Christmas: A Time for Reflection – Hope Springs Eternal
At Athens the temple was for priests, people standing outside divinity hidden – the Christian worshipped inside an architectural space where hope sprung eternal
Gothic Architecture
Gothic & Baroque Fashion – Are They About Beauty & The Beast
The Gothic and Baroque styles in design are both grand sweeping statements of art and style transformed into colourful costumes by the fashion houses of Europe
Walking a Labyrinth – Chartres Cathedral to Centennial Park
A labyrinth is an ancient symbol relating to wholeness, with powerful patterns within a sphere that merge the sublime and beautiful where heaven and earth meet.
Inventing the Gothic Style at St Denis
The Abbot Suger at St. Denis near Paris developed the Early Gothic style of architecture from 1137. It was a system of great structural ingenuity and Suger is attributed with inventing the pointed arch and pioneering the use of glass in a high range of clerestory windows to the south…
Pugin & Pearson – The Master & Disciple of Gothic Revival
Auguste Welby Pugin [1812-52] and John Loughborough Pearson [1817-1897] were leading exponents of the nineteenth century Gothic Revival style in architecture in England from Waterloo (1815) to the Great War (1914-1918). Their connection with the expansion of the colony established in the antipodes during the late eighteenth century has almost been forgotten, especially in England.
Symbolic Shapes
A church or cathedral is made up of sacred shapes such as pointed arches, circles and ogee curves. The circle represents sacred order, the earth, sun, moon, planets and the whole of creation. The ogee shape derives from the architecture of Islam, which is abstract although fine and decorative, portraying…