December 16, 2007
Vidimus 13, The King's Glass, and The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
Vidimus, which boasts of being the only online magazine devoted to medieval stained glass, has been around for about a year and is always worth a look through.
The December 2007 issue reviews the new book The King's Glass, by Carola Hicks. Amazon describes the book as such - "Monarchs and makers. The tense, captivating story of the glorious windows of the King's College Chapel, Cambridge". Translation - the book is about the stained glass of King's College Chapel, with a focus on the makers of the glass, mostly Flemish immigrants. Sounds like a great premise for a book, as there are far too few books on stained glass that deal with the designers and fabricators who actually make the stained glass. You can see other reviews of The King's Glass at the Telegraph online and the Times Online.
I visited King's College Chapel about 17 years ago and I have to say I liked the side chapel glass better than the big bold scenic windows. Just me, as I tend to prefer the small and intimate spaces over the large and overpowering. There is no mention of it in this issue of Vidimus, but if you can find it, look for Hilary Wayment's book on the King's College Side Chapel Glass. On writing this, I tried a search for 'hilary wayment chapel glass' at abebooks.com, and I've seen it on other used book sites. If you just want to see more images of the stained glass from King's College Chapel, the great and the intimate, you can see many images with a Flickr search for 'king's college chapel glass'.
a few examples, among many -
The Top portion of the East Window - in full
via Flickrite "nick in exsilio"
and a closer view in the lower center area - see Christ's foot at the top left in the image. I remember this as a large expanse of glass with a jumble of highly colored figures.
As for the Side Chapel windows, this is one of the more enigmatic of the side chapel roundels.
"Justice" - via flickrite twistan
Another view of the side chapel windows. This gives a better idea of the context in which you might see these, in a jumble of a different sort. Note the grasshopper - the side chapel windows contain many of these small 'nature' themed details.
via flickrite 'frscspd'
This issue of Vidimus being the Christmas issue and there being a tradition in England for the Christmas Ghost Story, there is included a ghost story by M.R. James called The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, which features stained glass in a key part of the plot. I read the story many years ago and it was fun to read it again. Well, actually, I listened to it this time. You can find links to free audio versions of all the stories in "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" at Librivox, which turns public domain books into downloadable audio book versions.
Posted by Tom at December 16, 2007 09:38 AM