The eyes have it
I wonder if Hook Norton, a large village in North Oxfordshire, can stand as a symbol of what I respond to in England’s rural settlements. So far, I’ve posted about this village’s remarkable brewery, about a Shell petrol pump globe, and about Hook Norton’s early, and lovely, Baptist chapel. Buildings and objects like these are very much the kind of things that appeal to me, and that have, I hope, animated the posts on this English Buildings blog for nearly 11 years. All I need is a parish church and a beautiful, hand-painted sign and I’ve got the essence of my interests. And Hook Norton is rich enough to oblige.
The parish church, then. I’ve visited St Peter’s Hook Norton (beautiful, large, airy, part-Norman, partly from the later Middle Ages) several times over the years, but only on the most recent occasion with the Resident Wise Woman. ‘You must come in here,’ I said to her. ‘There’s something you’ll really like.’ I knew that the primitive, but charmingly folkish carving on the Norman font would be up her street, and I hope it appeals to you to.
On the face of it, the relief decoration on the font is very simple: Adam, Eve, a centaur-archer, a figure carrying a water-bags, a lion-like creature, and a monster out of the bestiaries with two heads, one in his tail. But before we dismiss the simplistic carving, there’s much to keep us looking. ‘EVA’ and ‘ADAM’ are named, as is the archer, ‘SAGITARIUS’ and the latter identification encourages one to speculate that the lion could be Leo and the water-carrier Aquarius, though the two-headed monster (sometimes referred as an amphisbaena, although, strictly, an amphisbaena was a two-headed serpent) is in no zodiac that I know. The inscriptions also make one wonder if more people in the Middle Ages than we think could read – someone at any rate could spell out these words and tell others that here were the first man and woman. Adam has already begun to delve – he carries a rake in one hand and a spade in the other, and has dug into the band of ornament running around the base of the font. Eve has not, though, learned to spin, and seems more concerned with addressing her modesty.* The faces, apart from Eve’s rather pointed foxy visage, are charming, and some of the eyes have that tendency to look out at you directly from faces in profile that we see in many periods and genres of art, from ancient Egypt to the Cubists. I am charmed especially by the amphisbaena, in intimate conversation with himself, as many of us are. There is a much better photograph of it than mine, by John Piper, in the Tate collection, which is worth a look. He had a good eye for these eyes, did Mr Piper, as he did for the more general charms and visual interest of the English village.† I’m pleased to follow in his footsteps, even if my own photographic efforts are, compared with his, as crude as the work of the Hook Norton carver.
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* At least I think that’s what she’s doing.
† People who visited the recent Tate Piper exhibition, which has also been at Warwick Arts Centre, might be forgiven for thinking, from a misleading caption there, that Piper took all his pictures with a box Brownie camera. John Piper wrote in a note on equipment prefaced to a book of his photographs that he started with a number 2 Brownie, but bought a secondhand ‘Ideal’ camera with a Zeiss lens in Broughton when he was about 18; this he used until he was 60, when he treated himself to a Hasselblad. See John Piper, A Painter’s Camera: Buildings and Landscapes in Britain 1935–1985 (The Tate Gallery, 1987).
2 comments:
On the subject of literacy, I have recently begun to alter my opinion that most of the populace in medieval times were unlettered:the Bergen rune-staves c. 1300 (?) denoting ownership or mercantile transactions were obviously understood by many. Circa 1300 a man threw on the ground, somewhere in England, a quatrain in French, obviously expecting a "passer-by" to read it. In Great Malvern Priory, lines of classically-constructed Latin verse are boldly carved on a tomb - for whom? (Not for me: my Latin isn't good enough). ADAM and EVA on the font figures are pretty small beer compared with these.
The Amphisbaena probably refers to the two-headed snakes of India - actually conjoined twin snakes, with both the heads at the same end. The NAG, snake, is important in Indian art and culture. Like the dragon and the unicorn, if there wasn't a two-headed snake in nature, the imagination had to invent it. In my recent little book AMONG WELSH MEDIEVALS: THE LITERATURE OF TOTALITY I point out that the Bestiary was a mainstay of medieval literature and culture throughout Europe and beyond (e.g. Ethiopia). In this respect, there was no distinction between religious and secular art.
Well, you gave opened a can of worms here. When people asked why relatively poor communities would spend so much money on sculpture, stained glass windows, mosaics, paintings and silver art, the answer always mentioned educating the masses of illiterate citizens. What happens if that was not the correct answer?
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