One image I didn’t give you from our England visit is of a thatched-roofed building. This one is neither a remarkable structure nor unusual thatch. Seems like many of the still-thatched buildings are right next to the road, suggesting they are old country routes…. Quite a chimney on this one, no? Note, too, the use of dense hedges as visual barriers….

This is not church-glass, but ca. 1864 by a Neo-Gothic arts-and-crafts artist, a small piece we saw at the Musée National du Moyen Âge, titled “Chaucer asleep.” The designer was Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, and it was made by William Morris‘s decorative arts guild, which had six partners including Burne-Jones (photo of both men in 1874 here). They founded the group in 1861, and this piece was made just before their firm garnered a lot of business. In the 1850s, Burne-Jones was enamored of Canterbury Tales, so his choice of Chaucer before his design was in service of clients makes sense.

What I especially liked is all the plant-detail—in the meadow with the sleeping figure, against the fence, and glimpsed through openings in the wall. I like the angel holding the solar timepiece, left, and the poppies(?) by the fence. Interesting that the cloak is green, but not the plants…. I also like that his foot pokes gently out of what is otherwise the boundary of the rectangular piece, and into the framing area. BTW, the words are “Imago Chaucer Poetae.”

This entry was posted in anthropology, architecture, images on Friday, 29 April 2016 at 10:22 pm.
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