the pieta, Mary holding the body of Christ the Man of Sorrows. Beneath it is perhaps the best-known, the Holy Trinity represented in a roundel as three hares with their ears interlocking. An angel holding a Holy Trinity shield in an upper light recalls the same thing at Salle. Other glass includes a fine resurrection scene and a sequence of 15th Century Saints. There is also a small amount of continental glass collected in later centuries, including a most curious oval lozenge of St Francis receiving the stigmata.

 

Walking eastwards down the north aisle until the glass runs out, you are rewarded by a remarkable survival, a 14th century alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi. It probably formed part of the altar piece here, and was rediscovered hidden under the floorboards in the 18th century. Fragments of similar reliefs survive elsewhere in East Anglia, but none in such perfect condition. Beyond it, you step through into the north chancel chapel where there are a number of Clopton brasses, impressive but not in terribly good condition, and then beyond that into the secretive Clopton chantry. This beautiful little chapel probably dates from the completion of the church in the last decade of the 15th century. Here, chantry priests would have celebrated Masses for the dead of the Clopton family. The chapel is intricately decorated with devotional symbols and vinework, as well as poems attributed to John Lidgate. The beautiful Tudor tracery of the window is filled with elegant clear glass except for another great survival, a lily crucifix. This representation occurs just once more in Suffolk, on the font at Great Glemham. The panel is probably a later addition here from elsewhere in the church, but it is still haunting to think of the Chantry priests kneeling towards the window as they asked for intercessions for the souls of the Clopton dead. It was intended that the prayers of the priests would sustain the Cloptons in perpetuity, but in fact it would last barely half a century before the Reformation outlawed such practices.

 

You step back into the chancel to be confronted by the imposing stone reredos. Its towering heaviness is out of sympathy with the lightness and simplicity of the Perpendicular windows, and it predates Bodley's restoration. The screen which separates the chancel from the south chapel is medeival, albeit restored, and I was struck by a fierce little dragon, although photographing it into the strong south window sunshine beyond proved impossible. The brasses in the south chapel are good, and in better condition. They are to members of the Martyn family.

 

The south chapel is also the last resting place of Long Melford's other great family, the Cordells. Sir William Cordell's tomb dominates the space. He died in 1581, and donated the Trinity Hospital outside. His name survives elsewhere in Long Melford: my wife's mother grew up on Cordell Road, part of a council estate cunningly hidden from the High Street by its buildings on the east side.

 

Simon Knott, January 2013

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/Longmelford.htm

Golden Number Ratio Divine Proportion Compositions Fine Art Photography Dr. Elliot McGucken : Using the Nature's Golden Cut to Exalt Nature Photography!

 

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Ansel Adams used the golden ratio in his photography too:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFlzAaBgsDI

 

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The Fibonacci Numbers are closely related to the golden ratio, and thus they also play a prominent role in exalted natural and artistic compositions!

 

I'm working on a far deeper book titled The Golden Ratio Number for Photographers. :)

 

The famous mathematician Jacob Bernoulli wrote:

 

The (golden spiral) may be used as a symbol, either of fortitude and constancy in adversity, or of the human body, which after all its changes, even after death, will be restored to its exact and perfect self.

 

Engraved upon Jacob’s tombstone is a spiral alongside the words, "Eadem Mutata Resurgo," meaning "Though changed, I shall rise again." And so it is that within the Golden Ratio Principle, the golden harmonies rise yet again.

 

The golden ratio is oft known as the divine cut, the golden cut, the divine proportion, the golden number, and PHI for the name of the architect of the Parthenon Phidias. It has exalted classical art on down through the millennia and it can exalt your art too!

 

Ask me anything about the golden ratio! :) I will do my best to answer!!

 

Enjoy my Fine Art Ballet instagram too!

 

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Dr. Elliot McGucken's Golden Ratio Principle: The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Dr. E’s Golden Ratio Principle: The golden ratio exalts beauty because the number is a characteristic of the mathematically and physically most efficient manners of growth and distribution, on both evolutionary and purely physical levels. The golden ratio ensures that the proportions and structure of that which came before provide the proportions and structure of that which comes after. Robust, ordered growth is naturally associated with health and beauty, and thus we evolved to perceive the golden ratio harmonies as inherently beautiful, as we saw and felt their presence in all vital growth and life—in the salient features and proportions of humans and nature alike, from the distribution of our facial features and bones to the arrangements of petals, leaves, and sunflowers seeds. As ratios between Fibonacci Numbers offer the closest whole-number approximations to the golden ratio, and as seeds, cells, leaves, bones, and other physical entities appear in whole numbers, the Fibonacci Numbers oft appear in nature’s elements as “growth’s numbers.” From the dawn of time, humanity sought to salute their gods in art and temples exalting the same proportion by which all their vital sustenance and they themselves had been created—the golden ratio. the golden number, rectangle, and spiral!

 

www.instagram.com/goldennumberratio/

I am indebted to John Fielding (www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/) for posting an aerial shot of Holy Trinity, and my interest was piqued by the timber-framed building with the triple gable at the east end. Turned out this was the Lady Chapel, and more of that later. So, on my way back home to Kent, I called in to see if it looked as remarkable in the flesh as in photographs.

 

I arrived at Long Melford, after being taken on a magical mystery tour in light drizzle from Wortham, down narrow and narrower lanes, under and over railway lines, through woods, up and down hills until, at last, I saw the town laid out beyond the church.

 

I parked at the bottom of Church Walk then walked up past the line of timber framed houses, the tudor hospital and the tudor manor house.

 

Holy Trinity sits on top of the hill, spread out, filling its large churchyard and the large tower not out of proportion.

 

Inside it really is a collection of wonders, from brasses, the best collection of Medieval glass in Suffolk, to side chapels, and behind, the very unusual Lady Chapel.

 

------------------------------------------

 

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford is a Grade I listed parish church of the Church of England in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It is one of 310 medieval English churches dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

 

The church was constructed between 1467 and 1497 in the late Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a noted example of a Suffolk medieval wool church, founded and financed by wealthy wool merchants in the medieval period as impressive visual statements of their prosperity.

 

The church structure is highly regarded by many observers. Its cathedral-like proportions and distinctive style, along with its many original features that survived the religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, have attracted critical acclaim. Journalist and author Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, included the church in his 1999 book “England’s Thousand Best Churches”. He awarded it a maximum of 5 stars, one of only 18 to be so rated. The Holy Trinity Church features in many episodes of Michael Wood's, BBC television history series Great British Story, filmed during 2011.

 

A church is recorded as having been on the site since the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–1066). It was originally endowed by the Saxon Earl Alric, who bequeathed the patronage of the church, along with his manor at Melford Hall and about 261 acres of land, to the successive Abbots of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmund’s. There are no surviving descriptions of the original Saxon structure, although the roll of the clergy (see below) and the history of the site extend back to the 12th century.

 

The church was substantially rebuilt between 1467 and 1497. Of the earlier structures, only the former Lady Chapel (now the Clopton Chantry Chapel) and the nave arcades survive.

 

The principal benefactor who financed the reconstruction was wealthy local wool merchant John Clopton, who resided at neighbouring Kentwell Hall. John Clopton was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses and in 1462 was imprisoned in the Tower of London with John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford and a number of others, charged with corresponding treasonably with Margaret of Anjou. All of those imprisoned were eventually executed except John Clopton, who somehow made his peace with his accusers and lived to see the Lancastrians eventually triumphant at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

 

The dates of the reconstruction of the church are derived from contemporary wills, which provided endowments to finance the work

 

In 1710 the main tower was damaged by a lightning strike.[3] It was replaced with a brick-built structure in the 18th century and subsequently remodelled between 1898 and 1903 to its present-day appearance, designed by George Frederick Bodley in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. The new tower was closer to its original form with stone and flint facing and the addition of four new pinnacles.

 

The nave, at 152.6 feet (46.5 m), is believed to be the longest of any parish church in England. There are nine bays, of which the first five at the western end are believed to date from an earlier structure.

 

The interior is lit by 74 tracery windows, many of which retain original medieval glass. These include the image of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk, said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenniel's illustration of the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

The sanctuary is dominated by the large reredos, of Caen stone and inspired by the works of Albrecht Dürer. It was installed in 1877, having been donated by the mother of the then Rector Charles Martyn.

 

On the north side is the alabaster and marble tomb of Sir William Cordell who was the first Patron of the Church after the dissolution of the Abbey of Bury St Edmund's in 1539. On either side of the tomb are niches containing figures that represent the four Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude.

 

The sanctuary also holds one of the earliest extant alabaster bas relief panels, a nativity from the second half of the 14th century. The panel was hidden under the floor of chancel, probably early in the reign of Elizabeth I, and was rediscovered in the 18th century.[6] The panel, which may be part of an altar piece destroyed during the Reformation, includes a midwife arranging Mary's pillows and two cows looking from under her bed.

 

The Clopton Chapel is in the north east corner of the church. It commemorates various Clopton family members and was used by the family as a place of private worship.

 

The tomb of Sir William Clopton is set into an alcove here, in the north wall. An effigy of Sir William, wearing chain mail and plate armour, is set on top of the tomb. Sir William is known to have died in 1446 and it is therefore believed that this corner of the church predates the late 15th-century reconstruction. There are numerous brasses set in the floor commemorating other members of the Clopton family; two date from 1420, another shows two women wearing head attire in the butterfly style from around 1480, and a third depicts Francis Clopton who died in 1558.

 

There is an altar set against the east wall of the chapel and a double squint designed to provide priests with a view of the high altar when conducting Masses.

