Occasionally Jonathan Pageau and I like to experiment with our work – to skirt the boundaries of historical precedent, to revive forgotten and archaic techniques, or to juxtapose ideas in new ways. This project, an elaborate mixed-media icon of Archangel Gabriel, is such an instance. It was not a commissioned project, but rather something we […]
I have recently completed a small but highly interesting project, two years in the making, and involving several master artisans. It is a wooden cross with carved stone icons, crafted like a jewel, wholly traditional, and yet quite unlike anything seen before. This is one of those projects that grew, perhaps providentially, from an initially […]
The idea for this gospel cover began several years ago. I discussed with Jonathan Pageau the possibility of using his stone carvings as inlaid icons in wooden liturgical pieces. He is able to carve the steatite stone slabs quite thin so that the weight is reasonable even for a book cover. I based the […]
One of the points many OAJ contributors have been trying to bring across is that the medium out of which sacred art is made and the artful human act of fabrication are important on a symbolic and theological level. This question of materiality and production have become crucial ones in our age of mechanical reproduction […]
Last year, I promised our readers that I would try to create an opus sectile icon, that is an icon that joins different stones together to make an image. I recently had the chance to create something that is a mix of carving and mosaic and is probably as close as I am going to […]
Last month I had the opportunity to give my first icon carving training for Hexaemeron. Hexaemeron is a travelling liturgical arts school based on the work and method of Ksenia Pokrovsky of recent memory. It was an honor to join the Hexaemeron team and to have a chance of working with a very dedicated group of […]
I recently had the chance to make some wooden crowns for a seminarian planning his wedding. I had occasionally seen wooden crowns in recent Orthodox weddings and so I knew it was not completely an innovation. In discussion with the patron we decided on a tiara form, which would include a miniature stone icon and […]
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 […]
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 […]
There are certain Medieval forms which have always been with me, seeming to affect an almost hypnotic attraction. The casket reliquary or “chasse” is one of these. Shaped like a tomb, but also suggesting a basilica church, these reliquaries most probably originate in early insular (Gaelic/Celtic/Pictish/Saxon) art. Most of us know this shape primarily from […]