Bøger af Rachel Moss

As evidenced by the famed Book of Kells and monumental high crosses, Scotland and Ireland have long shared a distinctive artistic tradition. The story of how this tradition developed and flourished for another millennium through survival, adaptation and revival is less well known. Some works were preserved and repaired as relics, objects of devotion believed to hold magical powers. Respect for the past saw the creation of new artefacts through the assemblage of older parts, or the creation of fakes and facsimiles. Meanings and values attached to these objects, and to places with strong early Christian associations, changed over time but their 'Celtic' and/or 'Gaelic' character has remained to the forefront of Scottish and Irish national expression. Exploring themes of authenticity, imitation, heritage, conservation and nationalism, these interdisciplinary essays draw attention to a variety of understudied artworks and illustrate the enduring link that exists between Scottish and Irish cultures.

The town of Galway occupied a unique situation in medieval Ireland. Conspicuously English in its religious and political allegiances, it existed in an overwhelmingly Gaelic hinterland, far from the institutions of the colonial administration. Having cast off the overlordship of the de Burgh family by the fifteenth century, it functioned as a quasi-oligarchy dominated by a mercantile elite until well into the seventeenth century. Its position as a prosperous port town exposed it to influences from England and the Continent. This study examines how all these elements found expression in the town's civic and religious institutions as well as in its remarkable medieval art and architecture. It argues that the revival of the town in the late fifteenth century sprang from a programme of economic, political, and religious renewal that transformed it into a self-confident, self-regulating urban community, a veritable City of God.

This study deals with the form and development of a single type of architectural ornament, ubiquitous from the late eleventh to the early thirteenth centuries in northwestern Europe. Chevron ornament, or three-dimensional zigzag, has been described as the single most characteristic moulding, or indeed feature of any kind in Norman architecture in England. It is the most enduring of the decorative motifs that formed part of the so-called style géométrique, current in those areas in the earlier part of the twelfth century, and is found most typically decorating arches, string courses and columns in a wide variety of structures, from castles, to cathedrals to parish churches to the extent that for a period during the twelfth century its absence is more notable than its presence. Among the major preoccupations of scholarship in medieval art and architecture are the issues of authorship and chronology. Given the potential for a type of ornament such as chevron to reveal etymological characteristics it is surprising that studies of the apparent formal grammars of Romanesque ornament have not been more commonplace. It is with these issues in mind then that the current study sets out to explore the degree to which an architectural motif like chevron can be 'read' in a meaningful way.