 

The Clopton Chantry Chapel is a small chapel at the far north east corner of the church, accessed from the Clopton Chapel. This was the original Lady Chapel and is the oldest part of the current structure. After John Clopton's death in 1497, his will made provision for the chapel to be extended and refurbished and for him to be buried alongside his wife there.[10] The chapel was then renamed, while the intended Chantry Chapel became the Lady Chapel.

 

The tomb of John Clopton and his wife is set in the wall leading into the chapel. Inside, the canopy vault displays faded portraits of the couple. Also displayed is a portrait of the risen Christ with a Latin text which, translated, reads Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. A series of empty niches in the south wall most likely once held statues of saints. Around the cornice, John Lydgate's poem "Testament" is presented in the form of a scroll along the roof, while his "Lamentation of our Lady Maria" is along the west wall.

 

The Lady Chapel is a separate building attached to the east end of the main church. In an unusual layout, it has a central sanctuary surrounded by a pillared ambulatory, reflecting its original intended use as a chantry chapel with John Clopton's tomb in its centre. Clopton was forced to abandon this plan when his wife died before the new building was completed and consecrated; so she was buried in the former Lady Chapel and John Clopton was subsequently interred next to her.[12]

 

The stone carving seen in the Lady Chapel bears similarities to work at King's College Chapel, Cambridge and at Burwell Church in Cambridgeshire. It is known that the master mason employed there was Reginald Ely, the King's Mason, and although there is no documentary proof, it is believed that Ely was also responsible for the work at Holy Trinity, Long Melford.[13]

 

The chapel was used as a school from 1670 until the early 18th century, and a multiplication table on the east wall serves as a reminder of this use. The steep gables of the roof also date from this period.

 

The Martyn Chapel is situated to the south of the chancel. It contains the tombs of several members of the Martyn family, who were prominent local wool merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries, and who also acted as benefactors of the church. These include the tomb chest of Lawrence Martyn (died 1460) and his two wives. On the floor are the tomb slabs of Roger Martyn (died 1615) and his two wives Ursula and Margaret; and of Richard Martyn (died 1624) and his three wives.

 

Originally, the Martyn chapel contained an altar flanked by two gilded tabernacles, one displaying an image of Christ and the other an image of Our Lady of Pity. These tabernacles reached to the ceiling of the chapel, but were removed or destroyed during the English Reformation in the reign of King Edward VI.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Trinity_Church,_Long_Melford

 

---------------------------------------------

 

The setting of Holy Trinity is superlative. At the highest point and square onto the vast village green, its southern elevation is punctuated by the 16th Century Trinity Hospital almshouses. Across the green is the prospect of Melford Hall's pepperpot turrets and chimneys behind a long Tudor wall. Another great house, Kentwell Hall, is to the north. Kentwell was home to the Clopton family, whose name you meet again and again inside the church. Norman Scarfe described it as in a way, a vast memorial chapel to the family.

 

Holy Trinity is the longest church in Suffolk, longer even than Mildenhall, but this is because of a feature unique in the county, a large lady chapel separate from the rest of the church beyond the east end of the chancel. The chapel itself is bigger than many East Anglian churches, although it appears externally rather domestic with its triple gable at the east end. There is a good collection of medieval glass in the otherwise clear windows, as well as a couple of modern pieces, and a very mdern altarpiece at the central altar. Jacqueline's mother remembered attending Sunday School in this chapel in the 1940s.

 

The intimacy of the Lady Chapel is in great contrast to the vast walls of glass which stretch away westwards, the huge perpendicular windows of the nave aisles and clerestories, which appear to make the castellated nave roof float in air. An inscription in the clerestory records the date at which the building was completed as 1496. Forty years later, it would all have been much more serious. Sixty years later, it would not have been built at all. A brick tower was added in the early 18th Century, and the present tower, by GF Bodley, was encased around it in 1903. As Sam Mortlock observes, this tower might seem out of place in Suffolk, but it nevertheless matches the scale and character of the building. It is hard to imagine the church without it.

 

I came here back in May with my friend David Striker, who, despite living thousands of miles away in Colorado, has nearly completed his ambition to visit every medieval church in Norfolk and Suffolk. This was his first visit to Long Melford, mine only the latest of many. We stepped down into the vast, serious space.. There was a fairly considerable 19th Century restoration here, as witnessed by the vast sprawl of Minton tiles on the floor, although perhaps the sanctuary furnishings are the building's great weakness. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this that fails to turn my head eastwards, but instead draws me across to the north aisle for the best collection of medieval glass in Suffolk. During the 19th century restoration it was collected into the east window and north and south aisles, but in the 1960s it was all recollected here. Even on a sunny day it is a perfect setting for exploring it.

 

The most striking figures are probably those of the medieval donors, who originally would have been set prayerfully at the base of windows of devotional subjects. Famously, the portrait of Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk is said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenneil's Duchess in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, although I'm not sure there is any evidence for this. Indeed, several of the ladies here might have provided similar inspiration.

 

The best glass is the pieta, Mary holding the body of Christ the Man of Sorrows. Beneath it is perhaps the best-known, the Holy Trinity represented in a roundel as three hares with their ears interlocking. An angel holding a Holy Trinity shield in an upper light recalls the same thing at Salle. Other glass includes a fine resurrection scene and a sequence of 15th Century Saints. There is also a small amount of continental glass collected in later centuries, including a most curious oval lozenge of St Francis receiving the stigmata.

 

Walking eastwards down the north aisle until the glass runs out, you are rewarded by a remarkable survival, a 14th century alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi. It probably formed part of the altar piece here, and was rediscovered hidden under the floorboards in the 18th century. Fragments of similar reliefs survive elsewhere in East Anglia, but none in such perfect condition. Beyond it, you step through into the north chancel chapel where there are a number of Clopton brasses, impressive but not in terribly good condition, and then beyond that into the secretive Clopton chantry. This beautiful little chapel probably dates from the completion of the church in the last decade of the 15th century. Here, chantry priests would have celebrated Masses for the dead of the Clopton family. The chapel is intricately decorated with devotional symbols and vinework, as well as poems attributed to John Lidgate. The beautiful Tudor tracery of the window is filled with elegant clear glass except for another great survival, a lily crucifix. This representation occurs just once more in Suffolk, on the font at Great Glemham. The panel is probably a later addition here from elsewhere in the church, but it is still haunting to think of the Chantry priests kneeling towards the window as they asked for intercessions for the souls of the Clopton dead. It was intended that the prayers of the priests would sustain the Cloptons in perpetuity, but in fact it would last barely half a century before the Reformation outlawed such practices.

 

You step back into the chancel to be confronted by the imposing stone reredos. Its towering heaviness is out of sympathy with the lightness and simplicity of the Perpendicular windows, and it predates Bodley's restoration. The screen which separates the chancel from the south chapel is medeival, albeit restored, and I was struck by a fierce little dragon, although photographing it into the strong south window sunshine beyond proved impossible. The brasses in the south chapel are good, and in better condition. They are to members of the Martyn family.

 

The south chapel is also the last resting place of Long Melford's other great family, the Cordells. Sir William Cordell's tomb dominates the space. He died in 1581, and donated the Trinity Hospital outside. His name survives elsewhere in Long Melford: my wife's mother grew up on Cordell Road, part of a council estate cunningly hidden from the High Street by its buildings on the east side.

 

Simon Knott, January 2013

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/Longmelford.htm

el bosque que rodea a La Casa la hace sentir como un paraje natural de miles de años de pasividad y tendiente a la erosión.

aquí, un Habitante esperando a otro frente a la fachada.

 

---

 

the woods that surround La Casa make it look like a natural setting that has being passive for a thousand years and prone to erosion.

here, a Dweller waiting for another at the façade.

 

BMW 7-Series. Yes, I know it's not rare, but I liked the location and thought it was amazing that someone would drive such a big car through tiny hilly streets.

 

Spoleto, Italy | 2013

Yosemite Winter Fine Art Landscapes! Sony A7RII yosemite National Park Winter Snow! Dr. Elliot McGucken Fine Art Landscape Photography! Ansel Adams Tribute!

 

Follow me on Instagram! instagram.com/45surf

 

John Muir: "When I reached the [Yosemite] valley, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them with a love intensified by long and close companionship. … I … bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with the domes, and played with the pines."

 

"Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life."--John Muir

 

"I would advise sitting from morning till night under some willow bush on the river bank where there is a wide view. This will be "doing the valley" far more effectively than riding along trails in constant motion from point to point. The entire valley is made up of "points of interest." --John Muir on Yosemite!

  

Follow me on instagram for more!

 

instagram.com/45surf

 

Had a great time waking up at 5 AM every day to shoot tunnel view and then driving around down in the valley to Half Dome, Bridalviel Falls, Cook's Meadow and the glorious Cook's Meadow elm tree, Sentinel Bridge, Valley View, Swinging Bridge, and more! Yosemite winters are made for black and whites, and Ansel Adam's ghost haunts the brilliant landscape scenery!

 

The most epic "Ansel Adams" view is tunnel view where one can see El Capitan, Bridalviel Falls, and Half Dome over magnificent trees, snow, rising fogs, and breaking mists. Enjoy!

 

Been busy traveling and shooting landscapes and working on my books The Golden Hero's Odyssey about the golden rectangle and divine proportion I use in a lot of my compositions! Also working on my physics book on Dynamic Dimensions Theory! The equation dx4/dt=ic is on a lot of the 45surf swimsuit and shirts and all! :)

  

Follow me & 45surf!!

www.facebook.com/45surfAchillesOdysseyMythology/

 

www.facebook.com/elliot.mcgucken

 

instagram.com/45surf

  

My fine art landscape lenses for the A7RII are the Sony 16-35mm Vario-Tessar T FE F4 ZA OSS E-Mount Lens and the Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Lens ! Love the Carl Zeiss and super sharp Sony Glass!

