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Oil on canvas.
Carlo Carrà was one of the most influential Italian painters of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his still lifes in the style of Metaphysical painting. He studied painting briefly at the Brera Academy in Milan, but he was largely self-taught. In 1909 he met the poet Filippo Marinetti and the artist Umberto Boccioni, who converted him to Futurism, an aesthetic movement that exalted patriotism, modern technology, dynamism, and speed. Carrà’s most famous painting, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911), embodies Futurist ideals with its portrayal of dynamic action, power, and violence.
With the advent of World War I, the classic phase of Futurism ended. Although Carrà’s work from this period, such as the collage Patriotic Celebration, Free Word Painting (1914), was based on Futurist concepts, he soon began to paint in a style of greatly simplified realism. Lot’s Daughters (1915), for example, represents an attempt to recapture the solidity of form and the stillness of the 13th-century painter Giotto. Carrà’s new style was crystallized in 1917 when he met the painter Giorgio de Chirico, who taught him to paint everyday objects imbued with a sense of eeriness. Carrà and de Chirico called their style pittura metafisica (“Metaphysical painting”), and their works of this period have a superficial similarity.
In 1918 Carrà broke with de Chirico and Metaphysical painting. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, he painted melancholy figurative works based on the monumental realism of the 15th-century Italian painter Masaccio. Through such moody but well-constructed works as Morning by the Sea (1928), and through his many years of teaching at the Milan Academy, he greatly influenced the course of Italian art between the World Wars.
Carved corbel supporting the 14th century vault of the nave.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
May 1, 2022 - Leidsestraat 24 the building with the bay window. "Built for tailor P.M. Broekmans. Van Arkel probably renovated the facade and the first floor in 1897. Broekmans opened a new, larger store on the corner of Koningsplein-Herengracht in 1905.
After Broekmans, H. van Dooren & Cie. came here in 1906, where people could go for women's and girls' hats. The bay window on the first floor was probably added at that time. There was the showroom. Van Dooren was a chic store that was located here until the 1940s.
The News of the Day wrote in February 1892:
In the Leidschestraat 24 plot, Mr P.M. Broekmans is now reopening his well-known tailor's shop, which used to be located in the same street, in plot 57. The architect G. van Arkel, who recently enriched the Heiligenweg with two artistic facades, has founded a beautiful building here, which from the outside completely fits in with the environment and internally fully meets the requirements of the company. The facade is made of sand and brick with teak panelling, above which is a sculpted frame with an allegorical representation of the tailor's trade. A huge transom window gives a view into the display cabinets, which, like the whole building, will soon be electrically lit.
The spacious shop is paneled with oak and is immediately adjacent to the fitting room. Both spaces are separated from each other by a beautiful arched molding on marble columns, between which there are tasteful draperies. Especially the fitting room, the sanctuary in this tailor's palace, makes a rich impression with the old Dutch chimney and the large revolving mirrors. As a novelty, one sees here, among other things, a fully rigged saddle, for the benefit of riders who come to adjust riding breeches. Behind the fitting room is the tailor's room and behind that the workshop.
The entire interior bears witness to solidity and taste." Previous English description translated from the following website: amsterdamopdekaart.nl/1850-1940/Leidsestraat/24
One of the real pleasures of Flickr is finding out so much more about the areas you thought you knew.
I have been to Wymondham a few times, delivered beer to a hotel (more of that another time) and a friend used to run the Railway Inn near the station, but I hadn't really explored the town.
But having seen a friend's shots, I really thought I should go back and look at it anew. And then there was this building, the Abbey Church with two towers, ruins and all the associated history.
Whatever you think of the works inside, it is as a complete building, something to leave me, at least, in awe at the beauty. Of course, it might not please everyone, but it does me.
Many thanks to Sarah and Richard for taking me here.
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This massive church and its famous twin towers will be familiar to anyone who has ever been within five miles of Wymondham, pronounced Win-d'm; its presence always there above the roof tops, and still there on the horizon when the rooftops can no longer be seen. Closer to, it is like a mighty city on a hill. It is often referred to as Wymondham Abbey, which isn't entirely correct; but there was an Abbey here, and you can see a scattering of remains in the fields between the church and the river, gradually reduced over the centuries as the stone and rubble were taken away for use elsewhere.
We came to Wymondham on a day that was breathtakingly cold; although the temperature was hovering around freezing, there was a biting east wind that made it feel colder still. Hence, the clarity of the light in the photographs above. The top photograph, taken from the south on the far bank of the river, is worth a second glance, because it provides a number of clues as to how this extraordinary and magnificent building came to be the way it is today.
In the beginning, there was a Benedictine Priory, an offshoot of the Abbey of St Albans. It was founded here because, after the Conquest, William I granted the lands of Wymondham to the Duc d'Albini, and the Duke's brother was Abbot of St Albans. Part of the project consisted of building a massive Priory church, much bigger than the one you see today. In style, it was like the Abbey church of Bury St Edmund, or Ely Cathedral. It was a cruciform church about 70 metres long, and had twin west towers - you can see something similar today at Kings Lynn St Margaret. As at St Margaret, there was a third tower above the central crossing, the chancel extending a long way eastwards, and transepts that were as tall as the nave roof. It was completed during the 12th century.
You can see a surviving trace of the south-west tower in the photograph above. The base of its northern wall rises above the roofline at the western end of the clerestory, just beside the current west tower. The central crossing tower, however, was built to the east of the current east tower, the chancel extending eastwards beyond it.
D'Albini intended the church to serve the parish as well as the Priory, but this was not managed without recourse to the advice of Pope Innocent IV, who granted the people use of the nave and the north aisle, the Priory retaining the south aisle, transepts and chancel.
However, when the central crossing tower became unsafe in the late 14th century and had to be taken down, the Priory rebuilt it to the west of the crossing, actually within the nave. This is the east tower that you see today, now a shell. In turn, the parish extended the church further west, demolishing the two west towers and replacing them with the massive structure you see today. It really is huge; although it is not as tall as the church tower at Cromer, its solidity lends it a vastness not sensed there.
When the new east tower was built, the western face of it cut off the nave from the chancel, creating two separate spaces. When the west tower was built, it blocked off the former west window between the old towers. Because of this, Wymondham is the only medieval parish church in Norfolk, and one of the few in England, that has no window at either end.
Wymondham Priory became an Abbey in 1448, and seems to have lived its final century peaceably enough before being closed and asset-stripped by Henry VIII in the 1530s. The church then became solely the charge of the parish; the eastern parts, apart from the tower, were demolished.
Still without parapet or panelling, the west tower was never finished; but it features in the turbulent history of mid 16th century England because William Kett, one of the leaders of Kett's Rebellion, was hung from the top of it by Edward VI's thought police, a reminder of just how closely church and state became allied during the Reformation. It did give me pause for thought - hanging your enemy from a church tower seems such an obvious thing to do when you want to make a point. I wonder just how many more times it happened to less notable victims over the centuries, on church towers up and down the land?
You enter today through the great north porch, which is similar to that nearby at Hethersett, even to the extent of having an almost identical series of bosses. They depict rosary scenes in the life of Christ and the Blessed Virgin.
As I said, we came here on a spectacularly cold day, but I was delighted to discover that the interior of the church was heated, even on a Saturday. The church attracts a considerable number of visitors, as you might expect; but I still thought this was a nice gesture.
Wymondham church is above all else an architectural wonder; but in many ways this is a simple building, easy to explore and satisfying to visit. It has the feel of a small Anglican cathedral in that there is a pleasing mix of ancient Norman architecture and modern Anglican triumphalism; as in a cathedral, there are open spaces, and the old pews have been replaced with modern chairs, which almost always seems to work well. The glorious arcading, triforium and clerestory create a sense of great height; this, coupled with the lack of east or west windows, can make you feel rather boxed in, but I found I quite liked that; it made the place seem more intimate, despite its size.
The modern, triumphant feel to the place is largely owing to the vast reredos by Ninian Comper. This is generally considered to be his finest single work, and forms the parish war memorial. It was built and gilded during the 1920s and 1930s, and you have to say it is magnificent. It consists of three tiers of saints, with a glorious Christ in Majesty topping the tiers under the great tester. It was never completed; the space where the retable should be is now hidden by curtains.
The rood and beam, a bay to the west, is also Comper's work, and it is hard to conceive that work of this kind and to this scale will ever again be installed in an English church. The low sun, slanting through the south windows of the clerestory, picked out the gilding, and clever lighting from underneath helped to put Comper's vision of Heaven into practice. The row of candlesticks on the altar leaves you in no doubt in which wing of the Church of England Wymondham finds itself.
Comper's glory shouldn't distract you from the early 16th century facade above the sedilia. It is terracotta, and probably from the same workshop as the Bedingfield tombs at Oxborough. Here you see what might have happened to English church architecture if theReformation hadn't intervened. Looking west from the sanctuary, the original west window is clearly discernible, now home to the organ.
If Comper's work is a little rich for you, you may prefer the north aisle, which is wide enough to be a church in itself. Cleared of clutter, a few rows of chairs face a gorgeous early 20th century triptych depicting Mary and John at the foot of the cross. The Madonna and child towards the west is also Comper's, but the 1930s towering font cover on the typical East Anglian 15th century font is not; it is by Cecil Upcher. The south aisle is truncated, the eastern bays now curtained off; but here are the few medieval survivals in glass. From slightly later, but the other side of the Reformation divide, is an Elizabethan text on the arcade. It probably marks the point to which the pulpit was moved by the Anglicans in the 16th century.
St Mary and St Thomas of Canterbury is a church that it is easy to admire, and it certainly impressed me. Perhaps, it is not so easy a building to love. Inevitably, there is something rather urban in its grandeur, and even the warmth of the heating couldn't take the edge off the remoteness and anonymity you inevitably find in such a space.
However, the friendliness of the people on duty helped to make up for this. The area beneath the west tower has been converted into a shop, and the nice lady working there was very chatty and helpful. I have to say that I think it would concentrate my mind a bit, knowing that mighty weight was above me. The shop itself is good of its kind, selling books and religious items rather than just souvenirs, and more icons and rosaries than you would normally expect to find in an establishment of the Church of England.
The lady said that she was a Methodist really, and found the services rather formal, but she'd started coming to the Abbey because her daughter went there. "You ought to come, Mum, we're just like real Catholics!", she giggled, as she recalled her daughter's words. As a 'real Catholic' myself, I couldn't help thinking that we would have stripped out Comper's reredos long ago, and Masses would be accompanied by guitars and percussion, possibly with a modicum of clapping and the help of an overhead projector screen; but I kept my counsel.
Simon Knott, January 2006
To the south of the high altar stands the chantry chapel of Edward le Despenser (d.1375) opposite the tomb of his father. Edward's effigy is unique, a kneeling, praying figure with its original colouring set beneath a canopy on the roof of the chapel (best viewed from the opposite side of the sanctuary). Within the chapel has a delicate fan-vaulted ceiling and a well preserved mural of the Trinity.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
St Edmund, Southwold, Suffolk
I kept meaning to come back to Southwold - the church, I mean, for I found myself in the little town from time to time. I finally kept my promise to myself in the summer of 2017, tipping up on a beautiful sunny day only to find the church closed for extensive repairs. The days got shorter, and by the time the church reopened it was too late in the year for me to try again. In fact, it was not until late October 2018 that I made it back there, on another beautiful day.
Southwold is well-known to people who have never even been there I suppose, signifying one side of Suffolk to which Ipswich is perhaps the counter in the popular imagination. Some thirty years ago, the comedian Michael Palin made a film for television called East of Ipswich. It was a memoir of his childhood in the 1950s, and the basic comic premise behind the film was that in those days families would go on holiday to seaside resorts on the East Anglian coast. In the child Palin's case, it was Southwold.
The amusement came from the idea that people in those days would sit in deckchairs beside the grey north sea, or shelter from the drizzle in genteel teashops or the amusement arcade on the pier. In the Costa Brava package tour days of the 1980s, the quaintness of this image made it seem like something from a different world.
I remember Southwold in the 1980s. It was one of those agreeable little towns distant enough from anywhere bigger to maintain a life of its own. It still had its genteel tea shops, its dusty grocers, its quaint hotels and pubs all owned by Adnams, the old-fashioned and unfashionable local brewery. In the white heat of the Thatcherite cultural revolution, it seemed a place that would soon die on its feet quietly and peaceably.
And then, in the 1990s, the colour supplements discovered the East Anglian coast, and fell in love with it. The new fashions for antique-collecting, cooking with local produce and general country living, coupled with a snobbishness about how vulgar foreign package trips had become, conspired to make places like Southwold very sought after. Before Nigel Lawson's boom became a bust, the inflated house prices of London and the home counties gave people money to burn. And in their hoards, they came out of the big city to buy holiday homes in East Anglia.
Although they are often lumped together, the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk are very different to each other (Cambridgeshire and North Essex are also culturally part of East Anglia, but the North Essex coast is too close to London to have ever stopped being cheap and cheerful, and Cambridgeshire has no coastline). Norfolk's beaches are wide and sandy, with dunes and cliffs and rock pools to explore. Towns like Cromer and Hunstanton seem to have stepped out of the pages of the Ladybird Book of the Seaside. Tiny villages along the Norfolk coast have secret little beaches of their own.
Suffolk's coast is wilder. Beaches are mainly pebbles rather than sand, and the marshes stretch inland, cutting the coast off from the rest of the county. Unlike Norfolk, Suffolk has no coast road, and so the settlements on the coast are isolated from each other, stuck at the ends of narrow lanes which snake away from the A12 and peter out in the heathland above the sea. There are fewer of them too. It is still quicker to get from Walberswick to Southwold by water than by land. Because they are isolated from each other, they take on individual personalities and characteristics. Because they are isolated from the land, they become bastions of polite civilisation.
Between Felixstowe in the south, which no outsiders like (and consequently is the favourite of many Suffolk people) and Lowestoft in the north, which is basically an industrial town-on-sea (but which still has the county's best beaches - shhh, don't tell a soul) are half a dozen small towns that vie with each other for trendiness. Southwold is the biggest, and today it is also the most expensive place to live in all East Anglia. Genteel tea shops survive, but are increasingly shouldered by shops that specialise in ski-wear and Barbour jackets, delicatessens that stock radicchio and seventeen different kinds of olive, jewellery shops and kitchen gadget shops and antique furniture shops where prices are exquisitely painful. Worst of all, the homely, shabby, smoke-filled Sole Bay Inn under the lighthouse has been converted by the now-trendy Adnams Brewery into a chrome and glass filled wine bar.
If you see someone in Norfolk driving a truck, they are probably wearing a baseball cap and carrying a shotgun. in Suffolk, they've more likely just bought a Victorian pine dresser from an antique shop, and they're taking it back to Islington. Does this matter? The fishing industry was dying anyway. The tourist industry was also dying. If places like Southwold, Aldeburgh and Orford become outposts of north London, at least they will still provide jobs for local people. But the local people won't be able to afford to live there, of course. They'll be bussed in from Reydon, Leiston and Melton to provide services for people in holiday cottages which are the former homes they grew up in, but can no longer afford to buy. Does this seriously annoy me? Not as much as it does them, I'll bet.
So, lets go to Southwold, turning off the A12 at the great ship of Blythburgh church, the wide marshes of the River Blyth spreading aimlessly beyond the road. We climb and fall over ancient dunes, and then the road opens out into the flat marshes, the town spreads out beyond. We enter through Reydon (now actually bigger than Southwold, with houses at half the price) and over the bridge into the town of Southwold itself.
Having been so critical, I need to say here that Southwold is beautiful. It is quite the loveliest small town in all East Anglia. None of the half-timbered houses here that you find in places like Long Melford and Lavenham. Here, the town was completely destroyed by fire in the 17th century, and so we have fine 18th and 19th century municipal buildings. One of the legacies of the fire was the creation of wide open spaces just off of the high street, called greens. The best one of all is Gun Hill Green, overlooking the bay where the last major naval battle in British waters was fought. The cannons still point out to sea. The houses here are stunning, gobsmacking, jaw-droppingly wonderful. If I could afford to buy one of them as a weekend retreat, then you bet your life I would, and to hell with the people who moaned about it.
At the western end of the High Street is St Bartholomew's Green, and beyond it sits what is, for my money, Suffolk's single most impressive building. This is the great church of St Edmund, a vast edifice built all in one go in the second half of the 15th century. Only Lavenham can compete with it for scale and presence. Unlike the massing at St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham, St Edmund is defined by a long unbroken clerestory and aisles beneath - where St Peter and St Paul looks full of tension, ready to spring, St Edmund is languid and floating, a ship at ease.
Southwold church was just one of several vast late medieval rebuildings in this area. Across the river at Walberswick and a few miles upriver at Blythburgh the same thing happened. Blythburgh still survives, but Walberswick was derelicted to make a smaller church, as were Covehithe and Kessingland. Dunwich All Saints was lost to the sea. But Southwold was the biggest. Everything about it breathes massive permanence, from the solidity of the tower to the turreted porch, from the wide windows to the jaunty sanctus bell fleche.
Along the top of the aisles, grimacing faces look down. All of them are different. The pedestals atop the clerestory were intended for statues as at Blythburgh, but were probably never filled before the Reformation intervened. At the west end, above the great west window, you can see the vast inscription SAncT EDMUND ORA P: NOBIS ('Saint Edmund, pray for us') as bold a record of the mindset of late medieval East Anglian Catholicism as you'll find.
As at Lavenham and Long Melford, the interior has been extensively restored, but not in as heavy or blunt a manner as at those two churches. St Edmund has, it must be said, benefited from the attentions of German bombers who put out all the dull Victorian glass with blast damage during World War II. Here, the interior is vast, light and airy, and much of the restoration is 20th century work, not 19th century.
Perhaps because of this, more medieval interior features have survived. Unlike Long Melford, Southwold does not have surviving medieval glass (Mr Dowsing saw to that in 1644), but it does have what is the finest screen in the county.
It stretches right the way across the church, and is effectively three separate screens. There is a rood screen across the chancel arch, and parclose screens across the north and south chancel aisles. All retain their original dado figures. There are 36 of them, more than anywhere else in Suffolk. They have been restored, particularly in the central range, but are fascinating because they retain a lot of original gesso work, where plaster of Paris is applied to wood and allowed to dry. It is then carved to produce intricate details.
