Because of some weirdness we are going to do a second and smaller run of letterpress Anarchist Tool Chest posters this week.
We’ll only be making 500 this time and they’ll be in a slightly different hue of ink. We probably will have a few to sell on the website (and at our storefront in Covington, Ky., on May 14) but we have to increase the price to $25 (that price includes domestic shipping) so we don’t lose money on this project.
What was the weirdness? We had more posters spindled or mutilated during shipping and have to replace a lot more than we anticipated. Also, we ended up with fewer posters than we planned (still trying to figure that one out).
So if you are still lacking for one of these posters, hang tight and keep your eye on this blog. By the way, a few readers have asked how they can be notified of things like this. We don’t have a spambot – I mean newsletter – but you can sign up to receive an email from WordPress every time we post a new blog entry. Look at the top of the right rail of the blog and you’ll see “E-mail subscription.” Enter your email address in that box to sign up.
Note: We don’t sell, rent or give away anyone’s personal information to anyone. We don’t send advertisements or information on how you can get in on the exciting world of sausage making at home. All you’ll ever get is an email containing the blog entry.
The ancient “geometers” believed that geometry was the key to comprehending the incomprehensible; that an understanding of its inherent truths was the key to unlocking the mystery of how the “Gods” created order from chaos. The development of geometric constructions (the truths rather than proofs) became the foundational tool of the artisans to create a built world of inherently sound, durable and pleasing forms.
And it all started from nothing:
Across the Ionian Sea, a gentle wind blows from the West with the fading of winter–the breath of the God Zephyr, a harbinger of spring and the bringer of light. A God whose name would, as we will see, appropriately evolve to produce the word “zero.” The geometers did not use or represent zero as a number, but rather as a notation to show the location of the focus of a circle. Like the true center of a wheel, it is the only place that does not rotate, for it is a place of no dimension. There is nothing to rise, nothing to fall. All revolves around it. And like Zephyr, the renewer of life, the zero of the ancient artisans served as the seed of all shape and form. website
— Jim Tolpin, reprinted from the byhandandeye.com website, which explores artisan geometry
Quarreling Carvers, 1520, Beverley Minster, Great Britain
Over the weekend I plowed through several thousand photos on my mission to gather together misericords featuring woodworkings. I found enough examples to split into two posts: today are the carvers and (perhaps) the carpenters will be posted by next weekend. The carvers and their tools are from France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Great Britain.
Mallet, 1520-1525, St. Laurent Church, Estavayer-le-Lac, Switzerland.
There is a huge range of detail from one misericord to the next. From the simplicity of the mallet to a highly detailed scene of a carver at work on a statue. One carver might have been contracted, and paid by the day, to provide all the misericords in a church. In other instances a master carved was hired to plan all the carvings and oversee a crew of carvers.
Carver working on a figural piece, 1497-1503, Cathedral of Plasencia, Spain.
The misericord below was categorized as ‘Forestry’ but it looks like a woodworker is riving a block of wood for a misericord.
Riving, 1457-1470, Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Rouen, France.
In another French church two carvers are found working on a misericord.
Misericord Workshop, 1413, Church of Notre-Dame des Grands-Andelys, France.
In the entries for two churches I found the same misericord listed. The lighting and angle of the photos are different but the missing piece on the carver’s face, his clothes, number of fingers and tools are the same. This misericord mystery is just a case of to which church in East-central France does it actually belong.
À gauche: 1490-1500, St. Paul, Bletterans, ou à droite: 15th c. St.-Thomas-de-Cantorbery, Cuiseaux ?
Some of the oldest misericords in Great Britain are in Exeter Cathedral. The elegant arms in the misercord below are dated 1220-1270. If you would like to read a short section (54 pages) about the Exeter misericords including a bit about their construction, how they were moved within the cathedral and some destructive ‘work’ here is a link to “The Misericords of Exeter Cathedral” written by Kate M. Clarke in 1920. Note: the remainder of the book is about other non-misericord sites in Devon
Possibly a gift of the Glovers Guild, 1220-1270, Exeter Cathedral, Great Britain.
If you have any confusion on the configuration of a seat in a choir stall and the location of the misericords the two figures below should help. In the photo the red arrow points to a seat that is down. At the front edge of the seat you can see a small ledge or bracket. The back row of choir stalls shows the seats up and the location of the misericords.
Seats down in front row, seats up in back row. Aren’t those stools in front of the choir stalls fabulous?
Another view of ‘Seats Up/Seats Down’ is from the delightful little book “Choir Stalls and Their Carvings – Examples of Misericords from English Cathedrals and Churches” written and illustrated by Emma Phipson in 1896. You can find it here.
From “Choir Stalls and Their Carvings” by Emma Phipson, 1896.
The gallery has several more carvers or ‘kervers’ for you to enjoy.
–Suzanne Ellison
Carver overview & detail, 14th c., All Hallows Church, Wellingborough, Great Britain.
Flying Carver, 13th-16th c., Priory, Christchurch, Great Britain.
Carver, 1425-1449, St.-Sauveur, Bruges, Belgium.
Carver, 1521, St.-Gal, Langeac, France.
Carver, 1457-1470, Cathedral Notre Dame, Rouen, France.
Carver, 1457-1470, Cathedral Notre Dame, Rouen, France.
Carving a figural piece (armrest), after 1500, Abbey St.-Dennis, France.
Carver (armrest), 16th c., Castelnau-Bretenoux, Prudhomat, France.
Carvers? Maybe? 16th c., Church of Notre Dame, Lorris, France.
Bird on a Tree, late 15th c., Montemart, France.
Mallet, 1462-1464, St. Nicholas Cathedral, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Billhook, 1520-1525, St. Laurent Church, Estavayer-le-Lac, Switzerland.
The discovery of a pattern seems to me to be an inherent feature of the human experience of making. Whether he or she thinks about it or not, or is even aware of it, a person who makes something implicitly assumes existence of an order or standard of rightness that transcends all recipes and rules of composition: a standard, a pattern, or – to use the Greek word – a paradeigma which both measures the work and is measured by it.
This pattern can be thought of as a single, immutable template to be traced or copied, which appears to be how Plato understood it, or it can be thought of as a mutable rhythm governing a pattern of movement, like the figure of a dance: a rhythm or order (kosmos) that is rediscovered with each new tracing of the figure.
Artists – and by “artists” I mean all people who make things: not just novelists, poets, composers, and painters, but also cooks, gardeners, and seamstresses, insofar as they are not assembly line workers – are an infinitesimal and powerless minority in the Western world, but this was not always the case. The civilization of archaic Greece, which is to say Western civilization at its very roots, has been called a civilization of the artisan….
It is my contention that, with the dawn of Greek thought, the pattern discovered, or allowed to appear, through making was universalized to become the pattern that eventually came to be understood as the one embodied in the cosmos as we understand the word.
— Indra Kagis McEwen “Socrates’ Ancestor” (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.)