 

Winter fine art landscapes!

 

Epic Yosemite valley village winter snowstorm!

 

Yosemite Winter Fine Art Landscapes! Sony A7RII yosemite National Park Winter Snow! Dr. Elliot McGucken Fine Art Landscape Photography

I am indebted to John Fielding (www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/) for posting an aerial shot of Holy Trinity, and my interest was piqued by the timber-framed building with the triple gable at the east end. Turned out this was the Lady Chapel, and more of that later. So, on my way back home to Kent, I called in to see if it looked as remarkable in the flesh as in photographs.

 

I arrived at Long Melford, after being taken on a magical mystery tour in light drizzle from Wortham, down narrow and narrower lanes, under and over railway lines, through woods, up and down hills until, at last, I saw the town laid out beyond the church.

 

I parked at the bottom of Church Walk then walked up past the line of timber framed houses, the tudor hospital and the tudor manor house.

 

Holy Trinity sits on top of the hill, spread out, filling its large churchyard and the large tower not out of proportion.

 

Inside it really is a collection of wonders, from brasses, the best collection of Medieval glass in Suffolk, to side chapels, and behind, the very unusual Lady Chapel.

 

------------------------------------------

 

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford is a Grade I listed parish church of the Church of England in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It is one of 310 medieval English churches dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

 

The church was constructed between 1467 and 1497 in the late Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a noted example of a Suffolk medieval wool church, founded and financed by wealthy wool merchants in the medieval period as impressive visual statements of their prosperity.

 

The church structure is highly regarded by many observers. Its cathedral-like proportions and distinctive style, along with its many original features that survived the religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, have attracted critical acclaim. Journalist and author Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, included the church in his 1999 book “England’s Thousand Best Churches”. He awarded it a maximum of 5 stars, one of only 18 to be so rated. The Holy Trinity Church features in many episodes of Michael Wood's, BBC television history series Great British Story, filmed during 2011.

 

A church is recorded as having been on the site since the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–1066). It was originally endowed by the Saxon Earl Alric, who bequeathed the patronage of the church, along with his manor at Melford Hall and about 261 acres of land, to the successive Abbots of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmund’s. There are no surviving descriptions of the original Saxon structure, although the roll of the clergy (see below) and the history of the site extend back to the 12th century.

 

The church was substantially rebuilt between 1467 and 1497. Of the earlier structures, only the former Lady Chapel (now the Clopton Chantry Chapel) and the nave arcades survive.

 

The principal benefactor who financed the reconstruction was wealthy local wool merchant John Clopton, who resided at neighbouring Kentwell Hall. John Clopton was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses and in 1462 was imprisoned in the Tower of London with John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford and a number of others, charged with corresponding treasonably with Margaret of Anjou. All of those imprisoned were eventually executed except John Clopton, who somehow made his peace with his accusers and lived to see the Lancastrians eventually triumphant at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

 

The dates of the reconstruction of the church are derived from contemporary wills, which provided endowments to finance the work

 

In 1710 the main tower was damaged by a lightning strike.[3] It was replaced with a brick-built structure in the 18th century and subsequently remodelled between 1898 and 1903 to its present-day appearance, designed by George Frederick Bodley in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. The new tower was closer to its original form with stone and flint facing and the addition of four new pinnacles.

 

The nave, at 152.6 feet (46.5 m), is believed to be the longest of any parish church in England. There are nine bays, of which the first five at the western end are believed to date from an earlier structure.

 

The interior is lit by 74 tracery windows, many of which retain original medieval glass. These include the image of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk, said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenniel's illustration of the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

The sanctuary is dominated by the large reredos, of Caen stone and inspired by the works of Albrecht Dürer. It was installed in 1877, having been donated by the mother of the then Rector Charles Martyn.

 

On the north side is the alabaster and marble tomb of Sir William Cordell who was the first Patron of the Church after the dissolution of the Abbey of Bury St Edmund's in 1539. On either side of the tomb are niches containing figures that represent the four Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude.

 

The sanctuary also holds one of the earliest extant alabaster bas relief panels, a nativity from the second half of the 14th century. The panel was hidden under the floor of chancel, probably early in the reign of Elizabeth I, and was rediscovered in the 18th century.[6] The panel, which may be part of an altar piece destroyed during the Reformation, includes a midwife arranging Mary's pillows and two cows looking from under her bed.

 

The Clopton Chapel is in the north east corner of the church. It commemorates various Clopton family members and was used by the family as a place of private worship.

 

The tomb of Sir William Clopton is set into an alcove here, in the north wall. An effigy of Sir William, wearing chain mail and plate armour, is set on top of the tomb. Sir William is known to have died in 1446 and it is therefore believed that this corner of the church predates the late 15th-century reconstruction. There are numerous brasses set in the floor commemorating other members of the Clopton family; two date from 1420, another shows two women wearing head attire in the butterfly style from around 1480, and a third depicts Francis Clopton who died in 1558.

 

There is an altar set against the east wall of the chapel and a double squint designed to provide priests with a view of the high altar when conducting Masses.

 

The Clopton Chantry Chapel is a small chapel at the far north east corner of the church, accessed from the Clopton Chapel. This was the original Lady Chapel and is the oldest part of the current structure. After John Clopton's death in 1497, his will made provision for the chapel to be extended and refurbished and for him to be buried alongside his wife there.[10] The chapel was then renamed, while the intended Chantry Chapel became the Lady Chapel.

 

The tomb of John Clopton and his wife is set in the wall leading into the chapel. Inside, the canopy vault displays faded portraits of the couple. Also displayed is a portrait of the risen Christ with a Latin text which, translated, reads Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. A series of empty niches in the south wall most likely once held statues of saints. Around the cornice, John Lydgate's poem "Testament" is presented in the form of a scroll along the roof, while his "Lamentation of our Lady Maria" is along the west wall.

 

The Lady Chapel is a separate building attached to the east end of the main church. In an unusual layout, it has a central sanctuary surrounded by a pillared ambulatory, reflecting its original intended use as a chantry chapel with John Clopton's tomb in its centre. Clopton was forced to abandon this plan when his wife died before the new building was completed and consecrated; so she was buried in the former Lady Chapel and John Clopton was subsequently interred next to her.[12]

 

The stone carving seen in the Lady Chapel bears similarities to work at King's College Chapel, Cambridge and at Burwell Church in Cambridgeshire. It is known that the master mason employed there was Reginald Ely, the King's Mason, and although there is no documentary proof, it is believed that Ely was also responsible for the work at Holy Trinity, Long Melford.[13]

 

The chapel was used as a school from 1670 until the early 18th century, and a multiplication table on the east wall serves as a reminder of this use. The steep gables of the roof also date from this period.

 

The Martyn Chapel is situated to the south of the chancel. It contains the tombs of several members of the Martyn family, who were prominent local wool merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries, and who also acted as benefactors of the church. These include the tomb chest of Lawrence Martyn (died 1460) and his two wives. On the floor are the tomb slabs of Roger Martyn (died 1615) and his two wives Ursula and Margaret; and of Richard Martyn (died 1624) and his three wives.

 

Originally, the Martyn chapel contained an altar flanked by two gilded tabernacles, one displaying an image of Christ and the other an image of Our Lady of Pity. These tabernacles reached to the ceiling of the chapel, but were removed or destroyed during the English Reformation in the reign of King Edward VI.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Trinity_Church,_Long_Melford

 

---------------------------------------------

 

The setting of Holy Trinity is superlative. At the highest point and square onto the vast village green, its southern elevation is punctuated by the 16th Century Trinity Hospital almshouses. Across the green is the prospect of Melford Hall's pepperpot turrets and chimneys behind a long Tudor wall. Another great house, Kentwell Hall, is to the north. Kentwell was home to the Clopton family, whose name you meet again and again inside the church. Norman Scarfe described it as in a way, a vast memorial chapel to the family.

 

Holy Trinity is the longest church in Suffolk, longer even than Mildenhall, but this is because of a feature unique in the county, a large lady chapel separate from the rest of the church beyond the east end of the chancel. The chapel itself is bigger than many East Anglian churches, although it appears externally rather domestic with its triple gable at the east end. There is a good collection of medieval glass in the otherwise clear windows, as well as a couple of modern pieces, and a very mdern altarpiece at the central altar. Jacqueline's mother remembered attending Sunday School in this chapel in the 1940s.

 

The intimacy of the Lady Chapel is in great contrast to the vast walls of glass which stretch away westwards, the huge perpendicular windows of the nave aisles and clerestories, which appear to make the castellated nave roof float in air. An inscription in the clerestory records the date at which the building was completed as 1496. Forty years later, it would all have been much more serious. Sixty years later, it would not have been built at all. A brick tower was added in the early 18th Century, and the present tower, by GF Bodley, was encased around it in 1903. As Sam Mortlock observes, this tower might seem out of place in Suffolk, but it nevertheless matches the scale and character of the building. It is hard to imagine the church without it.

 

I came here back in May with my friend David Striker, who, despite living thousands of miles away in Colorado, has nearly completed his ambition to visit every medieval church in Norfolk and Suffolk. This was his first visit to Long Melford, mine only the latest of many. We stepped down into the vast, serious space.. There was a fairly considerable 19th Century restoration here, as witnessed by the vast sprawl of Minton tiles on the floor, although perhaps the sanctuary furnishings are the building's great weakness. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this that fails to turn my head eastwards, but instead draws me across to the north aisle for the best collection of medieval glass in Suffolk. During the 19th century restoration it was collected into the east window and north and south aisles, but in the 1960s it was all recollected here. Even on a sunny day it is a perfect setting for exploring it.