The central screen shows the eleven remaining disciples and St Paul. They are, from left to right, Philip, Bartholomew, James the Less, Thomas, Andrew, Peter, Paul, John, James, Simon, Jude and Matthew.
The south chancel chapel is light and open. The bosses above are said to represent Mary Tudor and her second husband Charles, Duke of Brandon. The screen here is painted with twelve Old Testament prophets, and Mortlock suggests that they are by a different hand to the images on the other two screens. Here on the south screen, some of the figures have surviving naming inscriptions, and Mortlock surmises that the complete sequence, from left to right, is Baruch, Hosea, Nahum, Jeremiah, Elias, Moses, David, Isaiah, Amos, Jonah and Ezekiel. Further, he observes that the subject is a usual one for the English Midlands, but rare for East Anglia, and that perhaps this part of the screen came from elsewhere. The same may be true of the other two parts - it is hard to think that the central screen was deliberately made too wide for the two arcades.
The north aisle chapel is reserved as the blessed sacrament chapel. The screen is harder to explore, because the northern side is curtailed by a large chest, but it features angels. Unlike the screens at Hitcham and Blundeston, which show angels holding instruments of the passion, these are the nine orders of angels, with Gabriel at their head, and flanked by angels holding symbols of the Trinity and the Eucharist. Mortlock says that they are so similar to the ones at Barton Turf in Norfolk that they may be by the same hand, in which case the central screen is also by that person. They are, from left to right, the Holy Trinity, Gabriel, Archangels, Powers, Dominions, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Virtues, Messengers, and finally the Eucharist. The Holy Trinity angel still has part of the original dedicatory inscription beneath his feet.
If part or all of this screen came from elsewhere, where did it come from? Possibly either Walberswick, Covehithe or Kessingland, the three downsized churches mentioned earlier. More excitingly, it might have come from one of the churches along this coast that was lost to the sea, perhaps neighbouring St Nicholas at Easton Bavents, or, just to the south, St Peter or St John the Baptist, the two Dunwich churches lost in the 16th and 17th centuries. We'll never know.
If you turn back at the screen and face westwards, your eyes are automatically drawn to the towering font cover, part of the extensive 1930s redecoration of the building. The clerestory is almost like a glass atrium intended to house it. Also the work of the period is the repainting and regilding of the 15th century pulpit (a lot of people blanch at this, but I think it is gorgeous) and the lectern. Beneath the font cover, the font is clearly one of the rare seven sacraments series, and part of the same group as Westhall, Blythburgh and Wenhaston. As at Blythburgh and Wenhaston, the panels are completely erased, probably in the 19th century, an act of barbarous vandalism. Given that Westhall is probably the best of all in the county, we must assume that three major medieval art treasures were wiped out. Astonishingly, vague shadows survive of the former reliefs; you can easily make out the Mass panel, facing east as at Westhall, the Penance panel and even what may be the Baptism of Christ.
Stepping through the screen, the reredos ahead is by Benedict Williamson and the glass above by Ninian Comper, familiar names in the Anglo-catholic pantheon, and evidence of an enthusiasm here that still survives in High Church form. There is a good engraved glass image of St Edmund to the north of the sanctuary, very much in the 1960s fashion, but curiously placed. On the wall of the chancel to the west of it, the high organ case is also painted and gilded enthusiastically.
As well as the screen, Southwold's other great medieval survival is the set of return stalls either side of the eastern face of the chancel screen. They have misericord seats, but the best feature are the handrests between the seats. On the south side, carvings include a man with a horn-shaped hat and sinners being drawn into the mouth of hell. On the north side are a man playing two pipes, a monkey preaching and a beaver biting its own genitals, a tale from the medieval bestiary, apparently.
What else is there to see? Well, the church is full of delights, and rewards further visits which always seem to turn up something previously unnoticed. St George rides full tilt at a dragon on an old chest at the west end of the north aisle. There is good 19th century glass in the porch and at the west end of the nave. A clock jack stands, axe and bell in hand, at the west end, a twin to the one upriver at Blythburgh. This one has a name, he's called Southwold Jack, and he is one of the symbols of the Adnams brewery.
As Mortlock notes, there are very few surviving memorials. This is partly because St Edmund was not in the patronage of a great landed family, but it may also suggest that they were largely removed at the time of the 19th century restoration, as at Brandon. One moving one is for the child of a vicar, and there are some interesting pre-Oxford Movement 19th century brasses in the south aisle.
High, high above all this, the roofs are models of Anglo-Catholic melodrama, the canopy of honour to the rood and the chancel ceilure in particular. But there is a warmth about it all that is missing from, say, Eye, which underwent a similar makeover. This church feels full of life, and not a museum piece at all. I remember attending evensong here late one winter Saturday afternoon, and it was magical. On another visit, I came on one of the first days of spring that was truly warm and bright, with not a cloud in the sky. As we drove into town, a cold fret off of the sea was condensing the steam of the brewery, sending it in swirls and skeins around the tower of St Edmund like low cloud. It was so atmospheric that I almost forgave them for what they have done to the Sole Bay Inn.
River Dargle Flood Defence Scheme.
These images were taken in the first week of November 2016.
These are the critical stabilisation works at the Silverbridge site, adjacent to the N11 dual-carriageway:
Back in November 2014, we observed bank stabilisation works here involving excavation, repair and building of a support wall structure -- carried out by JONS Construction on behalf of the National Roads Authority.
We would occasionally catch sight of this work in the distance. Quite an impressive little piece of structural engineering.
Having built a retaining concave wall, backfilled for solidity, they were also drilling, fixing and sealing ground anchors to pin the entire structure together.
Now we see that further works are being undertaken.
Word has it that extra ‘stabilisation work’ has to be done to protect the integrity of the riverbank. At the section here we can see that there’s not much space between the edge of the rock face and the Armco at the side of the dual-carriageway.
Have yet to determine what precisely that will entail. Serious work to reinforce the side access ramp down to the river.
The N11 carriageway runs adjacent to this sunken side of the riverbank -- barely 2 (large) paces divide the two. Even with twin strips of Armco along the roadside, it's perilously close. Traffic speeds along this stretch (maximum speed 100 kmp). Only needs a touch from a heavy vehicle to cause secondary impact, which (worst possible scenario) could result in something going airborne.
Working in these confined spaces puts a premium of safety and communication.
The guys have hard-filled a working shelf on the riverbed, to allow machinery access to the rockface. Obviously some serious drilling is called for before a form of extra 'pinning' is put in place.
They have sunk a series of hollowed tubes/casings -- obviously to form the foundations of a more extensive structure.
And some investigative work around the transverse buttress of the access bridge, parallel to the heavy-duty pipeline carrying water down from the Vartry reservoir.
At a (rough) guess -- I'd say the foundations were sunk to a depth of approx 4+m.
With such secure foundations in place, they would then look to construct a substantial bank of material, and/or retaining wall (similar to that in place further along the roadside bank).
=================================================
Previously the guys drilled and sunk 4+metre deep reinforced tubing and rods along a newly laid concrete base. Those stubs are now being used to attach steel rod cradles -- which, in turn, I believe will be filled with poured concrete. Variation on the method they've used elsewhere along this stretch of the river.
At this time of year, it's not a particularly nice place to be working in. The low, late sun never swings around sufficiently to light+warm this stretch. The day we were there, the air was barely above freezing point -- so, gotta be bloody cold down in that recess. No type of construction gear, or footwear, is going to keep the cold from seeping into your bones.
And, on a related point, it is a particularly tough spot for the inhabitants of the 3 traveller community dwellings adjacent to this work. Blood cold, and eternally damp.
River Dargle Flood Defence Scheme.
These images were taken during the third week of November 2016.
These are the critical stabilisation works at the Silverbridge site, adjacent to the N11 dual-carriageway:
Back in November 2014, we observed bank stabilisation works here involving excavation, repair and building of a support wall structure -- carried out by JONS Construction on behalf of the National Roads Authority.
We would occasionally catch sight of this work in the distance. Quite an impressive little piece of structural engineering.
Having built a retaining concave wall, backfilled for solidity, they were also drilling, fixing and sealing ground anchors to pin the entire structure together.
Now we see that further works are being undertaken.
Word has it that extra ‘stabilisation work’ has to be done to protect the integrity of the riverbank. At the section here we can see that there’s not much space between the edge of the rock face and the Armco at the side of the dual-carriageway.
Have yet to determine what precisely that will entail. Serious work to reinforce the side access ramp down to the river.
The N11 carriageway runs adjacent to this sunken side of the riverbank -- barely 2 (large) paces divide the two. Even with twin strips of Armco along the roadside, it's perilously close. Traffic speeds along this stretch (maximum speed 100 kmp). Only needs a touch from a heavy vehicle to cause secondary impact, which (worst possible scenario) could result in something going airborne.
Working in these confined spaces puts a premium of safety and communication.
The guys have hard-filled a working shelf on the riverbed, to allow machinery access to the rockface. Obviously some serious drilling is called for before a form of extra 'pinning' is put in place.
They have sunk a series of hollowed tubes/casings -- obviously to form the foundations of a more extensive structure.
And some investigative work around the transverse buttress of the access bridge, parallel to the heavy-duty pipeline carrying water down from the Vartry reservoir.
This was the day when they started to fill those sunken tubes/casings with liquid cement. At a (rough) guess -- I'd say the foundations are sunk to a depth of approx 4+m.
With such secure foundations in place, they would then look to construct a substantial bank of material, and/or retaining wall (similar to that in place further along the roadside bank).
As ever, the first attempt at a process brings it's own unique set of issues.
The tight confines of the riverbed obliges the use of a concrete pumping rig with long-boom capacity.
Would you call this a '4 section' unit'? Built on a 4-axle chassis, I'd suggest that it's reach is approx 40+m.
The remotely-controlled unit siphons and pumps liquid concrete into the sunken wells. Immediately the guys agitate the mixture to remove any air pockets. Final step is to lower in a pre-formed steel skeleton brace, intended to reinforce the foundation.
While we were there, the guys struggled to sink the steel frame into the sunken sleeve. I can't believe it was a problem with alignment -- other similar frames dropped neatly into their appointed sleeve.
Perhaps simply a case that the compressed liquid solution was just inflexible enough to receive the steel skeleton. We left.
Will find out later what the outcome was.
The Leica was glamourised (along with the early 1960's E-Type Jaguar) in "Man of the World", by association with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Frank Capa, but it already had ample cachet - the late Queen herself used one. The Leica world is one of near-fanatical devotees and collectors, perhaps with good reason.
The M2's designation is confusing. It was actually introduced after the M3, and athough less expensive was more practical, having 35mm, 50mm and 90mm viewfinder frames. The clip on selenium Leicameter, coupled to the shutter speed dial, agrees closely with the Weston Master, but readings cannot be taken with the camera to the eye, and hence the meter cannot be aimed accurately.
The verdict? To this day, nothing quite matches the solidity and smoothness of a rangefinder Leica, and the best M-Series lenses (like the 50mm f2 Summicron, here) are still the sharpest lenses, especially at larger apertures, ever made for the 35mm format. This is partly due to their short backfocus design, a type of lens which can only be used on a non-reflex camera. This, and the lack of a moving mirror, gives a rangefinder camera an advantage over an SLR for the majority of exposures, and enables it to produce the highest image quality in the format. It's also more comfortable - the eye can be put close to the viewfinder without squashing one's nose against the camera back.
River Dargle Flood Defence Scheme.
These images were taken during the third week of November 2016.
These are the critical stabilisation works at the Silverbridge site, adjacent to the N11 dual-carriageway:
Back in November 2014, we observed bank stabilisation works here involving excavation, repair and building of a support wall structure -- carried out by JONS Construction on behalf of the National Roads Authority.
We would occasionally catch sight of this work in the distance. Quite an impressive little piece of structural engineering.
Having built a retaining concave wall, backfilled for solidity, they were also drilling, fixing and sealing ground anchors to pin the entire structure together.
Now we see that further works are being undertaken.
Word has it that extra ‘stabilisation work’ has to be done to protect the integrity of the riverbank. At the section here we can see that there’s not much space between the edge of the rock face and the Armco at the side of the dual-carriageway.
Have yet to determine what precisely that will entail. Serious work to reinforce the side access ramp down to the river.
The N11 carriageway runs adjacent to this sunken side of the riverbank -- barely 2 (large) paces divide the two. Even with twin strips of Armco along the roadside, it's perilously close. Traffic speeds along this stretch (maximum speed 100 kmp). Only needs a touch from a heavy vehicle to cause secondary impact, which (worst possible scenario) could result in something going airborne.
Working in these confined spaces puts a premium of safety and communication.
The guys have hard-filled a working shelf on the riverbed, to allow machinery access to the rockface. Obviously some serious drilling is called for before a form of extra 'pinning' is put in place.
They have sunk a series of hollowed tubes/casings -- obviously to form the foundations of a more extensive structure.
And some investigative work around the transverse buttress of the access bridge, parallel to the heavy-duty pipeline carrying water down from the Vartry reservoir.
This was the day when they started to fill those sunken tubes/casings with liquid cement. At a (rough) guess -- I'd say the foundations are sunk to a depth of approx 4+m.
With such secure foundations in place, they would then look to construct a substantial bank of material, and/or retaining wall (similar to that in place further along the roadside bank).
As ever, the first attempt at a process brings it's own unique set of issues.
The tight confines of the riverbed obliges the use of a concrete pumping rig with long-boom capacity.
Would you call this a '4 section' unit'? Built on a 4-axle chassis, I'd suggest that it's reach is approx 40+m.
The remotely-controlled unit siphons and pumps liquid concrete into the sunken wells. Immediately the guys agitate the mixture to remove any air pockets. Final step is to lower in a pre-formed steel skeleton brace, intended to reinforce the foundation.
While we were there, the guys struggled to sink the steel frame into the sunken sleeve. I can't believe it was a problem with alignment -- other similar frames dropped neatly into their appointed sleeve.
Perhaps simply a case that the compressed liquid solution was just inflexible enough to receive the steel skeleton. We left.
Will find out later what the outcome was.
This one was my favourite of the three 300C Cedrics I had. Datman got it from a scrapyard or somewhere after it had suffered a hit in the side. The B-pillar got pushed back out and I got hold of some doors off a car that was going to be banger raced which were swapped across.
I ending up with it in a swap for the 1976 Laurel I had at the time, and it proved to be a reliable and amusing daily driver. The black doors and it being filthy for much of the time added to the appeal.
These are fun to drive, with their square looks hiding a VG30E V6 engine giving 155bhp. Handling isn’t great, but with a plush interior and big-car feel and solidity who cares? As noted elsewhere, it later got swapped for another white 300C and it eventually got banger raced.
Explore #379 - 22.8.2008
Spain - Cordoba - Ruins of Medina Azahara
Cidade Palaciana mandada construir por um califa para demonstrar o seu poder e a sua dignidade. construida no seculo X nao sobreviveu um seculo, antes de concluir 100 anos foi saqueada e destruida numa guerra que pos fim a um califado.
Medina Azahara, castelhanização do nome árabe مدينة الزهراء Madīnat al-Zahrā' (A cidade de Zahra) foi uma cidade palácio mandada edificar por Abderramán III (Abd al-Rahman III, al-Nasir) a uns 5 km dos arredores de Córdova en direcção oeste.
Os principais motivos da sua construção foram de índole político-ideológica: A dignidade do califa exige a fundação de uma nova cidade, símbolo do seu poder, à imitação de outros califados orientais e sobretudo, para mostrar a sua superioridade sobre os seus grandes inimigos, os fatimíadas de Ifriqia, A zona norte do continente africano.
Apesar da riqueza e solidez dos materiais empregados, Medina Azahara não chegou a sobreviver nem sequer um século, pois fui destruída e saqueada em 1010, como consequência da guerra civil que pôs fim ao califado de Córdova.
__________________________________________________________________
Medina Azahara, spanisation of the Arab name مدينة الزهراء Madīnat al-Zahr ā ' (The city of Zahra) was a city when western direction told palace to be built by Abderramán III (Abd al-Rahman III, al-Nasir) to approximately 5 km of the surroundings of Córdova en.
The principal causes of his construction were of nature ideological-politician: The dignity of the calif demands the foundation of a new city, symbol of his power, to the imitation of other oriental caliphates and especially, to show his superiority on his great enemies, the fatimíadas of Ifriqia, The Northern District of the African continent.
In spite of the wealth and solidity of the employed materials, Medina Azahara did not come surviving not even one century, since I was destroyed and looted in 1010, like consequence of the civil war that put end to the caliphate of Córdova.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taipei 101
台北101[1]
Taipei 101
Record height
Tallest in the world from 2004 to 2010[I]
Preceded byPetronas Towers
Surpassed byBurj Khalifa
General information
TypeMixed use: communication, conference, fitness center, library, observation, office, restaurant, retail
LocationXinyi District, Taipei, Republic of China
Coordinates25°2′1″N 121°33′54″ECoordinates: 25°2′1″N 121°33′54″E
Construction started1999[2]
Completed2004[2]
OpeningDecember 31, 2004
CostNT$ 58 billion
(US$ 1.80 billion)[3]
Height
Architectural509 m (1,669.9 ft)[2]
Roof449.2 m (1,473.8 ft)
Top floor439 m (1,440.3 ft)[2]
Observatory391.8 m (1,285.4 ft)[2]
Technical details
Floor count101 (+5 basement floors)[2]
Floor area193,400 m2 (2,081,700 sq ft)[2]
Elevators61 Toshiba/KONE elevators, including double-deck shuttles and 2 high speed observatory elevators)
Design and construction
OwnerTaipei Financial Center Corporation[2]
ManagementUrban Retail Properties Co.
ArchitectC.Y. Lee & partners[2]
Structural engineerThornton Tomasetti[2]
Main contractorKTRT Joint Venture [4]
Website
taipei-101.com.tw
References
[2][5]
Taipei 101 (Chinese: 台北101 / 臺北101), formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a landmark skyscraper located in Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan. The building ranked officially as the world's tallest from 2004 until the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010. In July 2011, the building was awarded LEED Platinum certification, the highest award in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and became the tallest and largest green building in the world.[6] Taipei 101 was designed by C.Y. Lee & partners and constructed primarily by KTRT Joint Venture. The tower has served as an icon of modern Taiwan ever since its opening, and received the 2004 Emporis Skyscraper Award.[7] Fireworks launched from Taipei 101 feature prominently in international New Year's Eve broadcasts and the structure appears frequently in travel literature and international media.
