Sunday, December 25, 2011

Medieval Stained Glass - St. Michael's Cathedral Coventry UK


I ran into one of those strange finds in life.  One thing led to another researching one thing on the net and then ran into a remarkable find of Medieval stained glass, over five years hundred years old, that had been taken out of Coventry Cathedral in England for protection at the beginning of WWII and before the infamous German fire bombing of Coventry in November 1940 and the destruction of St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the destruction in the city and loss of life there.



The glass by medieval glazier John Thornton has been in a vault since.  The collection is of course not all the stain glass of the lost church.  A small part of a whole, the oldest and perhaps the best in terms of art was saved.  Salvation and now resurrection.


A recent need to raise a million pounds for emergency repairs on the still standing memorial shell of the old cathedral has arisen and the glass is to be exhibited to help raise needed cash.  They built a modern cathedral next to the lost one.  A mixing of the new with the old gives a certain continuity to the St. Michael community.


















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