 

The most striking figures are probably those of the medieval donors, who originally would have been set prayerfully at the base of windows of devotional subjects. Famously, the portrait of Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk is said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenneil's Duchess in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, although I'm not sure there is any evidence for this. Indeed, several of the ladies here might have provided similar inspiration.

 

The best glass is the pieta, Mary holding the body of Christ the Man of Sorrows. Beneath it is perhaps the best-known, the Holy Trinity represented in a roundel as three hares with their ears interlocking. An angel holding a Holy Trinity shield in an upper light recalls the same thing at Salle. Other glass includes a fine resurrection scene and a sequence of 15th Century Saints. There is also a small amount of continental glass collected in later centuries, including a most curious oval lozenge of St Francis receiving the stigmata.

 

Walking eastwards down the north aisle until the glass runs out, you are rewarded by a remarkable survival, a 14th century alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi. It probably formed part of the altar piece here, and was rediscovered hidden under the floorboards in the 18th century. Fragments of similar reliefs survive elsewhere in East Anglia, but none in such perfect condition. Beyond it, you step through into the north chancel chapel where there are a number of Clopton brasses, impressive but not in terribly good condition, and then beyond that into the secretive Clopton chantry. This beautiful little chapel probably dates from the completion of the church in the last decade of the 15th century. Here, chantry priests would have celebrated Masses for the dead of the Clopton family. The chapel is intricately decorated with devotional symbols and vinework, as well as poems attributed to John Lidgate. The beautiful Tudor tracery of the window is filled with elegant clear glass except for another great survival, a lily crucifix. This representation occurs just once more in Suffolk, on the font at Great Glemham. The panel is probably a later addition here from elsewhere in the church, but it is still haunting to think of the Chantry priests kneeling towards the window as they asked for intercessions for the souls of the Clopton dead. It was intended that the prayers of the priests would sustain the Cloptons in perpetuity, but in fact it would last barely half a century before the Reformation outlawed such practices.

 

You step back into the chancel to be confronted by the imposing stone reredos. Its towering heaviness is out of sympathy with the lightness and simplicity of the Perpendicular windows, and it predates Bodley's restoration. The screen which separates the chancel from the south chapel is medeival, albeit restored, and I was struck by a fierce little dragon, although photographing it into the strong south window sunshine beyond proved impossible. The brasses in the south chapel are good, and in better condition. They are to members of the Martyn family.

 

The south chapel is also the last resting place of Long Melford's other great family, the Cordells. Sir William Cordell's tomb dominates the space. He died in 1581, and donated the Trinity Hospital outside. His name survives elsewhere in Long Melford: my wife's mother grew up on Cordell Road, part of a council estate cunningly hidden from the High Street by its buildings on the east side.

 

Simon Knott, January 2013

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/Longmelford.htm

I never study a church before I go, maybe that's a fault on my part because I might miss something important and so have to go back. But for me, it's the wonder as you walk through the porch or door into the church, not knowing what to expect.

 

St Mary's looks like a typical Suffolk church from the outside, nice proportioned tower, good quality flint knapping. And yet once you enter, your breath is taken away by the glorious restored ceiling.

 

----------------------------------------------

 

It is not easy to find Huntingfield; even the signposts do not bear its name until you are within the parish boundary. Yet this shallow valley, divided by the infant river Blyth, with church and parsonage on one bank and manor house on the other, has been owned by some notable families in England's history.

The church is a Grade 1 Listed Building, largely due to its amazing Victorian painted ceiling.

 

The existing church certainly dates from the 11th century but there are signs that there had been a chapel here long before.

Some fragments of carved stones are set into the wall of the tower. At the beginning of this century they were turned up by a ploughman in a field called 'Chapel Field', a little to the south of the present church. They are fragments from a Saxon stone coffin and standing cross of the 10th century, long since disappeared.

 

The oldest part of the church is the wall between the nave and the north aisle which was the solid outer wall of the original twelfth century church. That church would have been small and dark, the whole building probably standing within the area of the present nave. The light would have come from small high windows of which one still remains above the two round-headed arches.

This wall has been altered at least twice. It was first broken through when the north aisle was built, and again in the nineteenth century when the arches were given their present 'Norman' curves. That first church was built by the family who took their name from the village and lived in the manor for 250 years, the Lords de Huntingfield.

 

The chancel was added in the thirteenth century.

 

By the end of the fourteenth, the south side of the nave had been altered and both aisles had been built in the fashionable Gothic style with its pointed arches. The five small high, or clerestory, windows on the south side of the nave would have provided light into the nave, the advent of affordable glass having made such things possible.

 

The east window of the south aisle has all that remains of the medieval glass that would once have filled many of the windows. There is a record of what was still to be seen here in the sixteenth century which lists the memorial windows with the coats of arms borne by the families who once owned the Manor.

 

The windows of the south aisle are particularly pretty and date from the fifteenth century. Their Perpendicular style is indicated by their familiar flat-topped shape. The porch is also from the fifteenth century.

 

The font dates from the fourteenth century.

 

The ceiling painting is very special and is explained on a separate page. The work was carried out in the 19th century while William Holland was rector. At the same time the organ and vestry were added with the Vanneck family vault beneath.

 

The ceiling is a masterpiece of Victorian church decoration, painted from end to end in brilliant colours, with carved and coloured angels, with banners, crowns and shields, all in the medieval style and of a most intricate and detailed finish.

The scheme of decoration is important as it reflects the ecclestiastical devotion of the late Victorian period clergy and their patrons, combined with the heightened liturgical practices of the Oxford Movement.

 

It was painted by Mildred Holland, the wife of William Holland who was rector for 44 years from 1848 until his death in 1892. The church was closed for eight months from September 1859 to April 1860 while she painted the chancel roof. Tradesmen provided scaffolding and prepared the ceiling for painting but there is no record to show that she had any help with the work, and legend has it that she did much of it lying on her back. We may imagine Victorian ladies wearing tight laced corsets and many petticoats, and wonder how she managed the ladders, scaffolding and hard labour of painting. She had an adviser on her schemes, a Mr. E. L. Blackburne F.S.A., an authority on medieval decoration.

 

The twelve large panels of the chancel ceiling each show an angel holding either a scroll with the words of the canticle 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel', or the emblems of the Passion: the cross, the hammer and nails, the scourge, the lance, the crown of thorns and the reed.

Two pelicans in their piety (pecking their breasts to feed their young) are in the last small panels.

 

Between the beam ends of the chancel roof there are Bible verses in Gothic lettering,

 

then two tiers of panels; the lower have pictures of the Lamb of God alternating with`the Keys of Heaven. Above, are crowned monograms.

 

Above the Chancel Arch, the Lamb of God is depicted with the words 'Glory, Honour, Praise and Power unto the Lamb for Ever and Ever', lines taken from the Book of Revelation.

 

Three years later Mildred Holland began to paint again in the nave. In 1866 her husband William makes a note 'scaffolding finally taken down, September Ist'. The whole cost of repairing the nave roof, preparing it for painting and for materials amounted to £247.10s.7d of which £16.7s.6d was for 225 books of gold leaf and £72 for colours. William Holland's notes show that between 1859 and 1882 a total of £2,034. 10s.0d was spent on the church restoration, of which, apparently, he gave all but £400.

 

Recent research has found the complete record of William Holland's work in restoring and furnishing the church. These are available for interested students.

The figures on the nave roof are of the twelve apostles and two female saints. Each is painted in the lower tier with their traditional symbols and again in the upper tier clothed in heavenly raiment holding scrolls bearing their names.

 

Note that Saints Margaret and Andrew are both included as there is a tradition that these two saints were specially venerated here. There are niches for statues in the south aisle which may have held statues of them. The cult of St Margaret of Antioch grew in the 10th century and her veneration was brought back to England by crusaders. Her inclusion here may hint at an early date for the church's foundation.

 

Mildred Holland died in 1878; William served on until 1892, a total of forty years. He gave the font cover in memory of his wife and also the brass lectern with its graceful angels and winged dragons. Their graves are in the churchyard to the west of the entrance gates. Side by side they lie, beneath a table tomb alongside a standing cross.

 

It is natural to speculate about the roof. It is of a single hammer-beam construction, arch-braced principals alternating with hammer-beams ending in carved angels. The angels in the nave carry a crown or a banner, those in the chancel have heraldic shields bearing arms. The question all ask is: are these angels genuinely medieval work which escaped the axes of the post-Reformation Puritans, (and remember that William Dowsing, the arch-destroyer, came from nearby Laxfield) or are they all the handiwork of Victorian craftsmen?

Traditional East Anglian hammer-beam roofs generally terminate in a carving of some sort, and the de la Poles made angel roofs in the churches of their manors, even taking Suffolk carpenters to Ewelme in Oxfordshire to make one there. But our angels are too perfect to be so old. Entries in a tradesman's account of 1865 would seem to settle the matter; or do they?

 

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were times of great development and two families, both wealthy and influential, used their means to beautify and rebuild the churches on their manors including St Mary's. Keeping up with the neighbours is not a new fashion. Both left their marks on the font which, standing on restored steps and with a splendid cover, shows two heraldic shields.

The shield facing south depicts the arms of de Ufford while that on the north side is of de la Pole.

 

The de Ufford shield is that of Sir William de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk during the reign of Edward III. He held Framlingham Castle for the King and owned several manors in Suffolk. Among these were Parham, where he built the church, and Huntingfield.