Taipei 101 comprises 101 floors above ground and 5 floors underground. The building was architecturally created as a symbol of the evolution of technology and Asian tradition (see Symbolism). Its postmodernist approach to style incorporates traditional design elements and gives them modern treatments. The tower is designed to withstand typhoons and earthquakes. A multi-level shopping mall adjoining the tower houses hundreds of fashionable stores, restaurants and clubs.
Taipei 101 is owned by the Taipei Financial Center Corporation (TFCC) and managed by the International division of Urban Retail Properties Corporation based in Chicago. The name originally planned for the building, Taipei World Financial Center, until 2003, was derived from the name of the owner. The original name in Chinese was literally, Taipei International Financial Center (Chinese: 臺北國際金融中心).
Height
The Taipei 101 tower has 101 stories above ground and five underground. Upon its completion Taipei 101 claimed the official records for:[5]
Ground to highest architectural structure (spire): 508 metres (1,667 ft)[2]. Previously held by the Petronas Towers 451.9 m (1,483 ft).
Ground to roof: 449.2 m (1,474 ft). Formerly held by the Willis Tower 442 m (1,450 ft).
Ground to highest occupied floor: 438 m (1,437 ft). Formerly held by the Willis Tower 412.4 m (1,353 ft).
Fastest ascending elevator speed: designed to be 1010 meters per minute, which is 16.83 m/s (55.22 ft/s) (60.6 km/h, 37.7 mi/h).
Largest countdown clock: Displayed on New Year's Eve.
Tallest sundial. (See 'Symbolism' below.)
Taipei 101 is the first building in the world to break the half-kilometer mark in height.[5] The record it claimed for greatest height from ground to pinnacle now rests with the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (UAE): 829.8 m (2,722 ft). Taipei 101's records for roof height and highest occupied floor briefly passed to the Shanghai World Financial Center in 2009, which in turn yielded these records as well to the Burj.
Taipei 101 displaced the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as the tallest building in the world by 56.1 m (184 ft).[8] It also displaced the 85-story, 347.5 m (1,140 ft) Tuntex Sky Tower in Kaohsiung as the tallest building in Taiwan and the 51-story, 244.2 m (801 ft) Shin Kong Life Tower as the tallest building in Taipei.[9]
Various sources, including the building's owners, give the height of Taipei 101 as 508.0 m (1,667 ft), roof height and top floor height as 448.0 m (1,470 ft) and 438.0 m (1,437 ft). This lower figure is derived by measuring from the top of a 1.2 m (4 ft) platform at the base. CTBUH standards, though, include the height of the platform in calculating the overall height, as it represents part of the man-made structure and is above the level of the surrounding pavement.[10][11]
Structural design
Taipei 101 is designed to withstand the typhoon winds and earthquake tremors common in its area of the Asia-Pacific. Planners aimed for a structure that could withstand gale winds of 60 m/s (197 ft/s, 216 km/h, 134 mph) and the strongest earthquakes likely to occur in a 2,500 year cycle.[12]
Skyscrapers must be flexible in strong winds yet remain rigid enough to prevent large sideways movement (lateral drift). Flexibility prevents structural damage while resistance ensures comfort for the occupants and protection of glass, curtain walls and other features. Most designs achieve the necessary strength by enlarging critical structural elements such as bracing. The extraordinary height of Taipei 101 combined with the demands of its environment called for additional innovations. The design achieves both strength and flexibility for the tower through the use of high-performance steel construction. Thirty-six columns support Taipei 101, including eight "mega-columns" packed with 10,000 psi (69 MPa) concrete.[13] Every eight floors, outrigger trusses connect the columns in the building's core to those on the exterior.
These features combine with the solidity of its foundation to make Taipei 101 one of the most stable buildings ever constructed. The foundation is reinforced by 380 piles driven 80 m (262 ft) into the ground, extending as far as 30 m (98 ft) into the bedrock. Each pile is 1.5 m (5 ft) in diameter and can bear a load of 1,000–1,320 tonnes (1,100–1,460 short tons).[13] The stability of the design became evident during construction when, on March 31, 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei. The tremor was strong enough to topple two construction cranes from the 56th floor, then the highest. Five people died in the accident, but an inspection showed no structural damage to the building, and construction soon resumed.
Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers along with Evergreen Consulting Engineering designed a 660 tonnes (728 short tons)[14] steel pendulum that serves as a tuned mass damper, at a cost of NT$132 million (US$4 million).[15] Suspended from the 92nd to the 87th floor, the pendulum sways to offset movements in the building caused by strong gusts. Its sphere, the largest damper sphere in the world, consists of 41 circular steel plates, each with a height of 125 mm (4.92 in) being welded together to form a 5.5 m (18 ft) diameter sphere.[16] Another two tuned mass dampers, each weighing 6 tonnes (7 short tons),[15] sit at the tip of the spire. These prevent damage to the structure due to strong wind loads.
[edit]Structural facade
Taipei 101's characteristic blue-green glass curtain walls are double paned and glazed, offer heat and UV protection sufficient to block external heat by 50 percent, and can sustain impacts of 7 tonnes (8 short tons).[12] The facade system of glass and aluminum panels installed into an inclined moment-resisting lattices contributes to overall lateral rigidity by tying back to the mega-columns with one-story high trusses and at every eighth floor. This facade system is therefore able to withstand up to 95mm of seismic lateral displacements without damage.[17]
The original corners of the façade was tested at RWDI in Guelph, Ontario, Canada and revealed an alarming vortex that formed during a 3s 105 mph wind at a height of 10 meters (a 100-year-storm) simulation. This was equivalent to the lateral tower sway rate causing large crosswind oscillations. A double champfered step design was found to dramatically reduce this crosswind oscillation resulting in Taipei 101’s unique “double stairstep” corner façade. Architect C.Y. Lee also used extensive façade elements to represent the symbolic identity he pursued. These façade elements included the green tinted glass for the indigenous slender bamboo look, eight upper outwards inclined tiers of pagoda each with eight floors, A Ruyi and a money box symbol between the two façade sections among others.[18]
Taipei 101's own roof and façade recycled water system meets 20–30 percent of the building's water needs. These features culminated in Taipei 101 obtaining the honour of "the world's tallest green building" by LEED standards in July 2011.[19]
Taiwan,officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China now governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa), which makes up over 99% of its territory,[f] as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands...
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St Edmund, Southwold, Suffolk
I kept meaning to come back to Southwold - the church, I mean, for I found myself in the little town from time to time. I finally kept my promise to myself in the summer of 2017, tipping up on a beautiful sunny day only to find the church closed for extensive repairs. The days got shorter, and by the time the church reopened it was too late in the year for me to try again. In fact, it was not until late October 2018 that I made it back there, on another beautiful day.
Southwold is well-known to people who have never even been there I suppose, signifying one side of Suffolk to which Ipswich is perhaps the counter in the popular imagination. Some thirty years ago, the comedian Michael Palin made a film for television called East of Ipswich. It was a memoir of his childhood in the 1950s, and the basic comic premise behind the film was that in those days families would go on holiday to seaside resorts on the East Anglian coast. In the child Palin's case, it was Southwold.
The amusement came from the idea that people in those days would sit in deckchairs beside the grey north sea, or shelter from the drizzle in genteel teashops or the amusement arcade on the pier. In the Costa Brava package tour days of the 1980s, the quaintness of this image made it seem like something from a different world.
I remember Southwold in the 1980s. It was one of those agreeable little towns distant enough from anywhere bigger to maintain a life of its own. It still had its genteel tea shops, its dusty grocers, its quaint hotels and pubs all owned by Adnams, the old-fashioned and unfashionable local brewery. In the white heat of the Thatcherite cultural revolution, it seemed a place that would soon die on its feet quietly and peaceably.
And then, in the 1990s, the colour supplements discovered the East Anglian coast, and fell in love with it. The new fashions for antique-collecting, cooking with local produce and general country living, coupled with a snobbishness about how vulgar foreign package trips had become, conspired to make places like Southwold very sought after. Before Nigel Lawson's boom became a bust, the inflated house prices of London and the home counties gave people money to burn. And in their hoards, they came out of the big city to buy holiday homes in East Anglia.
Although they are often lumped together, the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk are very different to each other (Cambridgeshire and North Essex are also culturally part of East Anglia, but the North Essex coast is too close to London to have ever stopped being cheap and cheerful, and Cambridgeshire has no coastline). Norfolk's beaches are wide and sandy, with dunes and cliffs and rock pools to explore. Towns like Cromer and Hunstanton seem to have stepped out of the pages of the Ladybird Book of the Seaside. Tiny villages along the Norfolk coast have secret little beaches of their own.
Suffolk's coast is wilder. Beaches are mainly pebbles rather than sand, and the marshes stretch inland, cutting the coast off from the rest of the county. Unlike Norfolk, Suffolk has no coast road, and so the settlements on the coast are isolated from each other, stuck at the ends of narrow lanes which snake away from the A12 and peter out in the heathland above the sea. There are fewer of them too. It is still quicker to get from Walberswick to Southwold by water than by land. Because they are isolated from each other, they take on individual personalities and characteristics. Because they are isolated from the land, they become bastions of polite civilisation.
Between Felixstowe in the south, which no outsiders like (and consequently is the favourite of many Suffolk people) and Lowestoft in the north, which is basically an industrial town-on-sea (but which still has the county's best beaches - shhh, don't tell a soul) are half a dozen small towns that vie with each other for trendiness. Southwold is the biggest, and today it is also the most expensive place to live in all East Anglia. Genteel tea shops survive, but are increasingly shouldered by shops that specialise in ski-wear and Barbour jackets, delicatessens that stock radicchio and seventeen different kinds of olive, jewellery shops and kitchen gadget shops and antique furniture shops where prices are exquisitely painful. Worst of all, the homely, shabby, smoke-filled Sole Bay Inn under the lighthouse has been converted by the now-trendy Adnams Brewery into a chrome and glass filled wine bar.
If you see someone in Norfolk driving a truck, they are probably wearing a baseball cap and carrying a shotgun. in Suffolk, they've more likely just bought a Victorian pine dresser from an antique shop, and they're taking it back to Islington. Does this matter? The fishing industry was dying anyway. The tourist industry was also dying. If places like Southwold, Aldeburgh and Orford become outposts of north London, at least they will still provide jobs for local people. But the local people won't be able to afford to live there, of course. They'll be bussed in from Reydon, Leiston and Melton to provide services for people in holiday cottages which are the former homes they grew up in, but can no longer afford to buy. Does this seriously annoy me? Not as much as it does them, I'll bet.
So, lets go to Southwold, turning off the A12 at the great ship of Blythburgh church, the wide marshes of the River Blyth spreading aimlessly beyond the road. We climb and fall over ancient dunes, and then the road opens out into the flat marshes, the town spreads out beyond. We enter through Reydon (now actually bigger than Southwold, with houses at half the price) and over the bridge into the town of Southwold itself.
Having been so critical, I need to say here that Southwold is beautiful. It is quite the loveliest small town in all East Anglia. None of the half-timbered houses here that you find in places like Long Melford and Lavenham. Here, the town was completely destroyed by fire in the 17th century, and so we have fine 18th and 19th century municipal buildings. One of the legacies of the fire was the creation of wide open spaces just off of the high street, called greens. The best one of all is Gun Hill Green, overlooking the bay where the last major naval battle in British waters was fought. The cannons still point out to sea. The houses here are stunning, gobsmacking, jaw-droppingly wonderful. If I could afford to buy one of them as a weekend retreat, then you bet your life I would, and to hell with the people who moaned about it.
At the western end of the High Street is St Bartholomew's Green, and beyond it sits what is, for my money, Suffolk's single most impressive building. This is the great church of St Edmund, a vast edifice built all in one go in the second half of the 15th century. Only Lavenham can compete with it for scale and presence. Unlike the massing at St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham, St Edmund is defined by a long unbroken clerestory and aisles beneath - where St Peter and St Paul looks full of tension, ready to spring, St Edmund is languid and floating, a ship at ease.
Southwold church was just one of several vast late medieval rebuildings in this area. Across the river at Walberswick and a few miles upriver at Blythburgh the same thing happened. Blythburgh still survives, but Walberswick was derelicted to make a smaller church, as were Covehithe and Kessingland. Dunwich All Saints was lost to the sea. But Southwold was the biggest. Everything about it breathes massive permanence, from the solidity of the tower to the turreted porch, from the wide windows to the jaunty sanctus bell fleche.
Along the top of the aisles, grimacing faces look down. All of them are different. The pedestals atop the clerestory were intended for statues as at Blythburgh, but were probably never filled before the Reformation intervened. At the west end, above the great west window, you can see the vast inscription SAncT EDMUND ORA P: NOBIS ('Saint Edmund, pray for us') as bold a record of the mindset of late medieval East Anglian Catholicism as you'll find.
As at Lavenham and Long Melford, the interior has been extensively restored, but not in as heavy or blunt a manner as at those two churches. St Edmund has, it must be said, benefited from the attentions of German bombers who put out all the dull Victorian glass with blast damage during World War II. Here, the interior is vast, light and airy, and much of the restoration is 20th century work, not 19th century.
Perhaps because of this, more medieval interior features have survived. Unlike Long Melford, Southwold does not have surviving medieval glass (Mr Dowsing saw to that in 1644), but it does have what is the finest screen in the county.
It stretches right the way across the church, and is effectively three separate screens. There is a rood screen across the chancel arch, and parclose screens across the north and south chancel aisles. All retain their original dado figures. There are 36 of them, more than anywhere else in Suffolk. They have been restored, particularly in the central range, but are fascinating because they retain a lot of original gesso work, where plaster of Paris is applied to wood and allowed to dry. It is then carved to produce intricate details.
The central screen shows the eleven remaining disciples and St Paul. They are, from left to right, Philip, Bartholomew, James the Less, Thomas, Andrew, Peter, Paul, John, James, Simon, Jude and Matthew.
The south chancel chapel is light and open. The bosses above are said to represent Mary Tudor and her second husband Charles, Duke of Brandon. The screen here is painted with twelve Old Testament prophets, and Mortlock suggests that they are by a different hand to the images on the other two screens. Here on the south screen, some of the figures have surviving naming inscriptions, and Mortlock surmises that the complete sequence, from left to right, is Baruch, Hosea, Nahum, Jeremiah, Elias, Moses, David, Isaiah, Amos, Jonah and Ezekiel. Further, he observes that the subject is a usual one for the English Midlands, but rare for East Anglia, and that perhaps this part of the screen came from elsewhere. The same may be true of the other two parts - it is hard to think that the central screen was deliberately made too wide for the two arcades.
The north aisle chapel is reserved as the blessed sacrament chapel. The screen is harder to explore, because the northern side is curtailed by a large chest, but it features angels. Unlike the screens at Hitcham and Blundeston, which show angels holding instruments of the passion, these are the nine orders of angels, with Gabriel at their head, and flanked by angels holding symbols of the Trinity and the Eucharist. Mortlock says that they are so similar to the ones at Barton Turf in Norfolk that they may be by the same hand, in which case the central screen is also by that person. They are, from left to right, the Holy Trinity, Gabriel, Archangels, Powers, Dominions, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Virtues, Messengers, and finally the Eucharist. The Holy Trinity angel still has part of the original dedicatory inscription beneath his feet.
If part or all of this screen came from elsewhere, where did it come from? Possibly either Walberswick, Covehithe or Kessingland, the three downsized churches mentioned earlier. More excitingly, it might have come from one of the churches along this coast that was lost to the sea, perhaps neighbouring St Nicholas at Easton Bavents, or, just to the south, St Peter or St John the Baptist, the two Dunwich churches lost in the 16th and 17th centuries. We'll never know.
If you turn back at the screen and face westwards, your eyes are automatically drawn to the towering font cover, part of the extensive 1930s redecoration of the building. The clerestory is almost like a glass atrium intended to house it. Also the work of the period is the repainting and regilding of the 15th century pulpit (a lot of people blanch at this, but I think it is gorgeous) and the lectern. Beneath the font cover, the font is clearly one of the rare seven sacraments series, and part of the same group as Westhall, Blythburgh and Wenhaston. As at Blythburgh and Wenhaston, the panels are completely erased, probably in the 19th century, an act of barbarous vandalism. Given that Westhall is probably the best of all in the county, we must assume that three major medieval art treasures were wiped out. Astonishingly, vague shadows survive of the former reliefs; you can easily make out the Mass panel, facing east as at Westhall, the Penance panel and even what may be the Baptism of Christ.
Stepping through the screen, the reredos ahead is by Benedict Williamson and the glass above by Ninian Comper, familiar names in the Anglo-catholic pantheon, and evidence of an enthusiasm here that still survives in High Church form. There is a good engraved glass image of St Edmund to the north of the sanctuary, very much in the 1960s fashion, but curiously placed. On the wall of the chancel to the west of it, the high organ case is also painted and gilded enthusiastically.
As well as the screen, Southwold's other great medieval survival is the set of return stalls either side of the eastern face of the chancel screen. They have misericord seats, but the best feature are the handrests between the seats. On the south side, carvings include a man with a horn-shaped hat and sinners being drawn into the mouth of hell. On the north side are a man playing two pipes, a monkey preaching and a beaver biting its own genitals, a tale from the medieval bestiary, apparently.
What else is there to see? Well, the church is full of delights, and rewards further visits which always seem to turn up something previously unnoticed. St George rides full tilt at a dragon on an old chest at the west end of the north aisle. There is good 19th century glass in the porch and at the west end of the nave. A clock jack stands, axe and bell in hand, at the west end, a twin to the one upriver at Blythburgh. This one has a name, he's called Southwold Jack, and he is one of the symbols of the Adnams brewery.
As Mortlock notes, there are very few surviving memorials. This is partly because St Edmund was not in the patronage of a great landed family, but it may also suggest that they were largely removed at the time of the 19th century restoration, as at Brandon. One moving one is for the child of a vicar, and there are some interesting pre-Oxford Movement 19th century brasses in the south aisle.
High, high above all this, the roofs are models of Anglo-Catholic melodrama, the canopy of honour to the rood and the chancel ceilure in particular. But there is a warmth about it all that is missing from, say, Eye, which underwent a similar makeover. This church feels full of life, and not a museum piece at all. I remember attending evensong here late one winter Saturday afternoon, and it was magical. On another visit, I came on one of the first days of spring that was truly warm and bright, with not a cloud in the sky. As we drove into town, a cold fret off of the sea was condensing the steam of the brewery, sending it in swirls and skeins around the tower of St Edmund like low cloud. It was so atmospheric that I almost forgave them for what they have done to the Sole Bay Inn.
