Stained Glass Sunday - George and the Chicken Snake Bat Goat

"I, Saint George, in my shiny blue armour and my wings like a parrot and my totally manly yellow knitted miniskirt;
I tread on you, dragon, because you are very silly and you have a chicken's head."
True story.

Stained Glass Sunday - Storyboard

Mediæval stained glass wasn't just decorative; it had a purpose to serve. Back then, if you didn't speak Latin you wouldn't know what the hell the service was all about, so the church provided pictures.

Not sure which part of the scriptures this one's supposed to depict, but reading from top to bottom I'd guess something along the lines of:

And the big guy saith "Dude! Check it out, man; I'm sitting here with all these giant red peaches an' shit."
And the lady in the nightie saith "Whatever. I mean you should have seen it! Like, it was THIS big!"
And the man with the bloody sword spake thus: "Endangered species, my ass! I can get at least a dozen designer handbags outta your hide."

If you're in church today, check out the stained glass and see what tales it has to tell.

Stained Glass Sunday

And the Lord saith:
"She was THIS fat!

I mean, what the fuck?

Her profile said 'average' body type.

How is that average?

What is this? America?

I'll never trust an online dating site again as long as I live.

Sheesh!"

Stained Glass Sunday

Stained Glass Sunday - Smiley Cat and the Boob Fairy

One of many spiffy parts of Norwich Cathedral. I took this not so much for the stained glass but for the little gargoyley decorated heads around the frieze, in particular the left and right carvings on this face which I can only describe as Smiley Cat and the Boob Fairy (you'll need to click on the photo to enlarge it).
I heartily recommend exploring your local cathedral with an eye for the weird and wonderful things hidden away on high.

Hey, on an unrelated note I'm listening to a new disc of Couperin's Trois Leçons de Ténèbres (Vivat 102: Carolyn Sampson: soprano; Marianne Beate Kielland: mezzo with the King's Consort under Robert King), which is beautiful in itself, but reading the liner notes I find the theorbo - played so gorgeously by Lynda Sayce - was made by my old music teacher and world-class lutenist, David van Edwards. Yay!

Stained Glass Sunday - Sweet

Why should churches have all the fun?

This is MY kind of stained glass!

These are in Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly.

Stained Glass Sunday - Camelot

Stained Glass Sunday

Not my door.

More's the pity.

Stained Glass Sunday

The big ol' west window of Norwich Cathedral.

And here it is in context.

Stained glass windows are a bugger to photograph:

if you want the glass, the surroundings are too dark;

if you want the surroundings the window is too light;

if you Photoshop one onto the other it looks stupid.

Hey ho.

Stained Glass Sunday

Check out our spears, laydees.

Stained Glass Sunday - Cromer Lifeboat Station

Stained Glass Sunday - Royal Arcade

The yummy Art Nouveau Royal Arcade in Norwich.

And the same window from the outside. Spiffy, huh?

Stained Glass Sunday

Non-ecclesiastic stained glass this week. In fact not even stained glass, merely coloured glass. But pretty nonetheless. This is in the entrance to le Grand Palais.

Stained Glass Sunday - Notre Dame

Stained Glass Sunday - l'Église St. Gervais et St. Protais

I have so many photos of stained glass. For a Marxist Atheist I seem to have a perverse fascination with ecclesiastical glazing, though I am more a fan of Tiffany's glass, probably thanks to Shiela filling my house with it. The Tiffany exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg a couple of years back was mind-blowing, but of course no cameras were allowed inside, so duh. The photo at the bottom of this post is the closest you'll get unless you come round to my house to look at the catalogue.

Anyhoo, to save myself having to think of anything to write on a Sunday (and with apologies to rant fans for my having become addicted of late to photo-posting in favour of lengthy and splenetic romps through Roget's Profanisaurus) here is the start of yet another series.

I'm a huge fan of the light that stained glass casts on other surfaces and here is a nice example of that.
This is one of the many fine views available inside l'Église Saint Gervais et Saint Protais, tucked away behind Hôtel de Ville near the Seine in Paris.
One of the oldest Paris churches it is now adorned with magnificent modern stained glass thanks to a fabulous restoration made necessary by a German shell blowing the crap out of the place in March 1918, killing 88 people.

Here's the church from the outside. It's well worth a visit and not just for the stained glass; those buttresses are unconscionably spiffy, too. And of course, if you're of a religious bent you can always say hi to God while you're there.

Look out for more of the same on Sundays from now on … at least until I get bored and do something else.