Chapter VIII: Materials

So far we have merely described the forms of sculptured foliage. It is, however, obvious that these forms must have been considerably modified by the materials in which they were worked. We may go further and state that not merely the sculptures, but the whole character of the building must depend to a great extent on the materials obtainable. In some cases, especially for great buildings like Canterbury Cathedral, the stone may have been brought from a great distance--even across the sea. But in most cases the buildings were constructed of materials that were readily obtainable, and we find both in England and France the finest and best buildings in greatest profusion in districts where good building stone was readily procurable.

The great difference between northern and southern Gothic, say between the architecture of England or Northern France and Italy, is the effect of materials and climate. In the sunny south, wherever bright marbles are obtainable, the architecture tends to depend more on colour and surface than on form, while in the comparatively cold and rainy north, where marble is scarce, the builders had to depend on form almost entirely. A smooth polished surface would not be effective in ordinary building stone, so bold outline and deep shadows must be designed. And, truly, beauty of form is a higher and nobler art than beauty of polished surface and colour. Beauty of form depends more on art than on materials, though there is undoubtedly a great fascination in beautiful shining coloured surfaces.

Professor Prior[6] goes so far as to say that what is much wanted is a systematic survey to separate the various mason-crafts of the English quarry centres, to show their influence on the great tides of central style. He suggests that the country may be roughly divided into three areas for this purpose:

1st: the Upper Thames Valley, including the free large block stone of Box, Charlbury and Dunstable.

2nd: the regions of which Northamptonshire is the centre--Stamford, Peterborough and the Valley of the Nene. The Rutland oolite stone was more enduring than the Oxfordshire. Hence many illustrations of architecture are selected from this region.

3rd: the East Coast, where easy water carriage made good stone easily procurable.

Lincoln Cathedral containing our chief supply of thirteenth-century foliage sculpture, it is interesting to note that the stone came from a local quarry (oolite) and from Ancaster. Its warmth of tone and enduring qualities influenced the design and insured permanence. The Chilmark grey stone was eminently suitable for the refined mouldings of Salisbury, and the Doulting stone for the sculptures of Wells and Glastonbury, while Barnack quarries supplied three dioceses and six counties.

The principal supply of marble in this country came from the Isle of Purbeck. It is mostly used for slender shafts, but at Ely and Salisbury and also in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey the main columns are built entirely of it. It is more usually moulded and not sculptured, but it is sometimes sculptured as at Lincoln (Pl. 86) on the capitals and corbels, and on fonts and tombs.

The stone for the choir of Canterbury was brought from Caen in Normandy. In Cornwall we find at Launceston and elsewhere sculptured granite.

One of our illustrations is of ivory carving (Pl. 3). While this is not strictly architectural work, it is closely related to it, and on account of the beauty and costliness of the material, only the best carvers were employed upon it. It is chiefly on ivories and sarcophagi that the continuity of Classical and Gothic ornament may be followed through the dark ages of the decline of the Roman Empire up to the Norman revival.

Before leaving this subject, we illustrate a few more Purbeck marble carvings to note the effect of working in a harder material.

Pl. 87 shows some foliage on Bishop Marshall’s Tomb at Exeter.

Pl. 88 shows some foliage on Archbishop Grey’s Tomb at York.

Pl. 89 shows some foliage on a corbel at Rochester Cathedral.

These are all thirteenth-century work.

It remains to describe the progress of foliation in wood-carving. We are unaware of the existence of any such carving dating from before the thirteenth century. Some capitals of that date remain at Peterborough Cathedral, taken out of their original setting and used again, fitted into Jacobean canopies (Pl. 90). These specimens have a square abacus which determines the arrangement of the foliage, but it will be seen to consist of trefoils not grouped. Wooden capitals in good preservation are rare. More common are misericords of this period. There are several at Exeter showing well the characteristic Early English trefoils (Pls. 91 and 92). One that is apparently a little later (Pl. 93) shows the blobs or round excrescences which we noticed at Lincoln (Pl. 45), Ely (Pl. 54), and elsewhere, at the period just before the naturalistic change. Christchurch also has a series of thirteenth-century misericords, one of which is perhaps the best example left of this period (Pl. 94). At St Margaret’s Church, King’s Lynn, there is a well-executed fourteenth-century misericord showing a face with Decorated foliage coming from the mouth (Pl. 95). The same fancy we have noticed before, at Hemel Hempstead (Pl. 6), Winchelsea (Pl. 61) and elsewhere.

At St Margaret’s Church, King’s Lynn, there is a very beautiful fourteenth-century screen (Pl. 96). The foliage consists chiefly of crockets on gables and pinnacles. It is sharp-cut early Decorated work in this portion, and the leaves are almost naturalistic. Other portions of the same screen extend into the Perpendicular period. Our next illustration is of Decorated work from the canopies of the stalls at Winchester (Pl. 97). The favourite subject of wood-carving throughout the Decorated and Perpendicular periods is vine stems, leaves and grapes. In this instance the stems are graceful--describing parts of circles[7]. The grapes are numerous and round, the leaves extremely bulbous and ripple-edged. In a vine string at Tong, the stems are still graceful, but the grapes are fewer in number and more symmetrically arranged (Pl. 98). The leaves are still bulbous and ripple-edged, but are more lozenge-shaped, and the bulbous lumps are arranged in a cross. At Abergavenny dragons are mixed with the vines (Pl. 100), the stems are more twisted in a naturalistic manner, the grapes have lozenge outlines and the leaves are lozenge-shaped with drilled indentations. On the bench-ends at Tong the cruciform arrangement of the bulgings and the straight edges of the grapes are even more marked. In another example from Tong the wavy stem arrangement continues, but the foliage is oak leaves and acorns (Pl. 99). Above is a row of Tudor ornaments with symmetrically arranged balls or grapes between them.

The crockets outside the ogee arches of the stall canopies at Norwich Cathedral are good examples of square-cut lozenge-shaped leaves with rippled edges and radiating veins (Pl. 101).

The pews at Mullion may be taken as a characteristic example of late Perpendicular carving in Cornwall. The indented edges of the long pointed leaves with a ball in the centre are frequent in this kind of work (Pl. 102).

At the very end of the Gothic period we find in some of the wood-carving the same expression which we noticed at Cambridge--a desire to throw over convention and return to nature. Of this a bench-end at Crowcombe (Somerset) is a good example (Pl. 103).