One of the real pleasures of Flickr is finding out so much more about the areas you thought you knew.
I have been to Wymondham a few times, delivered beer to a hotel (more of that another time) and a friend used to run the Railway Inn near the station, but I hadn't really explored the town.
But having seen a friend's shots, I really thought I should go back and look at it anew. And then there was this building, the Abbey Church with two towers, ruins and all the associated history.
Whatever you think of the works inside, it is as a complete building, something to leave me, at least, in awe at the beauty. Of course, it might not please everyone, but it does me.
Many thanks to Sarah and Richard for taking me here.
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This massive church and its famous twin towers will be familiar to anyone who has ever been within five miles of Wymondham, pronounced Win-d'm; its presence always there above the roof tops, and still there on the horizon when the rooftops can no longer be seen. Closer to, it is like a mighty city on a hill. It is often referred to as Wymondham Abbey, which isn't entirely correct; but there was an Abbey here, and you can see a scattering of remains in the fields between the church and the river, gradually reduced over the centuries as the stone and rubble were taken away for use elsewhere.
We came to Wymondham on a day that was breathtakingly cold; although the temperature was hovering around freezing, there was a biting east wind that made it feel colder still. Hence, the clarity of the light in the photographs above. The top photograph, taken from the south on the far bank of the river, is worth a second glance, because it provides a number of clues as to how this extraordinary and magnificent building came to be the way it is today.
In the beginning, there was a Benedictine Priory, an offshoot of the Abbey of St Albans. It was founded here because, after the Conquest, William I granted the lands of Wymondham to the Duc d'Albini, and the Duke's brother was Abbot of St Albans. Part of the project consisted of building a massive Priory church, much bigger than the one you see today. In style, it was like the Abbey church of Bury St Edmund, or Ely Cathedral. It was a cruciform church about 70 metres long, and had twin west towers - you can see something similar today at Kings Lynn St Margaret. As at St Margaret, there was a third tower above the central crossing, the chancel extending a long way eastwards, and transepts that were as tall as the nave roof. It was completed during the 12th century.
You can see a surviving trace of the south-west tower in the photograph above. The base of its northern wall rises above the roofline at the western end of the clerestory, just beside the current west tower. The central crossing tower, however, was built to the east of the current east tower, the chancel extending eastwards beyond it.
D'Albini intended the church to serve the parish as well as the Priory, but this was not managed without recourse to the advice of Pope Innocent IV, who granted the people use of the nave and the north aisle, the Priory retaining the south aisle, transepts and chancel.
However, when the central crossing tower became unsafe in the late 14th century and had to be taken down, the Priory rebuilt it to the west of the crossing, actually within the nave. This is the east tower that you see today, now a shell. In turn, the parish extended the church further west, demolishing the two west towers and replacing them with the massive structure you see today. It really is huge; although it is not as tall as the church tower at Cromer, its solidity lends it a vastness not sensed there.
When the new east tower was built, the western face of it cut off the nave from the chancel, creating two separate spaces. When the west tower was built, it blocked off the former west window between the old towers. Because of this, Wymondham is the only medieval parish church in Norfolk, and one of the few in England, that has no window at either end.
Wymondham Priory became an Abbey in 1448, and seems to have lived its final century peaceably enough before being closed and asset-stripped by Henry VIII in the 1530s. The church then became solely the charge of the parish; the eastern parts, apart from the tower, were demolished.
Still without parapet or panelling, the west tower was never finished; but it features in the turbulent history of mid 16th century England because William Kett, one of the leaders of Kett's Rebellion, was hung from the top of it by Edward VI's thought police, a reminder of just how closely church and state became allied during the Reformation. It did give me pause for thought - hanging your enemy from a church tower seems such an obvious thing to do when you want to make a point. I wonder just how many more times it happened to less notable victims over the centuries, on church towers up and down the land?
You enter today through the great north porch, which is similar to that nearby at Hethersett, even to the extent of having an almost identical series of bosses. They depict rosary scenes in the life of Christ and the Blessed Virgin.
As I said, we came here on a spectacularly cold day, but I was delighted to discover that the interior of the church was heated, even on a Saturday. The church attracts a considerable number of visitors, as you might expect; but I still thought this was a nice gesture.
Wymondham church is above all else an architectural wonder; but in many ways this is a simple building, easy to explore and satisfying to visit. It has the feel of a small Anglican cathedral in that there is a pleasing mix of ancient Norman architecture and modern Anglican triumphalism; as in a cathedral, there are open spaces, and the old pews have been replaced with modern chairs, which almost always seems to work well. The glorious arcading, triforium and clerestory create a sense of great height; this, coupled with the lack of east or west windows, can make you feel rather boxed in, but I found I quite liked that; it made the place seem more intimate, despite its size.
The modern, triumphant feel to the place is largely owing to the vast reredos by Ninian Comper. This is generally considered to be his finest single work, and forms the parish war memorial. It was built and gilded during the 1920s and 1930s, and you have to say it is magnificent. It consists of three tiers of saints, with a glorious Christ in Majesty topping the tiers under the great tester. It was never completed; the space where the retable should be is now hidden by curtains.
The rood and beam, a bay to the west, is also Comper's work, and it is hard to conceive that work of this kind and to this scale will ever again be installed in an English church. The low sun, slanting through the south windows of the clerestory, picked out the gilding, and clever lighting from underneath helped to put Comper's vision of Heaven into practice. The row of candlesticks on the altar leaves you in no doubt in which wing of the Church of England Wymondham finds itself.
Comper's glory shouldn't distract you from the early 16th century facade above the sedilia. It is terracotta, and probably from the same workshop as the Bedingfield tombs at Oxborough. Here you see what might have happened to English church architecture if theReformation hadn't intervened. Looking west from the sanctuary, the original west window is clearly discernible, now home to the organ.
If Comper's work is a little rich for you, you may prefer the north aisle, which is wide enough to be a church in itself. Cleared of clutter, a few rows of chairs face a gorgeous early 20th century triptych depicting Mary and John at the foot of the cross. The Madonna and child towards the west is also Comper's, but the 1930s towering font cover on the typical East Anglian 15th century font is not; it is by Cecil Upcher. The south aisle is truncated, the eastern bays now curtained off; but here are the few medieval survivals in glass. From slightly later, but the other side of the Reformation divide, is an Elizabethan text on the arcade. It probably marks the point to which the pulpit was moved by the Anglicans in the 16th century.
St Mary and St Thomas of Canterbury is a church that it is easy to admire, and it certainly impressed me. Perhaps, it is not so easy a building to love. Inevitably, there is something rather urban in its grandeur, and even the warmth of the heating couldn't take the edge off the remoteness and anonymity you inevitably find in such a space.
However, the friendliness of the people on duty helped to make up for this. The area beneath the west tower has been converted into a shop, and the nice lady working there was very chatty and helpful. I have to say that I think it would concentrate my mind a bit, knowing that mighty weight was above me. The shop itself is good of its kind, selling books and religious items rather than just souvenirs, and more icons and rosaries than you would normally expect to find in an establishment of the Church of England.
The lady said that she was a Methodist really, and found the services rather formal, but she'd started coming to the Abbey because her daughter went there. "You ought to come, Mum, we're just like real Catholics!", she giggled, as she recalled her daughter's words. As a 'real Catholic' myself, I couldn't help thinking that we would have stripped out Comper's reredos long ago, and Masses would be accompanied by guitars and percussion, possibly with a modicum of clapping and the help of an overhead projector screen; but I kept my counsel.
Simon Knott, January 2006
Roof boss in the 14th century vault of the nave.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
In my series “Golden Rocks”, I invite you to explore the subtle, intimate beauty of nature, where the raw material of the rocks rises majestically in contrast to the softness of the sky, light and sea.
Through my images, I've sought to capture the delicate harmony between the solidity of the golden rocks and the lightness of the nuances that surround them. Each shot reveals a dialogue between rough textures and peaceful reflections, a silent dance between earth and sky.
“Golden Rocks” offers a soothing contemplation, inviting us to appreciate the richness of detail and the serenity of these landscapes shaped by time.
Wymondham Pron. Win-dum Abbey.
when the central crossing tower became unsafe in the late 14th century and had to be taken down, the Priory rebuilt it to the west of the crossing, actually within the nave. This is the east tower that you see today, now a shell. In turn, the parish extended the church further west, demolishing the two west towers and replacing them with the massive structure you see today. It really is huge; although it is not as tall as the church tower at Cromer, its solidity lends it a vastness not sensed there.
east tower: looking up When the new east tower was built, the western face of it cut off the nave from the chancel, creating two separate spaces. When the west tower was built, it blocked off the former west window between the old towers. Because of this, Wymondham is the only medieval parish church in Norfolk, and one of the few in England, that has no window at either end.
"http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/wymondham/wymondhamcofe.htm"
(Flickr Interestingness no. 372 on 25th March, 2008.)
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Perhaps this is the point to thank you all for your support over this latest Project.
The next Project to start in a few days time will be in Italy:
"Project:- Italy - Rome"
Rome is a huge place with a tremendous wealth of sites to explore, that this trip is but a taster. I hope, one day, to return and explore just a little bit more! - but do come and see what I found this time!
Oil on canvas; 63 x 41 cm.
Massimo Campigli, born Max Ihlenfeld, was an Italian painter and journalist. He was born in Berlin, but spent most of his childhood in Florence. His family moved to Milan in 1909, and here he worked on the Letteratura magazine, frequenting avant-garde circles and making the acquaintance of Boccioni and Carrà. During World War I Campigli was captured and deported to Hungary where he remained a prisoner of war from 1916–18. At the end of the war he moved to Paris where he worked as foreign correspondent for the Milanese daily newspaper. Although he had already produced some drawings, it was only after he arrived in Paris that he started to paint. At the Café du Dôme he consorted with artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini and Filippo De Pisis. Extended visits to the Louvre deepened Campigli's interest in ancient Egyptian art.
His first figurative works applied geometrical designs to the human figure, reflecting the influence of Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger as well as the Purism of "L’Esprit Nouveau". In 1923, he organized his first personal exhibition at the Bragaglia Gallery in Rome. During the next five years his figures developed a monumental quality, often with stylized poses and the limbs interwoven into a sculptural solidity. The importance given to order and tradition, the atmosphere of serenity and eternity were in line with the post-war reconstruction and the program of the “Twentieth Century” artists with whom Campigli frequently exhibited both in Milan from 1926–29 and abroad from 1927–31. In 1926 he joined the "Paris Italians" together with Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, Renato Paresce, Savinio, Severini and Mario Tozzi. In 1928, year of his debut at the Venice Biennial, he was very much taken by the Etruscan collection when visiting the National Etruscan Museum in Rome. He then broke away from the compact severity of his previous works in favor of a plane with subdued tones and schematic forms rich in archaisms.
During a journey in Romania he started a new cycle of works portraying women employed in domestic tasks and agricultural labor. These figures were arranged in asymmetrical and hieratic compositions, hovering on a rough textured plane, inspired by ancient fresco. These works were enthusiastically received by the critics at the exhibition held in the Jeanne Bucher gallery, Paris, in 1929 and at the Milione Gallery, Milan, in 1931. During the ‘thirties he held a series of solo exhibitions in New York, Paris and Milan which brought him international acclaim. In 1933 Campigli returned to Milan where he worked on projects of vast dimensions. In the same year he signed Mario Sironi’s Mural Art Manifesto and painted a fresco of mothers, country-women, working women, for the V Milan Triennial which unfortunately was later destroyed. In the following ten years other works were commissioned: I costruttori ("The builders") for the Geneva League of Nations in 1937; Non uccidere ("Do not kill") for the Milan Courts of Justice in 1938, an enormous 300 square metre fresco for the entrance hall, designed by Gio Ponti, of the Liviano, Padua which he painted during 1939–40. He spent the war years in Milan and in Venice, then after the war they divided his time between Rome, Paris and Saint-Tropez. In a personal exhibition at the Venice Biennial in 1948 he displayed his new compositions: female figures inserted in complicated architectonic structures. During the 60s his figures were reduced to colored markings in a group of almost abstract canvasses. In 1967 a retrospective exhibition was dedicated to Campigli at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.
St Edmund, Southwold, Suffolk
I kept meaning to come back to Southwold - the church, I mean, for I found myself in the little town from time to time. I finally kept my promise to myself in the summer of 2017, tipping up on a beautiful sunny day only to find the church closed for extensive repairs. The days got shorter, and by the time the church reopened it was too late in the year for me to try again. In fact, it was not until late October 2018 that I made it back there, on another beautiful day.
Southwold is well-known to people who have never even been there I suppose, signifying one side of Suffolk to which Ipswich is perhaps the counter in the popular imagination. Some thirty years ago, the comedian Michael Palin made a film for television called East of Ipswich. It was a memoir of his childhood in the 1950s, and the basic comic premise behind the film was that in those days families would go on holiday to seaside resorts on the East Anglian coast. In the child Palin's case, it was Southwold.
The amusement came from the idea that people in those days would sit in deckchairs beside the grey north sea, or shelter from the drizzle in genteel teashops or the amusement arcade on the pier. In the Costa Brava package tour days of the 1980s, the quaintness of this image made it seem like something from a different world.
I remember Southwold in the 1980s. It was one of those agreeable little towns distant enough from anywhere bigger to maintain a life of its own. It still had its genteel tea shops, its dusty grocers, its quaint hotels and pubs all owned by Adnams, the old-fashioned and unfashionable local brewery. In the white heat of the Thatcherite cultural revolution, it seemed a place that would soon die on its feet quietly and peaceably.
And then, in the 1990s, the colour supplements discovered the East Anglian coast, and fell in love with it. The new fashions for antique-collecting, cooking with local produce and general country living, coupled with a snobbishness about how vulgar foreign package trips had become, conspired to make places like Southwold very sought after. Before Nigel Lawson's boom became a bust, the inflated house prices of London and the home counties gave people money to burn. And in their hoards, they came out of the big city to buy holiday homes in East Anglia.
Although they are often lumped together, the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk are very different to each other (Cambridgeshire and North Essex are also culturally part of East Anglia, but the North Essex coast is too close to London to have ever stopped being cheap and cheerful, and Cambridgeshire has no coastline). Norfolk's beaches are wide and sandy, with dunes and cliffs and rock pools to explore. Towns like Cromer and Hunstanton seem to have stepped out of the pages of the Ladybird Book of the Seaside. Tiny villages along the Norfolk coast have secret little beaches of their own.
Suffolk's coast is wilder. Beaches are mainly pebbles rather than sand, and the marshes stretch inland, cutting the coast off from the rest of the county. Unlike Norfolk, Suffolk has no coast road, and so the settlements on the coast are isolated from each other, stuck at the ends of narrow lanes which snake away from the A12 and peter out in the heathland above the sea. There are fewer of them too. It is still quicker to get from Walberswick to Southwold by water than by land. Because they are isolated from each other, they take on individual personalities and characteristics. Because they are isolated from the land, they become bastions of polite civilisation.
Between Felixstowe in the south, which no outsiders like (and consequently is the favourite of many Suffolk people) and Lowestoft in the north, which is basically an industrial town-on-sea (but which still has the county's best beaches - shhh, don't tell a soul) are half a dozen small towns that vie with each other for trendiness. Southwold is the biggest, and today it is also the most expensive place to live in all East Anglia. Genteel tea shops survive, but are increasingly shouldered by shops that specialise in ski-wear and Barbour jackets, delicatessens that stock radicchio and seventeen different kinds of olive, jewellery shops and kitchen gadget shops and antique furniture shops where prices are exquisitely painful. Worst of all, the homely, shabby, smoke-filled Sole Bay Inn under the lighthouse has been converted by the now-trendy Adnams Brewery into a chrome and glass filled wine bar.
If you see someone in Norfolk driving a truck, they are probably wearing a baseball cap and carrying a shotgun. in Suffolk, they've more likely just bought a Victorian pine dresser from an antique shop, and they're taking it back to Islington. Does this matter? The fishing industry was dying anyway. The tourist industry was also dying. If places like Southwold, Aldeburgh and Orford become outposts of north London, at least they will still provide jobs for local people. But the local people won't be able to afford to live there, of course. They'll be bussed in from Reydon, Leiston and Melton to provide services for people in holiday cottages which are the former homes they grew up in, but can no longer afford to buy. Does this seriously annoy me? Not as much as it does them, I'll bet.
So, lets go to Southwold, turning off the A12 at the great ship of Blythburgh church, the wide marshes of the River Blyth spreading aimlessly beyond the road. We climb and fall over ancient dunes, and then the road opens out into the flat marshes, the town spreads out beyond. We enter through Reydon (now actually bigger than Southwold, with houses at half the price) and over the bridge into the town of Southwold itself.
Having been so critical, I need to say here that Southwold is beautiful. It is quite the loveliest small town in all East Anglia. None of the half-timbered houses here that you find in places like Long Melford and Lavenham. Here, the town was completely destroyed by fire in the 17th century, and so we have fine 18th and 19th century municipal buildings. One of the legacies of the fire was the creation of wide open spaces just off of the high street, called greens. The best one of all is Gun Hill Green, overlooking the bay where the last major naval battle in British waters was fought. The cannons still point out to sea. The houses here are stunning, gobsmacking, jaw-droppingly wonderful. If I could afford to buy one of them as a weekend retreat, then you bet your life I would, and to hell with the people who moaned about it.
At the western end of the High Street is St Bartholomew's Green, and beyond it sits what is, for my money, Suffolk's single most impressive building. This is the great church of St Edmund, a vast edifice built all in one go in the second half of the 15th century. Only Lavenham can compete with it for scale and presence. Unlike the massing at St Peter and St Paul at Lavenham, St Edmund is defined by a long unbroken clerestory and aisles beneath - where St Peter and St Paul looks full of tension, ready to spring, St Edmund is languid and floating, a ship at ease.
Southwold church was just one of several vast late medieval rebuildings in this area. Across the river at Walberswick and a few miles upriver at Blythburgh the same thing happened. Blythburgh still survives, but Walberswick was derelicted to make a smaller church, as were Covehithe and Kessingland. Dunwich All Saints was lost to the sea. But Southwold was the biggest. Everything about it breathes massive permanence, from the solidity of the tower to the turreted porch, from the wide windows to the jaunty sanctus bell fleche.
