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The Master Masons of Chartres |
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Author: |
John James, PhD |
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Publisheer: |
West Grinstead Publications, London, NY, Chartres and Sydney, 1990 |
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ISBN: |
0646008056 |
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Format: |
Cloth bound, 250 mm x 190 mm 200 pages, 116 illustrations |
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Price: |
Aud$55.00 (+ P&H)
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<<< FOR SPECIAL OFFER ON "THE ARK OF GOD" >>>>click here!
For $AUD 1,800 you may buy all 5 volumes directly from the author.
From the Author:
Chartres is one of the most impressive and exciting buildings from the Middle Ages, and is preserved almost intact. Yet we know nothing of the men who created it. In this masterpiece of detection, James shows how he came to identify the master masons from the stones themselves. His meticulous "reading" of the cathedral tells us much about these men, how they solved problems of engineering and design, how they raised two-ton stones 40 meters into the air, how one mason without telephone or printer controlled over 300 men on this gigantic workshop, He even extracts something of their artistic personalities.
PRAISE FROM WONDERFUL PEOPLE:
"This book, beautifully illustrated and written with an engaging enthusiasm and directness, contributes a great deal to our knowledge. He knows the building as well as the back of his hand. It is difficult to convey the detailed reading cod controlled excitement of a book in which the different levels of meaning tumble over one another, layer by layer. John James gives us a new appreciation of the living, growing and organic reality of medieval building."”
—John Lane
CHAPTERS:
Chapter 1: The Cathedral
Chapter 2: Messiness can be a Virtue
Chapter 3: The Contractors
Chapter 4: Dating by Poetry
Chapter 5: The Client
Chapter 6: Putting Significance into Form
Chapter 7: The Architect
Chapter 8: More about the Contractors
Chapter 9: The Geometers
Chapter 10: Master Bronze at work
SELECTED QUOTES:
"When you examine the cathedral closely, you discover to your immense surprise that the design is not a well controlled and harmonious entity, but a mess. We tend to think of a great work of art like Chartres as having been thought through to the end before it was begun. But Chartres is not like this, not at all. Our vision has been conditioned by the homogenizing eye of the camera, but when we look carefully we see that there are few things at one end of the building that match those at the other. Windows and piers and buttresses change, as do hidden elements such as wells and footings,and of course all the details. The close we look the messier it becomes: there is no other word for it."
"Christianity is a progressive religion in which man moves from a state of original sin towards a greater understanding with God. Every pilgrim accepts a hierarchy of ideas when he enters the cathedral, such as the wet end being more mundane from which he "progresses" towards the altar and the rising sun in the east. Pilgrim's place is in the nave, and he prays towards the choir. The root of our word 'nave' is the same as navy, with its overtones of the ark, and of protection from the boundless fears of the deep."