The other shield is that of Michael de la Pole, Lord Chancellor and Earl of Suffolk, who married Catherine, daughter and heiress of Sir John Wingfield of Wingfield Castle. He succeeded to the manor of Huntingfield through his wife, and died in 1389. The shield shows both of their arms.

 

Michael de la Pole's has three polecat faces while Catherine Wingfield's has three open wings. Both are puns on their names. (For another heraldic pun look for the arms of Huntingfield being held by one of the angels in the roof: three hunting horns on a 'field'.)

In Ufford church you can see a medieval font cover which was a model for ours when it was made in the nineteenth century. In Wingfield church there is a font so like ours that it was probably made by the same craftsman.

 

www.stmaryshuntingfield.org.uk/history.htm

 

-----------------------------------------------

 

There is nowhere else in Suffolk quite like St Mary. Huntingfield is one of the county's most obscure villages; there are hardly any signposts to it. It is the nearest village to the great pile of Heveningham Hall, and perhaps these two facts are not unconnected. But it is worth getting out the old Ordnance Survey map, because here at St Mary was a remarkable 19th century restoration.

In the second half of that century, many parish churches were drawn by the excitement of the age into major reconstructions and revisions. They often looked to London stars like Scott and Butterfield, or local plodders like Phipson, or else mavericks like Salvin. The demands of the new liturgical arrangements, coupled with a renewed sense of the need to glorify God, led them into what was often a rebuilding rather than a restoration. Internal decorations were, perhaps, the bespoke work of the architect; witness Phipson's meticulous attention to detail at St Mary le Tower, Ipswich.

 

Other restorers relied on the big picture, a vision that encompassed walls and floors, but left the fittings to others; as, for example, Salvin's Flixton St Mary. What was the driving force behind Victorian revisionism? Essentially, what happened in England between about 1830 and 1870 was a cultural revolution, a ferment of new ideas and the reaction to them. The changes proposed by the Oxford Movement were, at first, objectionable, and then merely controversial; but gradually, they seeped into the mainstream, until by about 1890 they had become as natural as the air we breathe.

 

By the centenary of the movement in the 1930s, one Anglican clergyman could observe "It is as if the Reformation had never happened". Well, not quite. And now, the pendulum has swung the other way, leaving the ritualists high and dry. But the evidence of the energy of those days survives, especially at Huntingfield, where it was the local vicar who drove the Oxford Movement through the heart of the parish, like a motorway through a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

 

What the vicar of Huntingfield had, and many other ministers didn't, was a visionary wife. Between 1859 and 1866, Mrs Mildred Holland planned, designed and executed the most elaborate redecoration of a church this county had seen since the Reformation. For seven years, she lay on her back at the top of scaffolding, first in the chancel (angels) and then in the nave (saints on the ceilure, fine angels on the beam ends), gilding, lettering and painting this most glorious of small church roofs. Her husband, the Reverend William Holland, kept a journal throughout this period, and there is no suggestion that she had any assistance, beyond that of workmen to raise the scaffolding, and a Mr E.L. Blackburne FSA, who was, apparently, an 'authority on medieval decoration'.

 

J.P. St Aubyn was responsible for the structural restoration of this largely 15th century building, and it is very restrained and merciful. He did, however, refit the little windows in the south clerestory. But you come here to see the painted roofs, which are perfectly splendid. Beware if you come with children, or it will cost you a fortune in pound coins to activate the illuminations.

 

The font cover is not part of Mildred Holland's work; rather, it is her memorial, as is the art nouveau lectern. It is as if her art was a catalyst, inspiring others to acts of beauty. She died in the 1870s, predeceasing her husband by twenty years. They are both now buried by the churchyard gate. How fitting, that they should lie in the graveyard of the church they loved so much, and to which they gave so much of their time, energy and money.

 

Curiously, Ann Owen, the wife of the vicar of nearby Heveningham, produced the stained glass there; a novel is waiting to be written about these two women.

 

For such an obscure village, St Mary has had its share of influential patrons. Four major families in particular have left their mark here. Before the Reformation, the de la Poles and Uffords, whose shields you'll find on the font, and in later years the Cokes and the Pastons, both more usually associated with Norfolk.

 

But, as I have said, you don't come to Huntingfield because of important dead people. Look up, look all around, and see the true memorial to Mrs Holland. It does not have the gravitas of Lound, or the piety of Kettlebaston. And I really love it for that. I think this is a place that should be better known, and not just because of the way it contrasts with the less successful 19th century restorations at neighbouring Cookley and Walpole.

What we have here is as fine a display of 19th century folk art as you'll find anywhere in the county.

 

Simon Knott, 2001 (updated 2007)

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/huntingfield.htm

Brushing up on Illustrator skills.

As the clock ticks towards the end of over 37 years of a significant Rossendale Transport presence in Greater Manchester, a reminder of the not so distant past when a good proportion of the buses were 'rosso' red and white and there were many carefully managed interworkings that saw vehicles begin their days operations from one depot and finish at another. On this side of the Pennines, the livery has now been consigned to history and the survivors are eking out their final years on school services in West Yorkshire.

 

Not so for Volvo B7TL / Plaxton 104, pictured in Bury Interchange in pre-Transdev days. It became 2728 after the council-owned Company was sold, but has subsequently been withdrawn.

 

The 484 was an early casualty of the rationalisation that followed the Transdev acquisition, with the route carved up, initially cut back to run from Ramsbottom to Bury as the short-lived 'Red 4', but then abandoned altogether with just the Red Express X41 left to serve the outskirts of the district before heading off along the M66 towards Manchester.

 

This image is copyright and must not be reproduced or downloaded without the permission of the photographer.

Finalmente fiz esta aranha que já estava dobrada na minha cabeça a muito tempo. Sempre tive vontade de fazer uma aranha com as patas realmente longas, como muitas aranhas são, então pensei: para aumentar as patas, basta diminuir o corpo, a regra básica da proporção...

Com uma geometria de 22,5 e uma estrutura bem simples mas bem eficiente - o aproveitamento de espaço é ótimo, fiz com 70x70 cm, e o resultado tem quase 35 cm de pata a pata - consegui chegar neste modelo, só o tipo de papel que não dá uma estética muito boa...

Não defini a espécie, pode ser qualquer uma com patas longas que não tenha pedipalpos muito grandes.

____________________________

Finally I did this spider that was already folded in my mind for so long. I always wanted to make a spider with really long legs, how many spiders are then thought: to raise the legs, simply lower the body, the basic rule of proportion ...

With a geometry of 22.5 and a structure very simple but very effective - the use of space is great, made with 70x70 cm, and the result is nearly 35 cm of the leg to leg - managed to get this model, only the type of paper does not give a very good look...

I did not define de specie, can be any one with long legs that does not have very large pedipalps.

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".[2] His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".[3] In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.[4] While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham,[5] he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God"[6] or "human existence itself".[7]

 

Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic".[8] A committed Christian who was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.[9] Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg.[10] Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary",[11] and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors"

 

Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed around 1783.[31] After his father's death, Blake and former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a print shop in 1784, and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson.[32] Johnson's house was a meeting-place for some leading English intellectual dissidents of the time: theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, philosopher Richard Price, artist John Henry Fuseli,[33] early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and English revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the French and American revolutions and wore a Phrygian cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. In 1784 Blake composed his unfinished manuscript An Island in the Moon.

 

Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (2nd edition, 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem to have shared some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence proving that they met. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfilment.

 

From 1790 to 1800, William Blake lived in North Lambeth, London, at 13 Hercules Buildings, Hercules Road.[34] The property was demolished in 1918, but the site is now marked with a plaque.[35] There is a series of 70 mosaics commemorating Blake in the nearby railway tunnels of Waterloo Station.[36][37][38] The mosaics largely reproduce illustrations from Blake's illuminated books, The Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and the prophetic books.

 

In 1788, aged 31, Blake experimented with relief etching, a method he used to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and the finished products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid to dissolve the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name).

 

This is a reversal of the usual method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching (which Blake referred to as "stereotype" in The Ghost of Abel) was intended as a means for producing his illuminated books more quickly than via intaglio. Stereotype, a process invented in 1725, consisted of making a metal cast from a wood engraving, but Blake's innovation was, as described above, very different. The pages printed from these plates were hand-coloured in water colours and stitched together to form a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem.

 

Although Blake has become better known for his relief etching, his commercial work largely consisted of intaglio engraving, the standard process of engraving in the 18th century in which the artist incised an image into the copper plate, a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to complete, but as Blake's contemporary, John Boydell, realised, such engraving offered a "missing link with commerce", enabling artists to connect with a mass audience and became an immensely important activity by the end of the 18th century.[40]

 

Europe Supported by Africa and America is an engraving by Blake dating to 1792 held in the collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art. It depicts three attractive women embracing one another. Black Africa and White Europe hold hands in a gesture of equality as the barren earth blooms beneath their feet. Europe wears a string of pearls while her sisters Africa and America, wearing slave bracelets, are depicted as "contented slaves".[41] Some scholars have speculated that the bracelets represents the historical fact while the handclasp Stedman's "ardent wish": "we only differ in color, but are certainly all created by the same Hand."[41] Others have said it "expresses the climate of opinion in which the questions of color and slavery were at that time being considered, and which Blake's writings reflect".[42] The engraving was for a book written by Blake's friend John Gabriel Stedman called The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796).[43]

 

Blake employed intaglio engraving in his own work, such as for the illustrations of the Book of Job, completed just before his death. Most critical work has concentrated on Blake's relief etching as a technique because it is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study drew attention to Blake's surviving plates, including those for the Book of Job: they demonstrate that he made frequent use of a technique known as "repoussage", a means of obliterating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting the back of the plate. Such techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different to the much faster and fluid way of drawing on a plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates why the engravings took so long to complete.