Along the top of the aisles, grimacing faces look down. All of them are different. The pedestals atop the clerestory were intended for statues as at Blythburgh, but were probably never filled before the Reformation intervened. At the west end, above the great west window, you can see the vast inscription SAncT EDMUND ORA P: NOBIS ('Saint Edmund, pray for us') as bold a record of the mindset of late medieval East Anglian Catholicism as you'll find.
As at Lavenham and Long Melford, the interior has been extensively restored, but not in as heavy or blunt a manner as at those two churches. St Edmund has, it must be said, benefited from the attentions of German bombers who put out all the dull Victorian glass with blast damage during World War II. Here, the interior is vast, light and airy, and much of the restoration is 20th century work, not 19th century.
Perhaps because of this, more medieval interior features have survived. Unlike Long Melford, Southwold does not have surviving medieval glass (Mr Dowsing saw to that in 1644), but it does have what is the finest screen in the county.
It stretches right the way across the church, and is effectively three separate screens. There is a rood screen across the chancel arch, and parclose screens across the north and south chancel aisles. All retain their original dado figures. There are 36 of them, more than anywhere else in Suffolk. They have been restored, particularly in the central range, but are fascinating because they retain a lot of original gesso work, where plaster of Paris is applied to wood and allowed to dry. It is then carved to produce intricate details.
The central screen shows the eleven remaining disciples and St Paul. They are, from left to right, Philip, Bartholomew, James the Less, Thomas, Andrew, Peter, Paul, John, James, Simon, Jude and Matthew.
The south chancel chapel is light and open. The bosses above are said to represent Mary Tudor and her second husband Charles, Duke of Brandon. The screen here is painted with twelve Old Testament prophets, and Mortlock suggests that they are by a different hand to the images on the other two screens. Here on the south screen, some of the figures have surviving naming inscriptions, and Mortlock surmises that the complete sequence, from left to right, is Baruch, Hosea, Nahum, Jeremiah, Elias, Moses, David, Isaiah, Amos, Jonah and Ezekiel. Further, he observes that the subject is a usual one for the English Midlands, but rare for East Anglia, and that perhaps this part of the screen came from elsewhere. The same may be true of the other two parts - it is hard to think that the central screen was deliberately made too wide for the two arcades.
The north aisle chapel is reserved as the blessed sacrament chapel. The screen is harder to explore, because the northern side is curtailed by a large chest, but it features angels. Unlike the screens at Hitcham and Blundeston, which show angels holding instruments of the passion, these are the nine orders of angels, with Gabriel at their head, and flanked by angels holding symbols of the Trinity and the Eucharist. Mortlock says that they are so similar to the ones at Barton Turf in Norfolk that they may be by the same hand, in which case the central screen is also by that person. They are, from left to right, the Holy Trinity, Gabriel, Archangels, Powers, Dominions, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Virtues, Messengers, and finally the Eucharist. The Holy Trinity angel still has part of the original dedicatory inscription beneath his feet.
If part or all of this screen came from elsewhere, where did it come from? Possibly either Walberswick, Covehithe or Kessingland, the three downsized churches mentioned earlier. More excitingly, it might have come from one of the churches along this coast that was lost to the sea, perhaps neighbouring St Nicholas at Easton Bavents, or, just to the south, St Peter or St John the Baptist, the two Dunwich churches lost in the 16th and 17th centuries. We'll never know.
If you turn back at the screen and face westwards, your eyes are automatically drawn to the towering font cover, part of the extensive 1930s redecoration of the building. The clerestory is almost like a glass atrium intended to house it. Also the work of the period is the repainting and regilding of the 15th century pulpit (a lot of people blanch at this, but I think it is gorgeous) and the lectern. Beneath the font cover, the font is clearly one of the rare seven sacraments series, and part of the same group as Westhall, Blythburgh and Wenhaston. As at Blythburgh and Wenhaston, the panels are completely erased, probably in the 19th century, an act of barbarous vandalism. Given that Westhall is probably the best of all in the county, we must assume that three major medieval art treasures were wiped out. Astonishingly, vague shadows survive of the former reliefs; you can easily make out the Mass panel, facing east as at Westhall, the Penance panel and even what may be the Baptism of Christ.
Stepping through the screen, the reredos ahead is by Benedict Williamson and the glass above by Ninian Comper, familiar names in the Anglo-catholic pantheon, and evidence of an enthusiasm here that still survives in High Church form. There is a good engraved glass image of St Edmund to the north of the sanctuary, very much in the 1960s fashion, but curiously placed. On the wall of the chancel to the west of it, the high organ case is also painted and gilded enthusiastically.
As well as the screen, Southwold's other great medieval survival is the set of return stalls either side of the eastern face of the chancel screen. They have misericord seats, but the best feature are the handrests between the seats. On the south side, carvings include a man with a horn-shaped hat and sinners being drawn into the mouth of hell. On the north side are a man playing two pipes, a monkey preaching and a beaver biting its own genitals, a tale from the medieval bestiary, apparently.
What else is there to see? Well, the church is full of delights, and rewards further visits which always seem to turn up something previously unnoticed. St George rides full tilt at a dragon on an old chest at the west end of the north aisle. There is good 19th century glass in the porch and at the west end of the nave. A clock jack stands, axe and bell in hand, at the west end, a twin to the one upriver at Blythburgh. This one has a name, he's called Southwold Jack, and he is one of the symbols of the Adnams brewery.
As Mortlock notes, there are very few surviving memorials. This is partly because St Edmund was not in the patronage of a great landed family, but it may also suggest that they were largely removed at the time of the 19th century restoration, as at Brandon. One moving one is for the child of a vicar, and there are some interesting pre-Oxford Movement 19th century brasses in the south aisle.
High, high above all this, the roofs are models of Anglo-Catholic melodrama, the canopy of honour to the rood and the chancel ceilure in particular. But there is a warmth about it all that is missing from, say, Eye, which underwent a similar makeover. This church feels full of life, and not a museum piece at all. I remember attending evensong here late one winter Saturday afternoon, and it was magical. On another visit, I came on one of the first days of spring that was truly warm and bright, with not a cloud in the sky. As we drove into town, a cold fret off of the sea was condensing the steam of the brewery, sending it in swirls and skeins around the tower of St Edmund like low cloud. It was so atmospheric that I almost forgave them for what they have done to the Sole Bay Inn.
One of the signs that our practice is beginning to unfold is that we get a sense of what St. Isaac the Syrian calls “sweetness.” Something deeper begins to attract us, and this something deeper is more spacious, alluring, and silent than the tediously dramatic opera scores of inner chatter. The inner chatter will be present, but its grip on our attention loosens. It is as though this mass of thoughts and feelings was a brick wall that once obstructed our vision. But gradually we see that the sense of this wall’s solidity is a creation of our identification with these thoughts and feelings. It is not a wall after all but a window.
-A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation by Martin Laird
THE STATUE WAS COMMISSIONED AS A TRIBUTE TO THE BRAVERY OF THOSE WHO WORKED IN THE GREAT LAXEY MINES HAS BEEN UNVEILED IN THE ISLE OF MAN.
THE ONE-TONNE STONE STRUCTURE, WHICH HAS BEEN ERECTED ON A PLINTH IN THE HEART OF LAXEY, WAS MADE IN BALI BY SCULPTOR ONGKY WIJANA.
CO-ORDINATOR IVOR HANKINSON SAID THE STATUE IS DEDICATED TO THE MINERS WHO WORKED IN VERY DIFFICULT CONDITIONS.
THE GREAT LAXEY MINE EMPLOYED MORE THAN 600 MINERS BETWEEN 1825 AND 1929.
AT ITS PEAK, IT PRODUCED A FIFTH OF ZINC EXTRACTED IN THE UK.
MR HANKINSON ADDED: "THEY WERE AN EXTREMELY HARDY MEN, VERY TOUGH INDEED AND THE SCULPTOR HAS MANAGED TO CONVEY THAT IN HIS WORK VERY EFFECTIVELY.
"WE HAVE ALSO HAD A PLAQUE MADE IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DOWN THE MINES".
ABOUT 30 MEN WERE KILLED IN MINING ACCIDENTS BETWEEN THE YEARS OF 1831 AND 1912.
SOME DROWNED, SOME WERE CRUSHED IN ROCK FALLS AND OTHERS DIED IN DYNAMITE EXPLOSIONS.
"THE WORKING CONDITIONS WERE INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT," SAID MR HANKINSON.
"SOME OF THE MEN HAD TO WALK MILES TO GET TO WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE. ONCE THERE, THEY HAD A TWO-HOUR JOURNEY ON LADDERS DOWN INTO THE MINES - SOME OF THE SHAFTS WERE A THIRD OF A MILE DEEP."
SCULPTOR ONKY WIJANA SAID HE WANTED TO CAPTURE THE STRENGTH AND DETERMINATION OF THE LAXEY MINERS
THE STATUE, CARVED FROM A FIVE-TONE BLOCK OF CARLOW BLUE LIMESTONE, TOOK MR WIJANA 10 MONTHS TO COMPLETE IN HIS STUDIO IN BANJAR SILAKARANG, INDONESIA.
"THESE GUYS WERE TOUGH BUT OFTEN LOOKED WEATHER-BEATEN, SUNKEN-CHEEKED AND WORN OUT," SAID MR WIJANA.
"HOWEVER, THEY ALSO HAD A SOLIDITY TO THEM AND ALWAYS A DETERMINATION IN THEIR EYES THAT I WANTED TO CAPTURE."
ONCE ERECTED ON ITS PLINTH, THE STONE MINER STATUE STANDS 13FT (4M) HIGH.
5th Platonic Solid - The Ether - Geometric Representation of the higher dimensions and crystalline consciousness grid our earth is surrounded by.
See Wiki for more details:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid
The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. Ornamented models of them can be found among the carved stone balls created by the late neolithic people of Scotland at least 1000 years before Plato (Atiyah and Sutcliffe 2003). Dice go back to the dawn of civilization with shapes that augured formal charting of Platonic solids.
The ancient Greeks studied the Platonic solids extensively. Some sources (such as Proclus) credit Pythagoras with their discovery. Other evidence suggests he may have only been familiar with the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron, and that the discovery of the octahedron and icosahedron belong to Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. In any case, Theaetetus gave a mathematical description of all five and may have been responsible for the first known proof that there are no other convex regular polyhedra.
The Platonic solids feature prominently in the philosophy of Plato for whom they are named. Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly un-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents earth. These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up, in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the solidity of the Earth was believed to be due to the fact that the cube is the only regular solid that tesselates Euclidean space. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, "...the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithêr (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid
To the south of the high altar stands the chantry chapel of Edward le Despenser (d.1375) opposite the tomb of his father. Edward's effigy is unique, a kneeling, praying figure with its original colouring set beneath a canopy on the roof of the chapel (best viewed from the opposite side of the sanctuary). Within the chapel has a delicate fan-vaulted ceiling and a well preserved mural of the Trinity.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
The columns of the temple are Doric in style with twenty flutings, which are c. 0.206 m. wide at the bottom. The columns are monolithic and the material is the rough native limestone of the neighborhood. The greatest diameter of the columns at the west end is 1.72 m., while those at the side measure only 1.63 m. The mean height of the column to the swell of the capital is 6.50 m., while the thickness of capital is 0,72 m. The total height is 7,22 m. The columns at the top have a diameter of only 1.29 m., and this great entasis and the flat building of the capitals give the appearance of great solidity to the structure. These measurements give massive proportions.
The abacus of the columns on the west end has a surface 2.25 m. square ca.
Source: Benjamin Powell, “The Temple of Apollo at Corinth” - American Journal of Archaeology
Doric Archaic temple
About 560 BC
Corinth, Pelopponese
The maquis, bars, dance halls and restaurants occupy a significant place in the social life of the Burkinabés. Suppose the offer is very abundant in Ouagadougou. In that case, it also tends to develop quickly in the city's outskirts to attract city dwellers looking for tranquillity and freshness.
The origin of Cabri de Loumbila dates back to the early 1990s when a couple of young French people raised goats and produced cheese according to the tradition of their country of origin. Following their return to France, the activity was taken over by a Burkinabè promoter. The site moved about a hundred meters to a plot of land adjoining the "Loumbila Beach" leisure park. Over the years, investments have been made, notably in providing bungalow accommodation.
One of the originalities of the maquis was the presence of traditional, entirely biodegradable furniture. For environmental preservation reasons, importing this type of craftwork outside the production areas has become difficult. As a result, it tends to disappear despite its great originality and solidity.
Les maquis, bars, dancings et restaurant occupent une place très importante dans la vis sociale des burkinabés. Si l'offre est très abondante à Ouagadougou, elle a également tendance à très rapidement se développer dans les périphéries de la ville dans l'objectif d'attirer les citadins en quête de tranquillité et de fraîcheur.
L'origine du Cabri de Loumbila remonte au début des années 1990 lorsqu'un couple de jeunes français entreprennent l'initiative d'élever des chèvres et de produire du fromage selon la tradition de leur pays d'origine. Suite à leur retour en France, l'activité a été reprise par un promoteur burkinabè et le site déplacé d'une centaine de mètres sur une parcelle jouxtant le parc de loisirs "Loumbila Beach". Au fil des années, des investissements ont été réalisés avec notamment la proposition d'hébergements en bungalows.
L'une des originalités du maquis était la présence d'un mobilier traditionnel entièèrement biodégradable. Pour des raisons de préservation de l'environnement, il est devenu difficile d'importer ce type d'artisanat en dehors des zones de production. Du coup, il a tendance à disparaître malgré sa grande originalité et sa solidité.
(In English Below)
Enfin complet !
Le Tie Crawler Version 2. Je préfère cette version.
Un de Tie mes préférés, encore une fois par son côté ridicule et peu pratique.
Le Tie Crawler (aussi connu comme Tie Century ou Tie Tank) est un véhicule blindé léger. Armé de deux blasters Tie classique, et d’un blaster anti-personnel (donc plus léger). Un seul pilote qui fait aussi office de tireur.
Idées dans le Lore
Il était simple à produire, et c’est à peu près tout. J’ai aussi le souvenir d’avoir lu quelque part que les recrues de l’Empire échouant au test pour devenir pilote de chasseur Tie, pouvaient se reconvertir plus facilement en pilote de Tie Crawler. Mais je n’ai pas pu retrouver la source. Et de toute façon l’idée que ce soit plus facile de devenir pilote de char plutôt que pilote de cargo quand on échoue à devenir pilote de chasse est stupide.
Limites
Tel que décrit, l’engin est limité. Les armes sont trop basses. Les deux blasters de Tie classique ne peuvent pas pivoter et du fait de son emplacement, le blaster antipersonnel ne peut pas pivoter verticalement avec un angle très grand. Les trois sont donc quasi inutiles sur n’importe quel terrain accidenté. De plus, la forme des chenilles me fait dire qu’un bloc de béton, d’environ un mètre de haut, suffirait à bloquer le Tie. Et puis c’est un Tie, donc pas de bouclier énergétique, donc peu blindé. L’unique pilote est à la merci de n’importe quel armement anti-char ou chasseur spatial. Il a aussi un gros point faible évident : les quatre réservoirs visibles de fuel. Bon déjà, c’est un point faible évident que n’importe quel rebelle mal armé essaiera de viser. Mais aussi, pourquoi les avoir mis là ? Vous avez vu la taille des chenilles ? Et la tailles des réservoirs ? Il suffisait de les mettre quelque part dans les chenilles où ils auraient été mieux protégés, mais aussi plus proche des moteurs. Sans compter qu’en cas d’explosion, les éloigner un peu du pilote augmenterait ses chances de survie. Et l’Empire a à cœur la sécurité de ses employés…
Amélioration de Lego 7664
Lego a amélioré le concept en rendant les ailes pivotantes et indépendantes. Le Tie crawler devenant tout à coup vraiment tout terrain. De plus, ils ont ajouté des lance-missiles planqués dans les ailes. Ce que j’avais maladroitement fait dans ma première version. Cette version n’en a pas. Les idées que j’ai testées en la matière manquaient tous de solidité. Et pour être franc, une fois sur l’étagère, les missiles cachés le resteraient.
Utilisation possible.
L’engin a quand même son utilité, surtout avec les améliorations lego. Ok, il n’a pas de boucliers, mais même la partie la plus faible (le cockpit) résiste au vide spatial, ce n’est pas non plus une voiture en plastique. En cas de guérilla, il peut être pratique. Il est relativement rapide (90km/h), et contrairement au AT-Walkers (toute la série des AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-DP, AT-RT…), il ne risque pas de tomber. D’ailleurs, même si on le retournait, ce ne serait pas un problème, ce serait même un avantage d’avoir les canons en haut. Il est aussi plus simple à stocker que des AT-AT et AT-ST, probablement aussi plus simple d’entretien.
Je vois aussi un avantage en tant qu’escorte de fantassin lors de patrouille à pied en zone de guérilla. En cas d’escarmouche, une demi-douzaine de soldats pourraient s’abriter derrière un mur de chenille. Concernant le point faible à l’arrière, c’est aussi un défaut de certains char IRL, donc on ne peut pas vraiment lui en tenir rigueur.
Il se trouve que j'ai trouvé un autre usage au Tie Crawler, en effet le mode « tourelle », avec les deux chenilles en position verticale.
Imaginez l'Empire arrive sur une nouvelle planète, ils explorent le terrain, et trouvent un endroit pour monter une base temporaire. Le temps de monter la base, le Tie Crawler pourrait monter la garde en mode tourelle. J’ai pas mal joué à Star Wars Battleground à l’époque (pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas, imaginez Age of Empire, mais version Star Wars). Imaginer un peu l’utilité d’une unité qui ferait à la fois tourelle et Tank.
Concernant le modèle en lui-même.
Le cockpit est bien solide, j’en suis très content, d’autant que j’ai réussi à y ajouter une ouverture de toit fonctionnelle, avec un passage. Alors soyons clair, vous n’y feriez pas passer une minifig, le trou ne fait que 1x2, mais c’est suffisant pour y positionner le conducteur en mode vigie (un pilote AT-AT piqué dans un set micro-fighter).
Les stickers viennent de lego, le TIE classique UCS que j’ai démonté depuis longtemps, mais dont j’avais gardé les pièces « stickers » pour cet usage.
