A Nice Commission

Last summer, I got a commission from St Dominic's Church in Washington DC, to carve the Four Evangelist symbols for the reredos in the church. Of course I was delighted, since this is "right up my alley", when it comes to medieval art. This gave me an opportunity to make something in the medieval style which as regular followers will know, is my true passion. As a starting point, I chose an 11th century image for St Mark, the lion, which is part of a silver and jeweled book cover. I then designed the other three characters to follow the same format, relying on other 10th and 11th century work to guide me. Father Schommer, of the church, allowed me complete freedom in my design. Our only discussion was that they would be gilded and have the backgrounds painted in. Of course, the size was determined by the placement of the roundels.

What follows are some pictures of the project as it unfolded.

I started with St Mark, as I had an image from a 11thc book cover

 

 

 The lion is also my sign, so I have a special affinity towards it

Nearly finished

The source of inspiration

One down, three to go.

St Luke follows Marc in the order

The carving well under way

And finished

Next was St John

This was my primary source of inspiration 10thc Ivory

 

One challenge to the design for St John was following the same format with one appendage holding the end of the scroll and another holding down the other end, but leaving some space. Anatomically, it did not work for his other foot to be in a similar position to what Mark and Luke had, so I came up with the idea of the wing tip holding down the other end; it works.

St Mathew, working out the design

 

 

The design for Mathew held even more challenges. I had thought that I would just follow another St Mathew that I had carved many years ago, but that did not work because his hands could not hold the scroll.

 

St Mathew and his symbol, Unfinished carving from 1998

 

 

I wanted to have him holding the scroll stretched out between his hands, but that left his centre open and did not work, also it did not have the feel of 10th or 11th century art to it. I finally thought of having one hand hold one end, and the other end "held" in his wing. It works, so I went with it.

 

 

this one needed a new plank of timber, as the other one was full

finished carving and ready for cutting out

the other three, all together and ready to cut out as well

After cutting them all out, which I never took a picture of, the next step was to prepare them all for gilding. This is done with several layers of gesso and red bole

 

Scraping the bole on St Johan

 

 

To give the carvings more of an authentic medieval look, I used a scraper and scraped the bole down, as opposed to sanding it. The results were much better even if it took much longer to do.

 

 

All ready for gilding

Genuine 23 karat "red gold" was used for the gilding.

Gilded, painted, lettered and ready to go

So small one can hardly see them, but they add a nice touch

Close-up of the left side

Close-up of the right side

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