 

The commission for Dante's Divine Comedy came to Blake in 1826 through Linnell, with the aim of producing a series of engravings. Blake's death in 1827 cut short the enterprise, and only a handful of watercolours were completed, with only seven of the engravings arriving at proof form. Even so, they have earned praise:

 

'[T]he Dante watercolours are among Blake's richest achievements, engaging fully with the problem of illustrating a poem of this complexity. The mastery of watercolour has reached an even higher level than before, and is used to extraordinary effect in differentiating the atmosphere of the three states of being in the poem.

 

Blake's illustrations of the poem are not merely accompanying works, but rather seem to critically revise, or furnish commentary on, certain spiritual or moral aspects of the text.

 

Because the project was never completed, Blake's intent may be obscured. Some indicators bolster the impression that Blake's illustrations in their totality would take issue with the text they accompany: In the margin of Homer Bearing the Sword and His Companions, Blake notes, "Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost." Blake seems to dissent from Dante's admiration of the poetic works of ancient Greece, and from the apparent glee with which Dante allots punishments in Hell (as evidenced by the grim humour of the cantos).

 

At the same time, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the corruptive nature of power, and clearly relished the opportunity to represent the atmosphere and imagery of Dante's work pictorially. Even as he seemed to be near death, Blake's central preoccupation was his feverish work on the illustrations to Dante's Inferno; he is said to have spent one of the very last shillings he possessed on a pencil to continue sketching.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

photo date/id: 20210927_850_2171ksp

 

I never study a church before I go, maybe that's a fault on my part because I might miss something important and so have to go back. But for me, it's the wonder as you walk through the porch or door into the church, not knowing what to expect.

 

St Mary's looks like a typical Suffolk church from the outside, nice proportioned tower, good quality flint knapping. And yet once you enter, your breath is taken away by the glorious restored ceiling.

 

----------------------------------------------

 

It is not easy to find Huntingfield; even the signposts do not bear its name until you are within the parish boundary. Yet this shallow valley, divided by the infant river Blyth, with church and parsonage on one bank and manor house on the other, has been owned by some notable families in England's history.

The church is a Grade 1 Listed Building, largely due to its amazing Victorian painted ceiling.

 

The existing church certainly dates from the 11th century but there are signs that there had been a chapel here long before.

Some fragments of carved stones are set into the wall of the tower. At the beginning of this century they were turned up by a ploughman in a field called 'Chapel Field', a little to the south of the present church. They are fragments from a Saxon stone coffin and standing cross of the 10th century, long since disappeared.

 

The oldest part of the church is the wall between the nave and the north aisle which was the solid outer wall of the original twelfth century church. That church would have been small and dark, the whole building probably standing within the area of the present nave. The light would have come from small high windows of which one still remains above the two round-headed arches.

This wall has been altered at least twice. It was first broken through when the north aisle was built, and again in the nineteenth century when the arches were given their present 'Norman' curves. That first church was built by the family who took their name from the village and lived in the manor for 250 years, the Lords de Huntingfield.

 

The chancel was added in the thirteenth century.

 

By the end of the fourteenth, the south side of the nave had been altered and both aisles had been built in the fashionable Gothic style with its pointed arches. The five small high, or clerestory, windows on the south side of the nave would have provided light into the nave, the advent of affordable glass having made such things possible.

 

The east window of the south aisle has all that remains of the medieval glass that would once have filled many of the windows. There is a record of what was still to be seen here in the sixteenth century which lists the memorial windows with the coats of arms borne by the families who once owned the Manor.

 

The windows of the south aisle are particularly pretty and date from the fifteenth century. Their Perpendicular style is indicated by their familiar flat-topped shape. The porch is also from the fifteenth century.

 

The font dates from the fourteenth century.

 

The ceiling painting is very special and is explained on a separate page. The work was carried out in the 19th century while William Holland was rector. At the same time the organ and vestry were added with the Vanneck family vault beneath.

 

The ceiling is a masterpiece of Victorian church decoration, painted from end to end in brilliant colours, with carved and coloured angels, with banners, crowns and shields, all in the medieval style and of a most intricate and detailed finish.

The scheme of decoration is important as it reflects the ecclestiastical devotion of the late Victorian period clergy and their patrons, combined with the heightened liturgical practices of the Oxford Movement.

 

It was painted by Mildred Holland, the wife of William Holland who was rector for 44 years from 1848 until his death in 1892. The church was closed for eight months from September 1859 to April 1860 while she painted the chancel roof. Tradesmen provided scaffolding and prepared the ceiling for painting but there is no record to show that she had any help with the work, and legend has it that she did much of it lying on her back. We may imagine Victorian ladies wearing tight laced corsets and many petticoats, and wonder how she managed the ladders, scaffolding and hard labour of painting. She had an adviser on her schemes, a Mr. E. L. Blackburne F.S.A., an authority on medieval decoration.

 

The twelve large panels of the chancel ceiling each show an angel holding either a scroll with the words of the canticle 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel', or the emblems of the Passion: the cross, the hammer and nails, the scourge, the lance, the crown of thorns and the reed.

Two pelicans in their piety (pecking their breasts to feed their young) are in the last small panels.

 

Between the beam ends of the chancel roof there are Bible verses in Gothic lettering,

 

then two tiers of panels; the lower have pictures of the Lamb of God alternating with`the Keys of Heaven. Above, are crowned monograms.

 

Above the Chancel Arch, the Lamb of God is depicted with the words 'Glory, Honour, Praise and Power unto the Lamb for Ever and Ever', lines taken from the Book of Revelation.

 

Three years later Mildred Holland began to paint again in the nave. In 1866 her husband William makes a note 'scaffolding finally taken down, September Ist'. The whole cost of repairing the nave roof, preparing it for painting and for materials amounted to £247.10s.7d of which £16.7s.6d was for 225 books of gold leaf and £72 for colours. William Holland's notes show that between 1859 and 1882 a total of £2,034. 10s.0d was spent on the church restoration, of which, apparently, he gave all but £400.

 

Recent research has found the complete record of William Holland's work in restoring and furnishing the church. These are available for interested students.

The figures on the nave roof are of the twelve apostles and two female saints. Each is painted in the lower tier with their traditional symbols and again in the upper tier clothed in heavenly raiment holding scrolls bearing their names.

 

Note that Saints Margaret and Andrew are both included as there is a tradition that these two saints were specially venerated here. There are niches for statues in the south aisle which may have held statues of them. The cult of St Margaret of Antioch grew in the 10th century and her veneration was brought back to England by crusaders. Her inclusion here may hint at an early date for the church's foundation.

 

Mildred Holland died in 1878; William served on until 1892, a total of forty years. He gave the font cover in memory of his wife and also the brass lectern with its graceful angels and winged dragons. Their graves are in the churchyard to the west of the entrance gates. Side by side they lie, beneath a table tomb alongside a standing cross.

 

It is natural to speculate about the roof. It is of a single hammer-beam construction, arch-braced principals alternating with hammer-beams ending in carved angels. The angels in the nave carry a crown or a banner, those in the chancel have heraldic shields bearing arms. The question all ask is: are these angels genuinely medieval work which escaped the axes of the post-Reformation Puritans, (and remember that William Dowsing, the arch-destroyer, came from nearby Laxfield) or are they all the handiwork of Victorian craftsmen?

Traditional East Anglian hammer-beam roofs generally terminate in a carving of some sort, and the de la Poles made angel roofs in the churches of their manors, even taking Suffolk carpenters to Ewelme in Oxfordshire to make one there. But our angels are too perfect to be so old. Entries in a tradesman's account of 1865 would seem to settle the matter; or do they?

 

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were times of great development and two families, both wealthy and influential, used their means to beautify and rebuild the churches on their manors including St Mary's. Keeping up with the neighbours is not a new fashion. Both left their marks on the font which, standing on restored steps and with a splendid cover, shows two heraldic shields.

The shield facing south depicts the arms of de Ufford while that on the north side is of de la Pole.

 

The de Ufford shield is that of Sir William de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk during the reign of Edward III. He held Framlingham Castle for the King and owned several manors in Suffolk. Among these were Parham, where he built the church, and Huntingfield.

The other shield is that of Michael de la Pole, Lord Chancellor and Earl of Suffolk, who married Catherine, daughter and heiress of Sir John Wingfield of Wingfield Castle. He succeeded to the manor of Huntingfield through his wife, and died in 1389. The shield shows both of their arms.

 

Michael de la Pole's has three polecat faces while Catherine Wingfield's has three open wings. Both are puns on their names. (For another heraldic pun look for the arms of Huntingfield being held by one of the angels in the roof: three hunting horns on a 'field'.)

In Ufford church you can see a medieval font cover which was a model for ours when it was made in the nineteenth century. In Wingfield church there is a font so like ours that it was probably made by the same craftsman.

 

www.stmaryshuntingfield.org.uk/history.htm

 

-----------------------------------------------

 

There is nowhere else in Suffolk quite like St Mary. Huntingfield is one of the county's most obscure villages; there are hardly any signposts to it. It is the nearest village to the great pile of Heveningham Hall, and perhaps these two facts are not unconnected. But it is worth getting out the old Ordnance Survey map, because here at St Mary was a remarkable 19th century restoration.