Les chenilles aussi sont solides, je regrette de n’avoir pu y intégrer un lance-missiles dissimulé comme le set lego, mais mes tentatives tenaient sur lego studio, mais pas sur IRL. Et si j’aimais l’idée de lego, je n’aimais l’exécution lego. J’ai donc laissé tomber.
Le seul point faible étant qu’avec le poids des chenilles, leur fixation au cockpit peut lâcher sous une contrainte trop grande. Contrairement au set lego, je déconseille de tenir le tout par les réservoirs. Il vaut mieux tenir le modèle par les deux chenilles en même temps.
Finally complete!
The Tie Crawler Version 2. I prefer this version.
One of my favorite Tie, again for its ridiculousness and impracticality.
The Tie Crawler (also known as Tie Century or Tie Tank) is a light armored vehicle. Armed with two classic Tie blasters, and one anti-personnel blaster (so, lighter). A single pilot who also acts as a gunner.
Ideas in the Lore
It was simple to produce, and that's about it. I also remember reading somewhere that Empire recruits who fail the test to become Tie fighter pilots could more easily be converted to Tie Crawler pilots. But I couldn't find the source. And anyway the idea that it's easier to become a tank pilot than a freighter pilot when you fail to become a fighter pilot is stupid.
Limitations
As described, the machine is limited. The weapons are too low. The two classic Tie blasters cannot rotate and because of its location, the anti-personnel blaster cannot rotate vertically at a very large angle. All three are therefore almost useless on any rough terrain. Also, the shape of the tracks tells me that a concrete block, about a meter high, would be enough to block the Tie. And it's a Tie, so it has no energy shield, so it's not very armored. The single pilot is at the mercy of any anti-tank weapon or space fighter. It also has an obvious weak point: the four visible fuel tanks. Now, this is an obvious weak point that any poorly armed rebel will try to target. But also, why put them there? Have you seen the size of the tracks? And the size of the tanks? They could have been put somewhere in the tracks where they would have been better protected, but also closer to the engines. Not to mention that in the event of an explosion, moving them a little further away from the pilot would increase his chances of survival. And the Empire cares about the safety of its employees...
Improvement of Lego 7664
Lego has improved the concept by making the wings swivel and independent. The Tie crawler suddenly becoming truly all terrain. Moreover, they added missile launchers hidden in the wings. Which I had clumsily done in my first version. This version does not have them. The ideas I tested in this area all lacked solidity. And to be honest, once on the shelf, the hidden missiles would stay there.
Possible use.
The thing still has its uses, especially with the lego upgrades. Ok, it doesn't have shields, but even the weakest part (the cockpit) resists the vacuum of space, it's not a plastic car either. In case of guerrilla warfare, it can be handy. It is relatively fast (90km/h), and unlike the AT-Walkers (the whole series of AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-DP, AT-RT...), it does not risk falling. Moreover, even if it was turned over, it would not be a problem, it would even be an advantage to have the guns on top. It is also easier to store than AT-ATs and AT-STs, probably also easier to maintain.
I also see an advantage as an infantryman escort when on foot patrol in a guerrilla zone. In case of a skirmish, half a dozen soldiers could take shelter behind a track wall. Regarding the weak point at the rear, this is also a flaw of some IRL tanks, so you can't really hold it against it.
I happened to find another use for the Tie Crawler, the " tower " mode, with the two tracks in vertical position.
Imagine the Empire arrives on a new planet, they explore the terrain, and find a place to set up a temporary base. By the time the base is set up, the Tie Crawler could stand guard in a tower mode. I played a lot of Star Wars Battleground at the time (for those who don't know, imagine Age of Empire, but Star Wars version). Imagine the usefulness of a unit that would be both tower and tank.
About the model itself.
This cockpit is very solid, I'm very happy with it, especially since I managed to add a functional roof opening, with a passage. So let's be clear, you wouldn't fit a minifig through it, the hole is only 1x2, but it's enough to position the driver in lookout mode (an AT-AT pilot nicked from a micro-fighter set).
The stickers come from lego, the classic UCS TIE that I disassembled a long time ago, but I kept the "sticker" parts for this purpose.
The tracks are also solid, I regret not having been able to integrate a concealed missile launcher like the lego set, my attempts were successful on lego studio, but not on IRL. And if I liked the lego idea, I didn't like the lego execution. So I gave up.
The only weak point is that with the weight of the tracks, their fixation to the cockpit can break under too much stress. Contrary to the lego set, I don't recommend to hold the whole thing by the tanks. It is better to hold the model by both tracks at the same time.
The old ways have not only petrified in a rigor mortis of unliving thought, their solid forms are prisons now. Only the mystic, the artist or those we call 'mad' catch glints of light through the tiny cracks in all this solidity. Our muted voices, like deeply buried miners are barely heard underneath these layers. Time to let the light in and watch the bastilles of a former age crumble into dust.
View Large on Black.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company… — E.B. White, ‘Here is New York’
River Dargle Flood Defence Scheme.
These images were taken during the third week of November 2016.
These are the critical stabilisation works at the Silverbridge site, adjacent to the N11 dual-carriageway:
Back in November 2014, we observed bank stabilisation works here involving excavation, repair and building of a support wall structure -- carried out by JONS Construction on behalf of the National Roads Authority.
We would occasionally catch sight of this work in the distance. Quite an impressive little piece of structural engineering.
Having built a retaining concave wall, backfilled for solidity, they were also drilling, fixing and sealing ground anchors to pin the entire structure together.
Now we see that further works are being undertaken.
Word has it that extra ‘stabilisation work’ has to be done to protect the integrity of the riverbank. At the section here we can see that there’s not much space between the edge of the rock face and the Armco at the side of the dual-carriageway.
Have yet to determine what precisely that will entail. Serious work to reinforce the side access ramp down to the river.
The N11 carriageway runs adjacent to this sunken side of the riverbank -- barely 2 (large) paces divide the two. Even with twin strips of Armco along the roadside, it's perilously close. Traffic speeds along this stretch (maximum speed 100 kmp). Only needs a touch from a heavy vehicle to cause secondary impact, which (worst possible scenario) could result in something going airborne.
Working in these confined spaces puts a premium of safety and communication.
The guys have hard-filled a working shelf on the riverbed, to allow machinery access to the rockface. Obviously some serious drilling is called for before a form of extra 'pinning' is put in place.
They have sunk a series of hollowed tubes/casings -- obviously to form the foundations of a more extensive structure.
And some investigative work around the transverse buttress of the access bridge, parallel to the heavy-duty pipeline carrying water down from the Vartry reservoir.
At a (rough) guess -- I'd say the foundations are sunk to a depth of approx 4+m.
With such secure foundations in place, they would then look to construct a substantial bank of material, and/or retaining wall (similar to that in place further along the roadside bank).
Work continues on filling the sunken foundation casings with liquid concrete solution.
They have abandoned the use of the extended boom to pump the liquid, and are simply using low-tech hose system.
Some secondary drilling also taking place into the bedrock.
From the museum label: " This is one of several still lifes by Paul Cezanne showing the ochre wallpaper with blue lozenge shaped motifs that was in his apartment on the rue de Ouest in Paris. The work's early date is reinforced by the thickly applied paint, which is so different from the thin washes of pigments that the artist would use in the 1880's and 1890's. The surface of the work was sculpted almost as much as painted. Around the apples, for instance, Cezanne used a palette knife or the end of his brush to incise contours."
From: www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?tab=2&resource=178
Paul Cézanne was a loner by temperament. He spent most of his life in his native Aix-en-Provence, in southern France, but his intermittent contact with the Impressionist circle (he participated in two of the group's exhibitions) was crucial to his development, prompting him to lighten his palette and transform his deliberately crude early style into a manner that is both rugged and elegant.
The Plate of Apples shows Cézanne assimilating lessons he had learned from Camille Pissarro in 1873–74, when the two men painted together in Auvers and Pontoise, but the work retains something of the crusty intransigence of Cézanne's previous efforts. Brusque strokes of saturated reds, yellows, and greens form the apples; the artist used a palette knife to apply much of the color and to incise contours around the fruits. The blue crosses on the wallpaper seem like talismans hovering in a mustard-yellow sky, generating a subdued aura of mystery. The whole has a rough-hewn quality; we sense that such formal resolution as it possesses was not easily achieved.
Cézanne had begun to place what he termed the "little sensation"—or focused, momentary perception—at the center of his practice, but in an idiosyncratic way. Manipulating perspective, he fashioned fractured compositions that reconcile the eye's mobility with pictorial solidity. This approach, evident in the tilt of the tabletop, its indeterminate spatial relationship to the wall, and the "squaring" of its left edge with that of the canvas, sets Cézanne's work apart from that of the Impressionists.
Bauhaus Museum Weimar, Germany
German architect Heike Hanada designed a minimalist concrete museum to celebrate the Bauhaus in Weimar, where the design school was founded 100 years ago. The building is dedicated to the design school creates a physical cultural presence for the Bauhaus in the German city where it was based between 1919 and 1925. Located near the Nazi-era Gauforum square and the Neue Museum Weimar, the Bauhaus Museum is a simple five-storey concrete box broken only with its entrance and a couple of windows. The enclosing shell of light-grey concrete lends the cube stability and dynamic solidity. Equally spaced horizontal grooves run around the facades of the museum, with the words "bauhaus museum" repeated in a band near the top of the building. Hanada designed the museum to be a public building for the city and has attempted to clearly connect it to the neighbouring park. With elements such as plinths, fasciae, portals, stairways and a terrace to the park, the architecture incorporates classical themes that underscore its public character.
The museum contains 2,000 m2 of exhibition space, which will be used to display around 1,000 items from the Weimar Bauhaus collection. A shop and entrance hall is located on the ground floor, with a cafe and toilets below, and three floors dedicated to telling the story of the Bauhaus above. Each of the galleries overlooks double-height spaces and are accessed from a long ceremonial staircase that stretches the height of the building. The visitors ascend a succession of interchanging open spaces and staircases until they finally arrive at the top floor where they are presented with an unobstructed view of the park. The cascading staircases are encased by ceiling-high walls and function as free-standing, enclosed bodies in the interior space. The collection is arranged to inform visitors about the history of the design school, with the gallery on the first floor dedicated to its origins in Weimar and the Bauhaus manifesto that Walter Gropius wrote in 1919. The second floor has exhibits that show how these ideas were implemented, with galleries dedicated to each of the Bauhaus directors – Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Mies van der Rohe – at the top of the building.
The museum in Weimar has opened to coincide with the centenary of the Bauhaus, which was established in the city in 1919. The school was forced to relocate from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed a new school building for the institution. Following a short time based in Berlin the school closed for good in 1933. Although only open for just over a decade, the Bauhaus is the most influential art and design school in history. The ideas and people associated with the school had an incredible impact on design and architecture, and to mark its centenary we created a series exploring its key works and figures.
mutual heights building, friezes and panels
these stitched images do not do the original panels any justice. lines are distorted but methinks the complete is more important, albeit for now. in future AI will improve
photographer's notes and text borrowings-
"mutual building", cape town. art deco, deluxe. finished in 1939. architect, fred glennis
inspiration maybe from the "met tower", NYC"?, chicago board of trade", "chrysler building, NYC"?
stone mason, ivan mitford-barberton (south african)
most of the building was changed into residential units
beautiful friezes by miftord-barberton
some nine (only?) african tribes depicted in stunning granite carvings on one facade of the building. it's unclear why only nine tribes were depicted
the tribes being-
matabele
basuto
barotse
kikuyu
zulu
bushman
xosa (xhosa)
pedi
masai
the building has three street facades, darling, parliament and long market streets, cape town CBD
much more to be explored and to be pixed. the building itself is exquisite
***********************
Mutual Building
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mutual Building (Afrikaans: Mutual Gebou), in Cape Town, South Africa, was built as the headquarters of the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society, now the "Old Mutual" insurance and financial services company. It was opened in 1940, but before the end of the 1950s—less than 20 years later—business operations were already moving to another new office at Mutual Park in Pinelands (north east of the city centre); since then Old Mutual has become an international business and their present head office is in London.
The building is a fine example of art deco architecture and design, and it has many interesting internal features such as the banking hall, assembly room, directors' board room; external features include a dramatic ziggurat structure, prismoid (triangular) windows, and one of the longest carved stone friezes in the world. It has been said that it provides evidence of the colonial attitudes of the time, and the "ideals of colonial government promulgated
by Rhodes in the late nineteenth century".[1]
The Mutual Building is now converted to residential use, although some parts of the building are used commercially. For example, the Banking Hall (which is now an events venue) and the retail shops that operate outside on the ground level.
Coordinates: 33°55ʹ27.45ʺS 18°25ʹ20.25ʺE
Mutual Building
Mutual Gebou
The front of the building, in Darling Street, Cape Town
Location in central Cape Town Alternative Mutual Heights, Old Mutual
names Building
General information
Contents
1 History
1.1 The business
1.2 The "new" (1940) Head Office in Darling Street
1.3 Search for inspiration
1.4 Completion
1.5 Vacating and conversion
2 Structure of the building
3 Design elements
4 Features of the building
4.1 The Entrance Hall 4.2 The Banking Hall
4.3 The lifts (elevators) 4.4 The Assembly Room 4.5 The Directors' Rooms 4.6 The atrium
4.7 The windows
4.8 Granite cladding 4.9 The Tribal Figures 4.10 The frieze
5 Views of (and from) the building 6 References
7 Other external links
Type
Architectural style
Address Town or city Country Coordinates Completed Inaugurated Renovated Owner Height
Structural system
Floor count Lifts/elevators
Commercial converted to residential
Art Deco
14 Darling Street
Cape Town
South Africa
33°55ʹ27.45ʺS 18°25ʹ20.25ʺE 1939
1940
2005
Mutual Heights Body Corporate 84 metres (276 ft)
Technical details
Reinforced concrete, granite cladding
12 plus 3 levels basement parking
7
Architect
Architecture firm
Architect
Renovating firm
Structural engineer
Awards and prizes
Fred Glennie Louw & Louw
Renovating team
Robert Silke Louis Karol
Murray & Roberts
South African Institute of Architects, Presidents Award 2008
Website
Design and construction
www.mutualheights.net (www.mutualheights.net)
History The business
The Old Mutual business has a long history. In 1845 John Fairbairn (a Scot) founded "The Mutual Life Assurance Society of the Cape of Good Hope" in Cape Town. Over the next 100 years the business was to evolve significantly, changing its name in 1885 to the "South Africa Mutual Life Assurance Society", but becoming familiarly known simply as "The Old Mutual", so as to distinguish it from newer businesses of the same kind.
The company employed women as early as 1901, expanded into Namibia in 1920 and into Zimbabwe (then
Rhodesia) in 1927.[2] Old Mutual is now an international business with offices all over the world, and its portfolio
of financial services continues to evolve to meet market needs.
It is now some years since the business "de-mutualised" in order to issue shares and fund its operations using conventional investment markets.
The "new" (1940) Head Office in Darling Street
The name of the building in English and in Afrikaans ("Mutual Gebou"): The interesting frieze shown here is described in the text
Some comparisons with earlier inspirational buildings
In the 1930s it became clear that a new headquarters building was needed and very ambitious targets were set for the building: it was to be the tallest building in South Africa (possibly in the whole continent of Africa, with the exception of the pyramids in Egypt), it was to have the fastest lifts, it was to have the largest windows. At the same time it was to epitomise the values of the business: "Strength, Security and Confidence in the Future"; this demanded a combination of traditional
and contemporary design.[1]
Although it is clearly identified on the exterior as the "Mutual Building" (or "Mutual Gebou" in Afrikaans) it is often familiarly referred to as "The Old Mutual Building". Here, in the body of this article, it will be referred to as the "Mutual Building", thereby acknowledging the
nomenclature on the exterior of the building itself.
Search for inspiration
The figure here (adapted from www.skycrapers.com) compares the building with some of the other contemporaneous tall buildings in the world. Those involved in the design of the building travelled widely to study inspirational examples of corporate buildings elsewhere in the world. They learnt about the latest approaches to lighting, ventilation and fire protection in the USA, South America, England
and Sweden.[3] In the USA, the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles is one example of the genre of building design that captured their attention: this building was completed in 1930 and has also since been
converted to residential occupation.[1]
The art deco style was chosen. However, the building is embellished with features in other styles (such as neo-classicist in the case of the banking hall) intended to reinforce the long- standing and traditional values of the Old Mutual business.
Completion
The building was completed in 1939 and opened
early in 1940 with a great fanfare. The local paper provided a 16 page supplement,[4] and South African architects and dignitaries enthused about it. In his definitive examination of the design of the building, Federico Freschi summarises the status of the building thus:
"Ultimately, the consensus suggests that the Old Mutual Building is at once a worthy monument to modern design principles and the consolidation of an important corporate and public image."[1]
The building is listed elsewhere as a notable building,[5] and it is regarded as an important example of the social values of the time and of the economic state of the nation, but all as seen from a European or
"colonial" perspective, as explained by Freschi.[1]
Vacating and conversion
Within 20 years (in the late 1950s) the Old Mutual began to vacate the building, moving in stages to new offices at Mutual Park in Pinelands, Cape Town. By the 1990s, only assorted tenants remained, the last of
which departed in May 2003.[3]
At this time, conversion to residential occupation began under the direction of Robert Silke at Louis Karol
Architects.[6] The name of the building was changed by the developers to Mutual Heights (www.mutualheights.net), a decision that did not find favour with all owners and residents involved in
the new community.[7] Despite scepticism about the name, it is generally agreed that the conversion was the first in a series of projects that re-invigorated the central business district of Cape Town. The conversion has
been the subject of a number of architecture and design awards.[8]
In February 2012, the large "Old Mutual" sign on the east side of the building was removed, leaving little external evidence of the commercial origins of the building; in 2015 Old Mutual Properties finally disposed of the remaining portions of the interior that had not been sold previously, including the banking hall, the directors suite and the fresco room.
Structure of the building
The building is constructed using reinforced concrete, filled in internally with bricks and plaster, and clad on the outside with granite. At first sight, the building is a striking example of the Art Deco style and many of its features epitomize this genre - however, some interior features deviate from true Art Deco and probably reflect the desire of the company to demonstrate solidity and traditional values at the same time as
contemporaneous, forward-looking values.[1]
It is 276 feet (85 metres) high, as measured from the ground floor to the top of the tower,[3] but the building is often listed as being more than 90 metres high (even as high as 96.8 metres on the Old Mutual web
site[2]); this probably takes account of the "spire" at the top.
