Wood Sculpture

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Methuen, 1911 - Decoration and ornament - 425 pages

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Page 328 - Sweet and young-grained wood it is : oak, trained and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame.
Page 4 - The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.
Page 297 - To this end we command that in every church there shall be placed a hollow trunk, fastened with three keys, the first to be kept by the bishop, the second by the priest of the church, and the third by some religious layman ; and that the faithful shall be exhorted to deposit in it, according as God shall move their hearts, their alms for the remission of their sins ; and that once in the week in all churches mass shall be publicly sung for the remission of sins, and especially of those who shall...
Page 286 - And whether your rood-lofts be taken down, and altered, so that the upper parts thereof with the seller or loft be quite taken down unto the cross beam, and that the said beam have some convenient crest put upon the same.
Page 16 - ... birds, in a manner never attempted in the later ages. The embalmer built up the semblance of the man in resins and cloth over his shrunken corpse, to make him as nearly as possible what he was when alive. In each direction man then set himself to supplement, to imitate, to rival, or to exceed, the works of nature. Art, as the gratification of an artificial taste and standard, was scarcely in existence ; but the simplicity, the vastness, the perfection, and the beauty of the earliest works place...
Page 392 - I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad ; but it is cold cutting — the look of equal trouble everywhere — the smooth, diffused tranquillity of heartless pains — the regularity of a plough in a level field.
Page 195 - At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, society was in a state of excitement.
Page 41 - Last, not least, the immense treasures in the churches, the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who day by day and week by week assembled to worship in the old houses of God, which they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice, and candlestick and banner, organs and bells, and picture and image, and altar and shrine they looked upon as their own, and part of their birthright...
Page 260 - For neither did the mischievous invention of men deceive us, nor an image spotted with divers colours, the painter's fruitless labour; the sight whereof enticeth fools to lust after it, and so they desire the form of a dead image, that hath no breath.
Page 4 - He burneth part thereof in the fire, with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself and saith, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire." And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image; he falleth down unto it and worshippeth it and prayeth unto it and saith, "Deliver me; for thou art my God.

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