In the second half of that century, many parish churches were drawn by the excitement of the age into major reconstructions and revisions. They often looked to London stars like Scott and Butterfield, or local plodders like Phipson, or else mavericks like Salvin. The demands of the new liturgical arrangements, coupled with a renewed sense of the need to glorify God, led them into what was often a rebuilding rather than a restoration. Internal decorations were, perhaps, the bespoke work of the architect; witness Phipson's meticulous attention to detail at St Mary le Tower, Ipswich.

 

Other restorers relied on the big picture, a vision that encompassed walls and floors, but left the fittings to others; as, for example, Salvin's Flixton St Mary. What was the driving force behind Victorian revisionism? Essentially, what happened in England between about 1830 and 1870 was a cultural revolution, a ferment of new ideas and the reaction to them. The changes proposed by the Oxford Movement were, at first, objectionable, and then merely controversial; but gradually, they seeped into the mainstream, until by about 1890 they had become as natural as the air we breathe.

 

By the centenary of the movement in the 1930s, one Anglican clergyman could observe "It is as if the Reformation had never happened". Well, not quite. And now, the pendulum has swung the other way, leaving the ritualists high and dry. But the evidence of the energy of those days survives, especially at Huntingfield, where it was the local vicar who drove the Oxford Movement through the heart of the parish, like a motorway through a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

 

What the vicar of Huntingfield had, and many other ministers didn't, was a visionary wife. Between 1859 and 1866, Mrs Mildred Holland planned, designed and executed the most elaborate redecoration of a church this county had seen since the Reformation. For seven years, she lay on her back at the top of scaffolding, first in the chancel (angels) and then in the nave (saints on the ceilure, fine angels on the beam ends), gilding, lettering and painting this most glorious of small church roofs. Her husband, the Reverend William Holland, kept a journal throughout this period, and there is no suggestion that she had any assistance, beyond that of workmen to raise the scaffolding, and a Mr E.L. Blackburne FSA, who was, apparently, an 'authority on medieval decoration'.

 

J.P. St Aubyn was responsible for the structural restoration of this largely 15th century building, and it is very restrained and merciful. He did, however, refit the little windows in the south clerestory. But you come here to see the painted roofs, which are perfectly splendid. Beware if you come with children, or it will cost you a fortune in pound coins to activate the illuminations.

 

The font cover is not part of Mildred Holland's work; rather, it is her memorial, as is the art nouveau lectern. It is as if her art was a catalyst, inspiring others to acts of beauty. She died in the 1870s, predeceasing her husband by twenty years. They are both now buried by the churchyard gate. How fitting, that they should lie in the graveyard of the church they loved so much, and to which they gave so much of their time, energy and money.

 

Curiously, Ann Owen, the wife of the vicar of nearby Heveningham, produced the stained glass there; a novel is waiting to be written about these two women.

 

For such an obscure village, St Mary has had its share of influential patrons. Four major families in particular have left their mark here. Before the Reformation, the de la Poles and Uffords, whose shields you'll find on the font, and in later years the Cokes and the Pastons, both more usually associated with Norfolk.

 

But, as I have said, you don't come to Huntingfield because of important dead people. Look up, look all around, and see the true memorial to Mrs Holland. It does not have the gravitas of Lound, or the piety of Kettlebaston. And I really love it for that. I think this is a place that should be better known, and not just because of the way it contrasts with the less successful 19th century restorations at neighbouring Cookley and Walpole.

What we have here is as fine a display of 19th century folk art as you'll find anywhere in the county.

 

Simon Knott, 2001 (updated 2007)

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/huntingfield.htm

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Been busy traveling and shooting landscapes and working on my books The Golden Hero's Odyssey about the golden rectangle and divine proportion I use in a lot of my compositions! Also working on my physics book on Dynamic Dimensions Theory! The equation d4/dt=ic is on a lot of the 45surf swimsuit and shirts and all! :)

  

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Malibu Pier fine art!

I used a toy horse and tried to make it look almost life-size by making it look like it was drinking from the creek.

I chose to show proportion on a chess board because it there is a small proportion of chess pieces at the front while there are more at the back. I took this picture using a shutter speed of 1/80 and an aperture of F 6.3. This picture didnt need much editing, just a little bit of sharpening and levels adjustment.

I am indebted to John Fielding (www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/) for posting an aerial shot of Holy Trinity, and my interest was piqued by the timber-framed building with the triple gable at the east end. Turned out this was the Lady Chapel, and more of that later. So, on my way back home to Kent, I called in to see if it looked as remarkable in the flesh as in photographs.

 

I arrived at Long Melford, after being taken on a magical mystery tour in light drizzle from Wortham, down narrow and narrower lanes, under and over railway lines, through woods, up and down hills until, at last, I saw the town laid out beyond the church.

 

I parked at the bottom of Church Walk then walked up past the line of timber framed houses, the tudor hospital and the tudor manor house.

 

Holy Trinity sits on top of the hill, spread out, filling its large churchyard and the large tower not out of proportion.

 

Inside it really is a collection of wonders, from brasses, the best collection of Medieval glass in Suffolk, to side chapels, and behind, the very unusual Lady Chapel.

 

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The Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford is a Grade I listed parish church of the Church of England in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It is one of 310 medieval English churches dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

 

The church was constructed between 1467 and 1497 in the late Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a noted example of a Suffolk medieval wool church, founded and financed by wealthy wool merchants in the medieval period as impressive visual statements of their prosperity.

 

The church structure is highly regarded by many observers. Its cathedral-like proportions and distinctive style, along with its many original features that survived the religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, have attracted critical acclaim. Journalist and author Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, included the church in his 1999 book “England’s Thousand Best Churches”. He awarded it a maximum of 5 stars, one of only 18 to be so rated. The Holy Trinity Church features in many episodes of Michael Wood's, BBC television history series Great British Story, filmed during 2011.

 

A church is recorded as having been on the site since the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–1066). It was originally endowed by the Saxon Earl Alric, who bequeathed the patronage of the church, along with his manor at Melford Hall and about 261 acres of land, to the successive Abbots of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmund’s. There are no surviving descriptions of the original Saxon structure, although the roll of the clergy (see below) and the history of the site extend back to the 12th century.

 

The church was substantially rebuilt between 1467 and 1497. Of the earlier structures, only the former Lady Chapel (now the Clopton Chantry Chapel) and the nave arcades survive.

 

The principal benefactor who financed the reconstruction was wealthy local wool merchant John Clopton, who resided at neighbouring Kentwell Hall. John Clopton was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses and in 1462 was imprisoned in the Tower of London with John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford and a number of others, charged with corresponding treasonably with Margaret of Anjou. All of those imprisoned were eventually executed except John Clopton, who somehow made his peace with his accusers and lived to see the Lancastrians eventually triumphant at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

 

The dates of the reconstruction of the church are derived from contemporary wills, which provided endowments to finance the work

 

In 1710 the main tower was damaged by a lightning strike.[3] It was replaced with a brick-built structure in the 18th century and subsequently remodelled between 1898 and 1903 to its present-day appearance, designed by George Frederick Bodley in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. The new tower was closer to its original form with stone and flint facing and the addition of four new pinnacles.

 

The nave, at 152.6 feet (46.5 m), is believed to be the longest of any parish church in England. There are nine bays, of which the first five at the western end are believed to date from an earlier structure.

 

The interior is lit by 74 tracery windows, many of which retain original medieval glass. These include the image of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk, said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenniel's illustration of the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

The sanctuary is dominated by the large reredos, of Caen stone and inspired by the works of Albrecht Dürer. It was installed in 1877, having been donated by the mother of the then Rector Charles Martyn.

 

On the north side is the alabaster and marble tomb of Sir William Cordell who was the first Patron of the Church after the dissolution of the Abbey of Bury St Edmund's in 1539. On either side of the tomb are niches containing figures that represent the four Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude.

 

The sanctuary also holds one of the earliest extant alabaster bas relief panels, a nativity from the second half of the 14th century. The panel was hidden under the floor of chancel, probably early in the reign of Elizabeth I, and was rediscovered in the 18th century.[6] The panel, which may be part of an altar piece destroyed during the Reformation, includes a midwife arranging Mary's pillows and two cows looking from under her bed.

 

The Clopton Chapel is in the north east corner of the church. It commemorates various Clopton family members and was used by the family as a place of private worship.

 

The tomb of Sir William Clopton is set into an alcove here, in the north wall. An effigy of Sir William, wearing chain mail and plate armour, is set on top of the tomb. Sir William is known to have died in 1446 and it is therefore believed that this corner of the church predates the late 15th-century reconstruction. There are numerous brasses set in the floor commemorating other members of the Clopton family; two date from 1420, another shows two women wearing head attire in the butterfly style from around 1480, and a third depicts Francis Clopton who died in 1558.

 

There is an altar set against the east wall of the chapel and a double squint designed to provide priests with a view of the high altar when conducting Masses.

 

The Clopton Chantry Chapel is a small chapel at the far north east corner of the church, accessed from the Clopton Chapel. This was the original Lady Chapel and is the oldest part of the current structure. After John Clopton's death in 1497, his will made provision for the chapel to be extended and refurbished and for him to be buried alongside his wife there.[10] The chapel was then renamed, while the intended Chantry Chapel became the Lady Chapel.

 

The tomb of John Clopton and his wife is set in the wall leading into the chapel. Inside, the canopy vault displays faded portraits of the couple. Also displayed is a portrait of the risen Christ with a Latin text which, translated, reads Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. A series of empty niches in the south wall most likely once held statues of saints. Around the cornice, John Lydgate's poem "Testament" is presented in the form of a scroll along the roof, while his "Lamentation of our Lady Maria" is along the west wall.