Having only 10 levels ("storeys") above ground level in the main part of this tall building (excluding the three levels of basement car parking, and the additional levels in the tower), it is evident that the spacing between floors is generous — generally each floor is about 5 metres above (or below) the next. In one of the meeting rooms on the eighth level (the Assembly Hall - see below), the curtains alone are more than six metres long. This generous spacing between floors was intended to achieve the greatest possible overall height for the building without exceeding the city planning limitation of 10 storeys, and it was allowed only
in view of the "set back" design of the exterior structure.[1]
Design elements
The original design of the building is attributed to Louw & Louw (Cape Town architects), working with Fred Glennie (best known at the time as a mentor to architectural students) – Mr Glennie is personally
credited with most of the detailed work[9] but Ivan Mitford-Barberton[10] was also involved with some
internal details as well as with the external granite decorations.
It is pleasing that the principal areas of the building have been so little changed over the years, especially the entrance, the banking hall, the assembly room, the directors' room, the atrium, and the windows. Even the original door handles (including the Old Mutual "logo") and the original banisters (on the staircases) are all still intact, and the atrium is largely unchanged although it is now protected from the weather by a translucent roof.
The original light fittings in the "public" areas are largely still intact, and in most parts of the building there are beautiful block-wood (parquet) floors.
Here is a selection of interior design details that exemplify the quality and attention to detail that was applied to this project by the architects, artists and designers.
Marble from the columns in the banking hall
As you use the stairs, you are reminded which storey you are on
Bulkhead lights on the 9th level
White-veined Onyx from the entrance hall
Hardwood block floors are still in place in many parts of the building
An original door handle (of which many remain)
The entrance hall has a gold leaf ceiling
Detail of a banister on one of the stairs
Original fire doors, with distinctive handles
Detail of the rail at the gallery of the Assembly Room
Some interior design details
The paragraphs below now visit each of the significant areas and features of the building in turn.
An original light fitting
The light fittings in the Assembly Room
The entrance lobby
Features of the building
The building incorporates a range of significant features.
The Entrance Hall
Black, gold-veined onyx is used in the Darling Street foyer, the ceiling of which is over 15 metres high and finished with gold leaf, laid by Italian workmen. The view of the glass window over the door to the banking hall (above) shows the iconic ziggurat shape of the building etched into the glass. Visitors must climb 17 steps to gain access to the banking hall, and towards the top they are met by the original "pill box" where security staff can observe who (and what) is entering and leaving the building. On either side of the pill box are the entrances to the main lifts – two on the left and two on the right (there are two "staff" lifts and one "service" lift elsewhere in the building).
Characteristic stainless steel trim and light fittings, such as can be seen here, are used extensively throughout the building.
The Banking Hall
Given its tall marble-clad colonnades, the magnificent banking hall would be more properly described as an example of "neo-classicism" although the light fittings echo the art deco theme that prevails elsewhere in the building, and again we see that the glass over the doors (at the far end in the photograph below) are etched with the iconic ziggurat form that is taken by the whole building.
The two service counters that can be seen in the banking hall look identical, but only the one on the right is original—the one on the left is a later, somewhat inferior, copy.
The banking hall
Between the columns of the banking hall the coats of arms are presented for each of the many provinces and countries within Southern Africa in which the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society had a presence.
The crests that appear between the columns in the banking hall
Northern Rhodesia Cape Colony Durban Rhodesia
Natal Petermaritzburg Port Elizabeth Orange Free State
Johannesburg Pretoria Kenya Colony Bloemfontein
Cape Town Union of South Africa Potchefstroom Windhoek The banking hall is now owned privately and is available for hire as an events venue.
The lifts (elevators)
The main lifts in the building are fast ("the fastest in Africa" it was claimed when the building opened) and no expense was spared – even in the basement parking area, the lifts are trimmed with black marble. Each door has an etched representation of an indigenous bird or animal from South Africa, with significant plants as additional decoration, or in some cases the corporate logo of the time.
There are seven lifts in the building, four of them "principal" lifts (as here)
The individual etchings in detail (click on the images to see the full-size version):
Springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), with a king protea (Protea cynaroides), the national flower
Kudu (Tragelaphus), with veltheimia (Veltheimia bracteata) at the lower right
Giraffe, with a succulent (Crassula)
Zebra (Equus quagga), with a prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica)
The individual etchings on the lift doors
Ostrich (Struthio camelus australus), with prickly pear (lower left) and "century plant" (Agave americana)
Leopard (Panthera pardus pardus), with spekboom (Portulacaria afra) at the lower right and candelabra lily (Brunsvigia josephinae) at the lower left
Crane (Balearica regulorm) with reeds behind (Phragmites australis)
Lion, with lion's tail (or wild dagga - Leonotis leonuris) at lower left, violet painted petals (Freesia laxa) lower right and coral tree (Erythrina lysistemon) at the top
Secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), with unidentifiable tree
The corporate "logo" (three entwined anchors), with Strelitzia reginae (bottom right), Disa uniflora (bottom left) and proteas (Protea repens) at the top
Vulture
These designs are attributed to Ivan Mitford-Barberton.
The Assembly Room
Perhaps the best known feature of the building (in artistic circles at least) is the Assembly Room, sometimes referred to as the "Fresco Room"; Freschi indicates that this was originally intended as a facility for policy
holders.[1] Here there are striking frescoes depicting some of the history of the nation of South Africa,
undertaken by Le Roux Smith Le Roux two years after the completion of the building.
Le Roux was supported in his early career by the famous British architect Herbert Baker, who provided bursaries so that Le Roux could spend time in
London and elsewhere. In London he
undertook a mural in South Africa House with
Eleanor Esmonde-White. An acquaintance (still living) of Le Roux and Esmonde-White recalls that Baker insisted that Eleanor Esmonde-White be awarded a bursary, despite gender-related objections from elsewhere; in the event she got to go to London with Le Roux, with the bursary. Following their years in London, Le Roux was awarded this commission to work on the Mutual Building and he therefore returned to Cape Town, but only after the main building work was done - it was not sensible to undertake this meticulous work while building operations were still in progress.
These frescoes are considered elsewhere as good examples of the genre—see for example
"Decopix - the Art Deco Architecture Site"[11] where the Mutual Building itself is well
represented.[12] The five frescoes on the end
walls and over the entrance depict more than
100 years of the history of the nation,
including industrial development, the Great
Trek, mining following the discovery of gold,
the growth of industry and agriculture, and a
hint of international travel and trade. Freschi considers that ".. in contemporary terms, Le Roux's work was seen to be distinctly progressive and very much in keeping with the ostensibly liberal party line of Jan
Smuts' coalition government".[1]
The panels are reproduced below, and selected portions from them are provided in the images that follow.
The five panels are presented left to right, in a clockwise direction when standing in the Assembly Room, back to the windows. The first and fifth are on the side walls, the second, third and fourth are on the long wall that includes the main entrance.
The fresco panels in the Assembly Room
The Assembly Room
Engineering water, The Great Trek building industry and
railroads
Trade and international travel
The discovery of gold
Railroads in service, productive farms
The fifth image includes a representation of the Mutual Building itself, the tallest building in what is known as the "City Bowl", below the slopes of Table Mountain. This did not remain true for long, it was only one year later that the General Post Office was built on the other (seaward side) of Darling Street, and a large number of larger more modern buildings have been built since (see the views from and of the building, shown further down this page).
Some details from the panels:
Some selected portions of the fresco panels in the Assembly Room
Mixing concrete, Wind-powered water working with the plans pumps provide
irrigation
The Great Trek - ladies Farm produce at last - a in their bonnets, men on smile on his face
horses
The Directors' Board Room
A detail - laying railway The image of the track Mutual Building under
Table Mountain
The Directors' Rooms
On the fourth level, at the front of the building, is the Directors' Board Room. As well as the board room there are two side rooms, one of which was a sitting room for Directors.
In the board room there is a continuous carved stinkwood frieze above the dado rail that incorporates animal and floral motifs (14 different species of birds and animals are represented). Ivan Mitford-Barberton is credited with this carving and it is probably the last work that he did in the building. Above the carved frieze is a mural designed and executed by Joyce Ord-Brown using stain on pale sycamore panelling. It represents
Cape Town as the "Tavern of the Seas" in a light hearted way.[1]
The selections below show some portions of the mural and the frieze, followed by some other details of the directors' rooms. The sea plane (second picture) is probably a Martin M-130, which is not recorded as having serviced South Africa (it worked the pacific routes). This is probably "artistic licence" on the part of Ord-Browne.
Portions of the Joyce Ord-Browne decorations
The Southern hemisphere, with route from Cape Town to London
Blue cranes flying
A sea plane
A portion of the Northern hemisphere, with King Neptune
Penguins and whales
A mermaid
Portions of the Mitford-Barberton stinkwood frieze
Some features of the directors' board room and sitting room
Entrance to the board room (see note below)
Easy chairs in the sitting room - unused in a long time
Marble at the door to the board room
Another original light fitting in the sitting room
Directors had their own storage drawers in the board room
An original light fitting in the board room that (seemingly) doubles as a ventilation device
It is of note that the etched ziggurat icon on the glass over the entrance to the board room (see the enlarged version of the first image above) is not the same as that which is used elsewhere.
The Directors' suite has great heritage value but in 2015 it was re-finished as a private apartment.
The atrium
The atrium extends from the roof of the banking hall to the very top of the main building. It was originally open to the weather, but it is now protected by a translucent roof, through which the tower can be seen extending even higher.
The circular windows visible here are incorporated into the apartments that now occupy the front of the building.
The windows
On entering the residential area of the building, one is struck by this extraordinary "top to bottom" atrium
The windows compared
The rising nature of the ziggurat mass of the exterior of the building is reinforced by the prismoid (triangular) windows, which extend up and down the height of the building. These windows are of note because they set the Mutual Building apart from some of the buildings that inspired it, for example the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles. They are also functional, because they allow light to enter the building more effectively than would otherwise be the case (using the reflective properties of the inside face of the glass), and by opening and closing blinds on the one side or the other it is possible on sunny days to manage the heat entering the building as the sun traverses the sky.
Water-cooled air conditioning was another innovative feature of the original building, that avoided the need for extensive natural ventilation and allowed more freedom for the design of the windows and granite spaces between; the same water-cooled air conditioning design is in use today.
As Freschi notes in his paper, the prismoid windows make for much more visual interest than the conventional windows in the General Post Office building. Here the image juxtaposes the Mutual building (foreground) with the General Post Office built the following year (behind).
Granite cladding
The granite cladding of the building was hewn from a single boulder on the Paarl Mountain, north east of the
city of Cape Town.[1] The cladding incorporates decorative baboon, elephant and tribal heads that project from the upper facades of the Darling Street elevation (the front of the building).
The granite decorations
The decorations Elephant (6th level) Baboon (8th level) Tribal head (tower)
Tower with tribal head
The Tribal Figures
On the Parliament Street facade there are carved granite figures representing nine ethnic African groups (not just South African) labelled thus: "Xosa", "Pedi", "Maasai", "Matabele", "Basuto", "Barotse", "Kikuyu", "Zulu", and "Bushman". Note that the identification of the tribes does not necessarily follow current practice.
The nine tribal figures looking over Parliament Street.
The individual figures in detail (remember you can click on the images to see the full-size version):
The individual tribal figures
"Xosa" "Pedi" "Masai" "Matabele"
"Basuto" "Barotse" "Kikuyu" "Zulu"
"Bushman"
Recently Sanford S. Shaman has written a critique of these figures, and other features of the building [13] partly based on interviews with pedestrians walking around the building.
The frieze
Around the three sides of the building facing Darling Street, Parliament Street and Longmarket Street there is a 386 feet (118 metre) frieze depicting scenes from the colonial history of South Africa, reported at its
completion to be the longest such frieze in the world.[4]
A portion of the 386 feet frieze that traverses three sides of the building, showing the 1820 settlers landing
It is of interest that, at the time, it was proclaimed that the building was built by South Africans, using South African materials; while the frieze was itself designed by South African, Ivan Mitford Barberton (born in Somerset East, Eastern Cape, in 1896), the work was executed by a team of Italian immigrants led by Adolfo Lorenzi. It has recently come to light that, in the course of the work, Lorenzi's team of masons were incarcerated when the Second World War broke out in 1939, being Italian and therefore regarded as "the
enemy" at that time. They were obliged to finish their work under an armed guard.[14]
A composite view of the frieze can be seen at the right; unfortunately in this version some portions are missing or obscured by trees in leaf.
The sections of the frieze are as follows:
The landing of Jan van Riebeeck
The arrival of the 1820 Settlers
The "Post Office Stone"
The building of the Castle of Good Hope
The emancipation of the slaves
Negotiations with Chaka (also known as "King Shaka)" The Great Trek
The dream of Nongqawuse (other spellings are sometimes used) Discovery of diamonds at Kimberley
Erection of a cross by Bartholomew Dias
Rhodes negotiating with the Matabele
David Livingstone preaching, healing and freeing slaves The opening up of Tanganyika Territory
The defence of Fort Jesus depicting Arab inhabitants
A second version of this collage of the complete frieze can be found elsewhere[15]
A composite showing almost all of the frieze in its 15 sections – some portions are missing in this version – click to see a readable version and then choose the "Full resolution" option under the image (but be patient, this is a large file – 1Mb)
Seen from Darling Street, the Mutual Building today stands proud as the day it was built.
Views of (and from) the building
The busy city works around the building. The Mutual Building can claim that its restoration and conversion to residential use brought new life to the city centre, and started a five year programme of re- invigoration and rapid improvement. The large green "Old Mutual" sign and logo were removed from the building in February 2012.
The skyline of the city of Cape Town has changed significantly since the Mutual Building was constructed. Even from its highest point of easy access, the Mutual Building View is now dwarfed by the more modern buildings in the Cape Town central business district.
In the modern skyline the Mutual Building is lost in a maze of tall buildings. Here the sea mist swirls around the central business district and the small coloured arrow picks out the Mutual Building, at the left. This photograph is taken from District Six, on the slopes of Devil's peak to the east of Table Mountain. Click to see the full size version of this photograph, when the outline of the building can be more easily discerned.
The view of the harbour from the middle levels of the Mutual Building in Darling Street in Cape Town, once uninterrupted, is now obscured by the General Post Office constructed shortly afterwards (seen here at the extreme left).
Table Mountain and its "table cloth" seen from the upper levels of the building.
Looking in the other direction, the City Hall, the Grand Parade and the Castle can all be seen clearly. In the distance are the Hottentots Holland Mountains.
References
The learned article by Federico Freschi is particularly recommended to all who are interested in this building and its context.
1. Freschi, F (1994). "Big Business Beautility: The Old Mutual Building, Cape Town, South Africa". Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol 20, pp.39-57
2. "Old Mutual - Our heritage". Old Mutual Web Site. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
3. CSD, (2003). "Mutual Heights Heritage Impact Assessment Report", CS Design Architects and Heritage
Consultants, Cape Town, South Africa (August)
4. Cape Times (1940). "Old Mutual in New Home", The Cape Times (special supplement) (30 January)
5. "Mutual Heights". Emporis - The world's building website. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
6. "Cocktails over the Grand Parade". Cape Times online. 25 July 2003. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
7. Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Body Corporate, Mutual Heights, 2008
8. "Louis Karol awards". Louis Karol web site. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
9. "SA Mutual Life Assr Soc (Old Mutual)". Artefacts web site. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
10. "Ivan Mitford-Barberton". Biographical web site by Margaret C Manning. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
11. "Decopix - the Art Deco Architecture Web site". Randy Juster's Art Deco web site. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
12. "The Mutual Building featured on Randy Juster's art deco web site". Randy Juster's Art Deco web site. Retrieved
27 December 2010.
13. "Art South Africa web site". "The Heights of Contradiction" by Sanford S. Shaman. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
14. Correspondence by email, Giovanni Adolfo Camerada to Andy Bytheway, 2008
15. "The Mutual Building Frieze". Web site of the Mutual Heights community.
Other external links
Website for the Mutual Heights Community (www.mutualheights.net)
Louis Karol Architects website (www.louiskarol.com/index.html)
Randy Juster's art deco web site (www.decopix.com)
David Thompson's art deco buildings web site (artdecobuildings.blogspot.com/) City of Cape Town web site (www.capetown.gov.za)
Stewart Harris' flikr photographs include some images of Fred Glennie and Le Roux Smith Le Roux at work on the building, and other interesting images of the building (www.flickr.com/groups/1615104@N21/)
Confirmation of the Bloemfontein crest that defied identification for several years (www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Bloemfontein)
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When Larry's brother was here, we went for lunch downtown to this pub. I feel it is the most sympathetic renovation and conversion of an historic property in Calgary. The bank reference is obvious. The baron reference is to George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen, financier behind the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1800's, President of the Bank of Montreal, and the person after whom Stephen Avenue Walk, where this bank sits, was named.
From HistoricPlaces.ca
Built in 1930, the Bank of Nova Scotia building is an excellent example of the kind of architectural eclecticism that was popular in banks of the period. Designed to convey a sense of solidity and security, this bank building is impressive in the proportions and symmetry of its flattened classical facade. This rational plan is characteristic of architect John M. Lyle's Beaux-Arts classicism, and yet the building pushes the limits of that style in many of its decorative elements. Of primary significance is the program of low relief sculptural panels adorning the main facade. Designed by Lyle, these panels depict such western Canadian themes as agriculture, commerce, and ranching. The incorporation of such imagery into a traditionally classical building was groundbreaking, and the Bank of Nova Scotia building remains an outstanding example of such a sculptural program in Alberta. The traditional interpretation of a bank as a classical temple has here been reconciled by Lyle with a modern emphasis on linearity, its decoration and interior materials moving decidedly toward the streamlined Art Deco style.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
I must say, dear man, that you are a wonderful inspiration to me in my writing endeavours. I might take that inspiration in all sorts of unhealthy, and regrettable, directions, but that’s my problem, and obviously you ain’t to blame at all, at all. Yes, ‘twas a strange serendipity, that ‘Barking Dogge’ conjunction.
