Friday, April 24, 2015

Gothic Ornaments in the Cathedral Church of York

Joseph Halfpenny - Gothic Ornaments in the Cathedral Church of York (1795)

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Posted because of the great illustrations - below is only a small sample.  Like many 18th century books it has a list of subscribers who helped fund its publication - a practice still current with Kickstarter.  While researching it I discovered that Dover reprinted this in 2005 under the title Gothic Ornament.

Halfpenny was an engraver who did a few other publications but this is his best-known.  The text is fairly minimal and basically just descriptive.  One plate seems to me to depict the Green Man but the text identifies the faces as "bosses".  Apparently parts of the church were later damaged by fire and this is the only record of those sections before.