Something A Little Different

The picture below is the United Methodist Church in downtown St. Pete. Nothing is truly old down here, since this area is fairly new as far as towns go. The church was built in 1926 and they spend quite a little fortune in stained glass windows. I noticed an ad for a tour of the windows every Wednesday morning, which included a rather large rendition of DaVinci's The Last Supper, and it was free, so why not? I thought stain glass pictures would be difficult to take, but it wasn't.

It wasn't a large crowd, only 4 of us, but they were chatty so I didn't have to be. The windows today are on either side of the chapel. The ones to the right get the morning sun, the ones to the left, the afternoon. They have been valued at over a million dollars and are protected on the outside by lexan. They have not been cleaned in decades.

I like stained glass and not so surprisingly, I learned quite a bit about the making and designing of panes. First, stained glass is not smooth like your kitchen window. Stained glass is manhandled during the process, kind of like icing a cake to make the colors lighter/darker, richer, etc.

In most classic stained glass religious windows, Christ is wearing white for purity, or red, for the blood he sacrificed. These windows represent the chronological life of Christ.

John the Baptist is baptising Christ and using a sea shell, another recurrent feature in many windows. The shell represents an "eternal" element.

The sheep represent the meek and passive, while the evergreen in the back is another symbol of the eternal.

The windows themselves are reproductions of famous European windows. These were made by a company in Ohio. Imagine the shipping necessary to get these from there to Florida in the 20's.

The golden medallion halo was a popular Medieval painting feature.

I thought my camera did a pretty good job of capturing the lights and colors of the windows.

The lily becomes a theme in many depictions and we again, see the evergreen on the hillside, as Christ emerges from the burial cave.

This one really caught my eyes mostly because of the blues and yellows. It is a very striking color pattern. Tomorrow we will be seeing the Last Supper and talking a bit about its design. Its pretty fascinating stuff so be here to join in. Class dismissed.

Comments

Flashback Friday

Class, Or Lack Thereof The Dwight Vice gravestone in Oquawka, Illinois. I bring this old chestnut out every so often just to remind me that class is classless. Dwight Vice was killed in his home near Oquawka in 2001. It was one of those things that can generate crime: two guys thought Dwight had a lot of money stashed at home because of his pot-selling sideline to supplement his fishing job. Not really one of those big drug deals gone-bad things. Marijuana was, according to the trial, about the only stuff Dwight sold. But these two guys barge into the house and killed Dwight and attempted to kill his 11 year old kid, Darryl, before they took off with what money they could find. His son, now 23, was stabbed in the back and left for dead. He survived and is wheelchair bound and has undergone several surgeries to repair his wounds. He will be paralyzed for life. None of this is pleasant. Reading the f...

The Mary Davis Home - Part 2

None of these pictures were taken by me, they came right from the MDH website. I am posting these so that friends who have never seen inside where I worked can gain access. After 27 years I have many stories, tales and acquaintances. But, I wouldn't know how to express them appropriately in a few paragraphs. I enjoyed 98% of my stay there and hope I made a difference in the lives of a fraction of the kids who entered. The original MDH at this site was just the front part. The large red-roofed area in back was added on in the 90's. This is the Jerry Carlton library. It was unofficially named after one of the counselors who truly loved the place. He passed away around 2002, I think. Mr. Farber looks like he is explaining a few things to a client. The classroom. Activity area with the gym behind the windows. Another shot of the classroom. It was a little different area to teach since we had 2 classes and 2 teachers i...

Statuary In North Straub Park

The Vinoy is not the only park in town. The place is fairly littered with them, and almost all, except Bum Paradise, are pretty nice. This is North Straub and they have some old pieces in that seem to have suffered from time and perhaps human folly. These and some 30 other statues were imported from Italy by local developer C. Perry Snell to help beautify the city. Mr. Snell was in real estate and during the depression he went on a European shopping trip to collect items for the city. He obtained these from Italy and installed them in this park even after the bottom fell in the markets. He fulfilled his obligations at great personal loss to his own company and wealth. Halso continued to pay his staff during those tough times. He developed many areas in the city, Vinoy, Snell Isle, Crescent Lake and the beach area down around Fort DeSoto. He lived from 1869 until 1949 and then buried in Kentucky. I wo...

Existing In BFE

Search This Blog