I hope this finds you with Thoth Baboonhead, having reasserted his position, perched, squatting and squitting even, on your shoulder, pouring that Hamlety stuff into your ear portals, that poisonous inspiration. Coincidentally we (Me and Hem Binnen) were watching Konshu, just last night, in ‘Moon Knight’. Everything seems to be coming up Egypt, as opposed to Roses, at the moment.
I have been looking at the nuns, those rather dog-eared, Clondalkin based, somewhat sadistic, wimpled vestal virgins of my youth. I think of the nuns as sort of the BVM with pubic hair. I don't hate pubes, though rather do hate this current depilation craze, so that would not mean to suggest that they are dirty or besmirched in any way. I just cannot imagine the BVM having the same, no matter how hard I try. I had looked at the vestals before, through Goya actually, and some fairly unknown paintings of his, or at least as unknown as Goya's paintings are capable of being. I would guess that Egypt must have had its vestals too, somewhere around Isis, I suspect. Somethings never change, those Goddess/Mother/Whore tropes being one of those wonderful humdingers.
Goya’s output of Mythological subject matter is quite small. However, there are three paintings which I would like to discuss which introduce us to the ‘Virgin’ in her progress to the autonomous ‘Bride’. They are not well-known paintings and therefore the illustrations leave something to be desired. However, it is the myth behind the subjects chosen rather than the treatment which fascinates. The first is entitled ‘Sacrifice to Vesta’, painted in 1771. Vesta was a virgin goddess and custodian of the sacred flame. It was believed that if the flame was extinguished, calamity would befall the country. Vesta, although a virgin, was also a fertility goddess because of the nourishing qualities of fire. The vestal virgins were her high priestesses. They took vows of absolute chastity and any deviation from this was punishable by death. They also had the power of imparting life, and if a man condemned to death chanced to meet a vestal, he was immediately reprieved. I think the parallels with Duchamp's virgins are obvious. This ability to impart life, or autonomy, is common to both, but there is another aspect which is even more fascinating. When a vestral virgin was accused of dalliance, to prove her intact state, she would have to bring water back to the temple from the Tiber in a "sacred sieve". The vestal had also, at all times, to wear a veil. So, basically, what we have is an autonomous veiled virgin whose maidenhead intactness depends on the non-porosity of the sacred sieve. In the "Green Box" Duchamp tells us that "the sieves of the bachelor apparatus are a reversed image of porosity"
Imagine that the "sacred sieve" and the "bachelor sieves" are one and the same thing. This Bachelor sieve which is a "reversed image of porosity" serves to turn the gaseous particles or "spangles" into a liquid (gas to liquid). It would therefore follow that if the initial component was a liquid, and this was passed into the sieve, it would then become a solid (liquid to solid). The water from the Tiber would become ice, thus saving the reputation and life of the vestal virgin by its '"reversed image of porosity". The quote, in parentheses, are from Duchamp's 'Notes' for his 'Large Glass'.
It is of some interest that the officiator at the "sacrifice" in Goya’s painting is a man. This would never have been the case, as Vesta’s sanctuary was entered only by her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, except on the festival day, the Vestalia, on the seventh of June, when mothers of families were allowed to make offerings. This might however represent Tarquin the Elder, who eventually modified the ruling about the death sentence imposed on wayward vestals. Initially they would be flogged to death, but on Tarquin’s instigation they were whipped and walled up alive in a tomb (shades of the Anchorite there) which was sealed after a few provisions had been deposited therein. Perhaps the pyramid in the background could be considered as such a tomb, and maybe the "unveiled" female standing to the left could be the sacrificial victim. I believe that an intentional ambiguity has been set up between the Myth and the depiction of the event.
The second ‘virgin’ aspect is that of ‘Susanna and the Elders’.
The Story of Susanna, one of the books of the Old Testament apocrypha, tells how she was accused of adultery by certain Jewish elders who had unsuccessfully made overtures on her chastity. Her innocence was defended and proven by Daniel, resulting in the Elders being put to death.
The particular painting to which I refer was painted in 1824/25, just three years before Goya's death. It is executed on ivory and is part of a series of 22 miniatures including a re-working of ‘Judith and Holofernes’ which had previously manifested itself amongst the ‘Black Paintings’ of the Quinta del Sordo.
The ‘Susanna’ shows an almost naked plump woman, in downcast profile, facing away from her tormentors, but the question arises as to who torments whom. The image of a group (perhaps 3, as some report to see, but I only see 2) of desperately lustful men is seen to her left. They appear more as shadows or dissoluble reflections, in comparison to the solidity of the earthy and sexual Susanna. It is the coy presentation of such innocent nakedness which excites the men to attempt to part Susanna from her innocence. She holds her hands between her legs as if to protect herself, but she could just as easily be masturbating. She looks down dejectedly, or is she actually observing her own deft fingering? The tormentors become the tormented. Their impotent desperation achieves a form of release in death and Susanna achieves fulfilment in herself.
It is Goya’ s re-working of this myth which make all this conjecture possible. ‘Susanna’ and the ‘Naked Maja’ are cousins, once removed.
In the final mythological scene to be considered we encounter the ‘Bride’. The painting is that of ‘Hercules and Omphale’ The legend goes that Hercules was sold to Omphale, the Queen of Lydia, as a slave. He is ordered to rid Lydia of its robbers and despoilers and so impresses Omphale by his accomplishing this task in such an exemplary masculine fashion, that she takes him as her husband. She then dons his Lion’s skin and has him dress in woman’s clothing to wait upon her needs. The ‘Bride’ here consummates herself, by reversing roles, turning the ‘Bachelor’ into a reflection of herself. She has total autonomy. This episode forms only a very small aspect of the complete Hercules myth and I believe it to be of some significance that Goya would choose it. Hercules epitomised, for the Greeks, all that was strong and manly, He is depicted by them as a glorious hero and invincible athlete to whom the foundation of the Olympic games was ascribed. He was the son of Alcmene (woman of might) who had been impregnated by Zeus, who had assumed the guise of her husband Amphitryon, hence his demi-god like strength. Being thus engendered we can trace his ancestry back to Chronos and Uranus. It was due to the action of the furies, who were created from the blood of Uranus, that the Hercules legendry wanderings began. This legend remains one of the most potent of all Greek myths. Its dominating image is one of aggressive manliness and yet Goya, ignoring these exploits, chooses to reveal to us the slightly obscure tale of the androgynous Hercules forced into submission to a domineering woman. This is a tale of male impotence and, however temporary the situation, this was the aspect of the legend which obviously fascinated Goya.
Perhaps there has always been this confused, shared, and switched pronoun thing going on. I suspect that its present manifestation might eventually generate its own myths, as empires crumble and new 'creeds' assert themselves.
Chiaroscuro (English: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/; Italian: [ˌkjaroˈskuːro] (light-dark)) is an artistic technique, developed during the Renaissance, that uses strong tonal contrasts between light and dark to model three-dimensional forms, often to dramatic effect.[1] It is one of the four canonical painting modes of Renaissance art (alongside cangiante, sfumato, and unione).
The underlying principle is that solidity of form is best achieved by the light falling against it. Artists known for developing the technique include Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Rembrandt. It is a mainstay of black and white and low-key photography.
Video © Craig Lindsay 2020. All rights reserved.
Two main visits today, and the curiosity abouts what does actually go through a blue tit's mind remains. Today, aside from moving the dead fly around, there seemed to be a bit of an interest in checking the solidity of the box floor and walls.
The first 4 or so minutes cover the first visit, including this bird's normal flitting in and out of the box. The last 3 or so minutes cover the second visit.
The floor inspection reaches a particular peak around 6 minutes 20 seconds in - unless, of course, the bird was just sending a message using morse code.
The American Standard Building, formerly known as the American Radiator Building stands at 103 meters tall just south of Bryant Park. The 23-floor Art-Deco tower was designed Raymond Hood and John Howells from 1923-1924 for the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company.
The design broke from the Beaux Arts/classicism styles of the time, utilizing bold cubic massing that allowed verticality in light of the zoning laws of 1916 dictating setbacks for buildings above a certain height. The tower rises up fifteen stories before it begins a series of setbacks, creating a striking silhouette.
The most striking feature of Hood's design is the unusual black and gold color scheme--which served both practical and symbolic purposes. Although Hood denied the later, the building is especially dramatic when floodlighted at night, like a giant glowing coal--in effect, becoming an advertisement for the American Radiator Company. The black brickwork facing, said to symbolize coal, was selected to lessen the visual contrast between the walls and windows, giving the tower an effect of solidity and massiveness. The Gothic-style pinnacles and the terra-cotta friezes on the edges of the setbacks are coated with gold, symbolizing fire and flame.
The base is clad in bronze plating and black granite. The large plate glass windows of the ground floor showrooms are enframed by slender, bronze, ribbed shafts reminiscent of the Gothic style, but terminating in cubistic pinnacles. The windows are surmounted by a slender continuous modillioned bronze enframement. The main entrance, between the windows, is set within an arched opening and accented by bronze details of modified Gothic design. The second floor is surmounted by a modillioned cornice set on large intricate corbel blocks, displaying a series of carved allegories by Rene Paul Chambellan, symbolizing the transformation of matter into energy. The third story has a distinctive window bay treatment, flanked by indented brick pilasters surmounted by gold pinnacles and shielded by intricately detailed railings.
In 1998, the building was sold in Philip Pilevsky for $15 million. Three years afterwards, the American Radiator Building was converted into The Bryant Park Hotel with 130 rooms and a theater in basement.
The American Standard Building was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1974.
For more details on the Empire State Building, see this picture. For more of my pictures of the Empire State Building, click here.
The Empire State Building was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1981.
Empire State Building National Register #82001192
American Standard Building National Register #70002663
Most of Majorette's castings haven't been on a Mattel style metal diet ensuring heavyweight quality remains at the forefront of their designs giving an almost unrivalled solidity at this price point and keeping plastic to a minimal where possible.
The majority of this substantial looking MAN TGX Articulated Tanker is made of metal and you can certainly tell once in hand. A fully licensed MAN product giving authenticity and credibility and as per usual well finished and nicely detailed.
Found in an E.Leclerc Jouet toy shop where I don't need to tell you are fully stocked Majorette wise :-)
Mint and boxed.
If there's one place in London that merits an Art Deco Fair, it's Eltham Palace,
with its Art Deco entrance hall, created by the textile magnates the Courtaulds in 1936. The much-loved weekend fair is held twice a year - once in the summer and a second time in September - giving visitors the chance to buy original 1930s objects, from furniture and collectables to hats, handbags and jewellery. Browse the original 1930s objects, from jewellery to furniture while you take in the magnificent Art Deco surroundings of the Palace. Ticket price includes entry to Eltham Palace and gardens and you can see the house by guided tour.
About Eltham Palace
Restored by English Heritage, this fantastic house boasts Britain's finest Art Deco interior and offers visitors the chance to indulge in the opulence of 1930s Britain whilst at the same time experiencing the solidity and symbolism of medieval London. Eltham Palace began to evolve during the 15th century when Edward IV commissioned the Great Hall, which survives today as a testament to the craftsmanship of the period. More about Eltham Palace
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
St Mary, Walpole, Suffolk
Walpole is a fairly large village on the outskirts of Halesworth. I've been cycling through it long enough to remember when it still had a shop and a pub, and what felt like a life of its own, but these are gone now. However, St Mary survives, set back from the road in a large graveyard up the hill on the way to Halesworth. At first sight, it appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill Victorian village church, but a Norman doorway has been preserved within the south porch. Otherwise, what you see today is largely the work of the 19th century architect HM Eyton.
To be honest, It is easy to moan about churches like this. But here it is, at the heart of its village, open to visitors, reasonably friendly inside - honestly, it is hard to criticize. From the outside, it puts me in mind of Catholic churches in northern France, rebuilt in this style after the destruction of the First World War. This design is also familiar from a thousand municipal cemetery chapels, with its funny little spire and restrained mock-decorated windows.
There are some medieval survivals here. But not many. The base of the tower was retained, and footings of the nave walls suggest it was originally Saxon. The Norman doorway is remarkably well-preserved, suggesting the previous porch had survived for many centuries. It has had an electric light fitting driven through it, presumably by someone who thought it was a good idea.
Even on a sunny day the church seems dark inside, but as your eyes become accustomed to the gloom your first surprise is the rather odd medieval font. It is not originally from this church but from St Andrew, in the centre of Norwich, which may explain its urban solidity. It must be said that it is much more attractive than the vulgar 19th century one that replaced it in Norwich.
The parish have been busy here over the last few years, and one of the most striking aspects of the interior is that the long chancel has been cleared of all its furnishings, exposing a fine Victorian tiled floor. It does perhaps accentuate the gloom of the nave, and modern chairs would look much better in that space than clumpy old Victorian pews.
The village of Walpole is a mecca for church explorers, but they are on their way to visit Walpole Old Chapel up the hill, rather than the homely charms of St Mary. I was headed there next, as I understood it was open on Saturday afternoons, and I hadn't seen inside since recording a programme about it for BBC Radio Suffolk a year or so previously. I came out of St Mary into the rain. It was that horrible seeping drizzle, and so I sped as fast as I could up to the Old Chapel. I got there to find that it didn't open until 2pm. There was no shelter, and waiting an hour in the rain wasn't really an option, so I hurried back to Halesworth and took shelter in the Angel Hotel instead.
Taurus - SALMIAH HASSAN
The characteristics of taurus are solidity, practicality, extreme determination and strength of will - no one will ever drive them, but they will willingly and loyally follow a leader they trust. They are stable, balanced, conservative good, law-abiding citizens and lovers of peace, possessing all the best qualities of the bourgeoisie. As they have a sense of material values and physical possessions, respect for property and a horror of falling into debt, they will do everything in their power to maintain the security of the status quo and be somewhat hostile to change.
Mentally, the caracteristics of taurus are keen-witted and practical more often than intellectual, but apt to become fixed in their opinions through their preference for following accepted and reliable patterns of experience. Taurus character is generally dependable, steadfast, prudent, just, firm and unshaken in the face of difficulties. Their vices arise from their virtues, going to extremes on occasion,such as sometimes being too slavish to the conventions they admire.
On rare occasions a Taurus may be obstinately and exasperatingly self-righteous, unoriginal, rigid, ultraconservative, argumentative, querulous bores, stuck in a self-centered rut. They may develop a brooding resentment through nursing a series of injuries received and, whether their characters are positive or negative, they need someone to stroke their egos with a frequent, "Well Done!" Most Taurus people are not this extreme though.
They are faithful and generous friends with a great capacity for affection, but rarely make friends with anyone outside their social rank, to which they are ordinarily excessively faithful. In the main, they are gentle, even tempered, good natured, modest and slow to anger, disliking quarreling and avoiding ill-feeling. If they are provoked, however, they can explode into violent outbursts of ferocious anger in which they seem to lose all self-control. Equally unexpected are their occasional sallies into humor and exhibitions of fun.
Although their physical appearance may belie it, they have a strong aesthetic taste, enjoying art, for which they may have a talent, beauty (recoiling from anything sordid or ugly) and music. They may have a strong, sometimes unconventional, religious faith. Allied to their taste for all things beautiful is a love for the good things of life pleasure, comfort, luxury and good food and wine and they may have to resist the temptation to over indulgence, leading to drunkenness, gross sensuality, and covetousness.
In their work, Taurus are industrious and good craftspeople, and are not afraid of getting their hands dirty. They are reliable, practical, methodical and ambitious, within a framework of obedience to superiors. They are at their best in routine positions of trust and responsibility, where there is little need of urgency and even less risk of change, and a pension at the end. Yet they are creative and good founders of enterprises where the rewards of their productiveness come from their own work and not that of others.
They can flourish in many different trades and professions: banking, architecture, building, almost any form of bureaucracy, auctioneering, farming, medicine, chemistry, industry Taurus make good managers and foremen surveying, insurance, education and, perhaps surprisingly, music and sculpture. They make an ideal trustee or guardian, and can attain eminence as a chef. Some Taurus are gifted enough in singing to become opera stars or to excel in more popular types of music.
They are more than averagely amorous and sensually self-conscious, but sexually straightforward and not given to experiment. They make constant, faithful, home loving spouses and thoughtful, kindly parents, demanding too much of neither their spouses nor children. They can be over possessive and may sometimes play the game of engineering family roles for the pleasure of making up the quarrel. If anyone offends their amour proper they can be a determined enemy, though magnanimous in forgiveness if their opponent makes an effort to meet them halfway.
No other sign in the zodiac is closer to earth then Taurus. The main objective in leading a Taurean life is primarily (though not entirely) to maintain stability and physical concerns. Your inner spiritual sense longs for earthly harmony and wholesomeness. When you fully understand this, and work toward this end, you will no longer need to blindly reassure yourself with external possessions and comforts. A realization that finding this inner peace will cause all of the above mentioned positive things will overtake you and your life will be very full.
Ultimately the Taurean needs to discover their truest, deepest and highest values. When they know what is truly valuable, they are no longer chained to people and to things that have to do with lesser values. The greatest indication of value to a Taurean is beauty, which cannot be owned, only appreciated.
Possible Health Concerns For Taurus...
Taurus governs the throat and neck and its subjects need to beware throat infections, goiter and respiratory ailments such as asthma. They are said to be at risk of diseases of the genitals, womb, liver and kidneys, and of abscesses and rheumatism. Because their body type has an inclination to physical laziness, Taureans can be overweight.
The TSB on Hanover Street was built at a time when banks tried to convince potential customers their money would be safe with them by the premises they operated from. This window just inspires that confidence and security while the Doric columns and acroterion give the solidity and elegance of an ancient Greek temple. The bank is also built on a plinth of solid granite and in the shape of a cubic money box. Sadly today is a different world.
By Oldrieve, Bell and Paterson, 1939. Bank opened 26th August 1940.
simpletravelandrecreation.blog/2021/09/12/halifax-pacific...
Now a beautiful dance club, the Greek style notable building was once, without surprise, a bank. The Bank of Commerce has for years (1906-1977) occupied the building. Strategically located in the heart of the business activities and across the street from the Province House, the bank was accessible to the wealthiest of the region.
During the early 20th century it was common that banks set their activities in the most dominant buildings to represent solidity, credibility and wealth to reinsure investors on their trustfulness. Four (4) Ionic columns covered and a recessed entrance welcomed investors.
(In the lower left, one can see a woman modelling a Middle Eastern or South Asian outfit; the two photographers who were doing their photo-shoot were just beyond the frame.)
Halifax, Nova Scotia.