I came across these Christmas cards I designed when I was employed with another firm, and thought I would post them.  Courtesy of JBHM.

These were done in the days of Xerox and #11 Xacto.

Snowflake Cathedrals

If  you could possibly add even more

ornamentation to a Corinthian Cap

Ionic Candy Cane

We all know these eidifces often took centuries to build, with one generation of stone masons training the next.  Understanding that many of these were “Work in Progress” for many years, I wanted to make a comparison of the largest of the European cathedral to see which were built when, relative to one another.

Architectural drawings are scarce, and in many cases the architect of record is unknown.  Wikipedia was my main source of information, and any date can be debatable, but it served me well for an overall snapshot.  I was less interested in the exact dates as I was a simple graphic overview.

Look at Aachen Cathedral, specifically Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel.  Charlemagne worked hard as the Holy Roman Emperor to let the state reflect the spiritual basis of the religion, only to have Machiavelli sweep it all away hunderds of years later.

For fun I also threw in Washington Nathional Cathedral.

The graphic certainly shows how the 13th century was the era of the European cathedrals.

11/26/11

In my readings, it is mentioned that the Gothic cathedrals were always constructed with the narthex entrance (called the Royal Portal) facing west.  But how west is the orientation?  Were they all 90 degrees west?  One would think certain site constraints would dictate some variances, so I decided to make a comparison of the orientation of several of the cathedrals using Google Earth, and plans clipped from several web sites.  None of these plans are to scale, I just sized them so that the naves were approximately the same width.

The process I used was to locate the cathedral in Google Earth, making sure north was true.  Then tape a thread across the face of my laptop along the centerline of the nave, toggle over to photo editing software and rotate the plan from north to align with the thread.  Sounds crude, but it works well.  Again, all I am concerned about is the angle relative to north.

You can see that Notre Dame (Paris) and Amiens are almost the exact same orientation, but Reims and Chartes are uniquely oriented.  I also threw in Canterbury to see what things were like across the Channel.

So, suffice to assume that all of the Middle Age big boys faced west, or westerly.  Aaron Williams, who is studying theology at St. Joseph Seminary, says this is referred to as Ad Orientam worship.  The processional nature of the worship faces the easterly rising sun as an image of final judgement. 

We all know that the difference between Cathedral and Church is that the cathedral is the seat of the bishop, or Diocese.  So for the reader of this blog, I ask you to make a mental note of any large cathedral (or even church) you see as to their orientation. Does this ancient rule apply to today’s Work?  Probably not in the Protestant sector, but what about the Catholic? 

St. Peter Cathedral in Jackson, MS faces east, and this structure dates to the early 1900′s.  St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans is also oriented east, but Natchez Cathedral does in fact, face west.

St Peter Cathedral, Jackson, MS

http://cathedralsaintpeter.org/who-we-are/parish-history/

It will not surprise me to find that many of our later day Roman Catholic churches are oriented primarily because of site conditions, rather than Middle Age practice.

11/23/11

This is a portriat I made for Broadmoor Children’s Life Group with 3M post-it notes. 

 Measures about 8 foot square.

11/20/11

I’ve been playing around with my standard scale figure block, wanting to create something new as I have been looking at this guy for 10 years.  These are drawn with p-lines, except in PowerDraft its called B-spline.

I like the way this is going, but need to add other entourage in this same theme.

11/20/11

I found this tree when walking the other day.  It looks like a Horseapple Tree, or what we called Bodock.  Also called Osage Orange tree.  It’s rather knarley looking and is often accompanied with large thorns, but that’s part of the aesthetic.  We used to cut these up and polish the wood for an orange/yellow finish.  I didn’t see any fruit (horseapples) however – not that I would have eaten any.

11/06/11

I am currently reading Universe of Stone. Written by Philip Ball, this biography of Chartes Cathedral perked my interest into the High Gothic.

People do not realize the scale of these cathedrals, which utterly dominated the landscape of the town ( in this case, the Chartes region, southwest of Paris). Photo from greatbuildings.com.

Chartes Cathedral - context

This is a beautiful elevation I found from alephnaught.com, which is a drawing that accompanied the paper model, purchased at the gift shop.

south elevation

Its drawn in the traditional Beaux Arts style.  You just can’t replicate this look with todays technology.   Note the coloration of the windows are darker than shade.  There is so much depth to this drawing.

Speaking of Chartes gift shop, Ball says that today as during the Middle Ages these cathedrals were intended not only for spiritual enlightment, but a source of revenue for generations of the clergy apparatus.