 

The Lady Chapel is a separate building attached to the east end of the main church. In an unusual layout, it has a central sanctuary surrounded by a pillared ambulatory, reflecting its original intended use as a chantry chapel with John Clopton's tomb in its centre. Clopton was forced to abandon this plan when his wife died before the new building was completed and consecrated; so she was buried in the former Lady Chapel and John Clopton was subsequently interred next to her.[12]

 

The stone carving seen in the Lady Chapel bears similarities to work at King's College Chapel, Cambridge and at Burwell Church in Cambridgeshire. It is known that the master mason employed there was Reginald Ely, the King's Mason, and although there is no documentary proof, it is believed that Ely was also responsible for the work at Holy Trinity, Long Melford.[13]

 

The chapel was used as a school from 1670 until the early 18th century, and a multiplication table on the east wall serves as a reminder of this use. The steep gables of the roof also date from this period.

 

The Martyn Chapel is situated to the south of the chancel. It contains the tombs of several members of the Martyn family, who were prominent local wool merchants in the 15th and 16th centuries, and who also acted as benefactors of the church. These include the tomb chest of Lawrence Martyn (died 1460) and his two wives. On the floor are the tomb slabs of Roger Martyn (died 1615) and his two wives Ursula and Margaret; and of Richard Martyn (died 1624) and his three wives.

 

Originally, the Martyn chapel contained an altar flanked by two gilded tabernacles, one displaying an image of Christ and the other an image of Our Lady of Pity. These tabernacles reached to the ceiling of the chapel, but were removed or destroyed during the English Reformation in the reign of King Edward VI.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Trinity_Church,_Long_Melford

 

---------------------------------------------

 

The setting of Holy Trinity is superlative. At the highest point and square onto the vast village green, its southern elevation is punctuated by the 16th Century Trinity Hospital almshouses. Across the green is the prospect of Melford Hall's pepperpot turrets and chimneys behind a long Tudor wall. Another great house, Kentwell Hall, is to the north. Kentwell was home to the Clopton family, whose name you meet again and again inside the church. Norman Scarfe described it as in a way, a vast memorial chapel to the family.

 

Holy Trinity is the longest church in Suffolk, longer even than Mildenhall, but this is because of a feature unique in the county, a large lady chapel separate from the rest of the church beyond the east end of the chancel. The chapel itself is bigger than many East Anglian churches, although it appears externally rather domestic with its triple gable at the east end. There is a good collection of medieval glass in the otherwise clear windows, as well as a couple of modern pieces, and a very mdern altarpiece at the central altar. Jacqueline's mother remembered attending Sunday School in this chapel in the 1940s.

 

The intimacy of the Lady Chapel is in great contrast to the vast walls of glass which stretch away westwards, the huge perpendicular windows of the nave aisles and clerestories, which appear to make the castellated nave roof float in air. An inscription in the clerestory records the date at which the building was completed as 1496. Forty years later, it would all have been much more serious. Sixty years later, it would not have been built at all. A brick tower was added in the early 18th Century, and the present tower, by GF Bodley, was encased around it in 1903. As Sam Mortlock observes, this tower might seem out of place in Suffolk, but it nevertheless matches the scale and character of the building. It is hard to imagine the church without it.

 

I came here back in May with my friend David Striker, who, despite living thousands of miles away in Colorado, has nearly completed his ambition to visit every medieval church in Norfolk and Suffolk. This was his first visit to Long Melford, mine only the latest of many. We stepped down into the vast, serious space.. There was a fairly considerable 19th Century restoration here, as witnessed by the vast sprawl of Minton tiles on the floor, although perhaps the sanctuary furnishings are the building's great weakness. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this that fails to turn my head eastwards, but instead draws me across to the north aisle for the best collection of medieval glass in Suffolk. During the 19th century restoration it was collected into the east window and north and south aisles, but in the 1960s it was all recollected here. Even on a sunny day it is a perfect setting for exploring it.

 

The most striking figures are probably those of the medieval donors, who originally would have been set prayerfully at the base of windows of devotional subjects. Famously, the portrait of Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk is said to have provided the inspiration for John Tenneil's Duchess in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, although I'm not sure there is any evidence for this. Indeed, several of the ladies here might have provided similar inspiration.

 

The best glass is the pieta, Mary holding the body of Christ the Man of Sorrows. Beneath it is perhaps the best-known, the Holy Trinity represented in a roundel as three hares with their ears interlocking. An angel holding a Holy Trinity shield in an upper light recalls the same thing at Salle. Other glass includes a fine resurrection scene and a sequence of 15th Century Saints. There is also a small amount of continental glass collected in later centuries, including a most curious oval lozenge of St Francis receiving the stigmata.

 

Walking eastwards down the north aisle until the glass runs out, you are rewarded by a remarkable survival, a 14th century alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi. It probably formed part of the altar piece here, and was rediscovered hidden under the floorboards in the 18th century. Fragments of similar reliefs survive elsewhere in East Anglia, but none in such perfect condition. Beyond it, you step through into the north chancel chapel where there are a number of Clopton brasses, impressive but not in terribly good condition, and then beyond that into the secretive Clopton chantry. This beautiful little chapel probably dates from the completion of the church in the last decade of the 15th century. Here, chantry priests would have celebrated Masses for the dead of the Clopton family. The chapel is intricately decorated with devotional symbols and vinework, as well as poems attributed to John Lidgate. The beautiful Tudor tracery of the window is filled with elegant clear glass except for another great survival, a lily crucifix. This representation occurs just once more in Suffolk, on the font at Great Glemham. The panel is probably a later addition here from elsewhere in the church, but it is still haunting to think of the Chantry priests kneeling towards the window as they asked for intercessions for the souls of the Clopton dead. It was intended that the prayers of the priests would sustain the Cloptons in perpetuity, but in fact it would last barely half a century before the Reformation outlawed such practices.

 

You step back into the chancel to be confronted by the imposing stone reredos. Its towering heaviness is out of sympathy with the lightness and simplicity of the Perpendicular windows, and it predates Bodley's restoration. The screen which separates the chancel from the south chapel is medeival, albeit restored, and I was struck by a fierce little dragon, although photographing it into the strong south window sunshine beyond proved impossible. The brasses in the south chapel are good, and in better condition. They are to members of the Martyn family.

 

The south chapel is also the last resting place of Long Melford's other great family, the Cordells. Sir William Cordell's tomb dominates the space. He died in 1581, and donated the Trinity Hospital outside. His name survives elsewhere in Long Melford: my wife's mother grew up on Cordell Road, part of a council estate cunningly hidden from the High Street by its buildings on the east side.

 

Simon Knott, January 2013

 

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/Longmelford.htm

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The Fibonacci Numbers are closely related to the golden ratio, and thus they also play a prominent role in exalted natural and artistic compositions!

 

I'm working on a far deeper book titled The Golden Ratio Number for Photographers. :)

 

The famous mathematician Jacob Bernoulli wrote:

 

The (golden spiral) may be used as a symbol, either of fortitude and constancy in adversity, or of the human body, which after all its changes, even after death, will be restored to its exact and perfect self.

 

Engraved upon Jacob’s tombstone is a spiral alongside the words, "Eadem Mutata Resurgo," meaning "Though changed, I shall rise again." And so it is that within the Golden Ratio Principle, the golden harmonies rise yet again.

 

The golden ratio is oft known as the divine cut, the golden cut, the divine proportion, the golden number, and PHI for the name of the architect of the Parthenon Phidias. It has exalted classical art on down through the millennia and it can exalt your art too!

 

Ask me anything about the golden ratio! :) I will do my best to answer!!

 

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Dr. Elliot McGucken's Golden Ratio Principle: The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Dr. E’s Golden Ratio Principle: The golden ratio exalts beauty because the number is a characteristic of the mathematically and physically most efficient manners of growth and distribution, on both evolutionary and purely physical levels. The golden ratio ensures that the proportions and structure of that which came before provide the proportions and structure of that which comes after. Robust, ordered growth is naturally associated with health and beauty, and thus we evolved to perceive the golden ratio harmonies as inherently beautiful, as we saw and felt their presence in all vital growth and life—in the salient features and proportions of humans and nature alike, from the distribution of our facial features and bones to the arrangements of petals, leaves, and sunflowers seeds. As ratios between Fibonacci Numbers offer the closest whole-number approximations to the golden ratio, and as seeds, cells, leaves, bones, and other physical entities appear in whole numbers, the Fibonacci Numbers oft appear in nature’s elements as “growth’s numbers.” From the dawn of time, humanity sought to salute their gods in art and temples exalting the same proportion by which all their vital sustenance and they themselves had been created—the golden ratio. the golden number, rectangle, and spiral!

 

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Studies in Nature

This group of images: "Nature" is part of an academic work done from nature "objects" bringing by architecture students to the design studio in the University. It's goal is to discover in these objects, some intrinsec caracteristics like: proportion, harmony, geometry, ritm, patron of develop, etc.

We look for undestand such nature virutes to apply them on their own designs.

Some of these images have photographic value by theirsevelsand for this reason I want to share them in this stream

 

Este conjunto de imagenes: "Nature" forman parte de un trabajo academico hecho a partir de objetos de la naturaleza aportados estudiantes de Arquitectura al taller de diseño en la Universidad y que tiene como objetivo el descubrir en ellos ciertas características implicitas como: proporción, armonía, geometría, ritmo, patrón de desarrollo etc.

Se busca con ello el comprender estas virtudes en la naturaleza para luego aplicarlas a sus propios diseños.

Algunas de estas imagenes tienen valor fotográfico en si mismas y por eso las comparto en esta galería.

Kodak C875.

SO: Ubuntu Linux.

Software: ShowFoto

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