Posts by Jonathan Pageau
One Year Already
It was a bit more than a year ago that we posted our first article on the Orthodox Arts Journal in the hopes of fostering Orthodox traditional arts of all kinds. The OAJ is the brainchild of a few of us hoping to see a space where individuals could encounter the beauty, richness and diversity of liturgical…
Continue reading »Prosopon Conference Online
A few months ago, we posted an article about a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Prosopon School of Iconography and Iconology. The event took place in April of this year in Princeton NJ. They had 120 people attend, mostly from the US, but also from England, Estonia and Russia. For those nearby, there…
Continue reading »Ethiopian Carving
Since the post I wrote on Ethiopian art has attracted many comments, I thought I would share a few thoughts on Ethiopian carving. I had seen images of Ethiopian carving before my trip there and was looking forward to finding where they came from. It is in the city of Axum, where the fabled Ark of…
Continue reading »Is There Really a Patristic Critique of Icons
Gabe Martini has written a nice concise defense of icons in the Patristic record for the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy blog. It is a response to a Protestant article, but it shows nicely how thin the opposition to icons is in the Church Fathers. Gabe relies strongly on our own fr.Steven Bigham’s books and so I…
Continue reading »The Amber Icons of Alexander Krylov
Alexander Krylov is a Russian master of amber. For several years he worked with a few others to recreate the famous “amber room”, the gift of the Prussian king to Peter the Great in the 18th century. It was known as “the eight wonder of the world”, but was looted by the Nazis during the…
Continue reading »Learning Icon Carving with Hexaemeron
Icon carving is an art which has been experiencing a great renewal in Orthodoxy all across the world. In the last 15 years we have seen several amazing icon carvers appear, with Aidan Hart in England, the Azbuhanov couple in Russia. The art of miniature carving has also been finding a quality it had lost…
Continue reading »The Serpents of Orthodoxy
One of the most surprising images one is faced with considering Orthodox liturgical symbolism is the bishop’s staff sporting two snakes flanking a small cross atop it. Especially in a Protestant North American context, this image seems to hark back to ancient chthonian cults, more a wizard’s magic staff than anything Christian. As I have…
Continue reading »Russian Master Icon Carvers
Rashid and Inessa Azbuhanov are a Russian couple who are leading the rediscovery of icon carving in the Russian Church. Their works grace the collections of Russian politicians from Gorbachev to Putin, European royal families and church authorities from the Russian Patriarch to the Pope of Rome. Their works are often large and highly detailed, like wooden lace as…
Continue reading »Miniature Icons by Evgeny Baranov
Here are some of the most astounding miniature icons I have seen. They are made by a Russian artisan named Evgeny Baranov who is also a very good goldsmith as you will see below. These pictures were taken from his facebook page. I have been trying to get a short interview with some more details, and…
Continue reading »Icons from Shells
Here is a surprising video from a Georgian news website of an Archpriest who uses seashells to create decorative images but also icons. His images are quite “folk” in appearance and composition and the iconography is obviously rather simple as the shells prevent too much detail. This priest seems quite comfortable as he is shown…
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