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Mosaics
Part II - Opus Sectile and the Italian Method
The decoration in the Chapel of St Gregory and
St Augustine was installed at the same time, and by the same group of
mosaicists, as that in the Holy Souls Chapel across the nave. But despite
this it is in complete contrast - the result of having a very different
donor, designer, technique and style.
Lord Brampton, the donor, was a distinguished judge and a friend of Cardinal
Manning, the second Archbishop of Westminster. He joined the Catholic
Church in 1898 and paid £8,500 (£300,000 today) for the decoration
of St Gregory and St Augustine's, which was intended to be both a thanksgiving
offering and a chantry chapel for his wife and himself. The theme is the
conversion of England from Rome, with the saints who brought this about
portrayed in opus sectile above the altar, and those who subsequently
kept the faith alive in this country shown in mosaics on the walls and
vault.
Lord Brampton selected Clayton & Bell of Regent Street, renowned for
its ecclesiastical stained glass, to design the decoration. For the altarpiece
showing St Gregory, St Augustine, his companions and successors, J R Clayton,
the firm's head, chose opus sectile from James Powell & Sons, Glassmakers
of Whitefriars. In the 1860s Powells had started grinding up waste glass
and baking it, to produce panels of opaque material with an eggshell finish
which could be cut into suitable shapes and painted. These glass tiles
they named opus sectile. Those forming the altarpiece were made in 1901
from Clayton & Bell's drawings. The panels either side of the entrance
are later: 'the Just Judge' - Clayton & Bell's memorial to Lord Brampton,
who died in 1907, and 'Not Angles but Angels' - given by the Choir School
in 1912.
J R Clayton believed that any attempt to revive the dead in art was a
profound mistake and he ignored the wishes of the Cathedral Architect,
J F Bentley, that the Byzantine (Greek) style should be adopted. Instead
his designs were similar to those he produced for Victorian Gothic churches.
Full-size coloured drawings for the mosaics were sent over to the Venice
and Murano Glass company in Venice where, using a technique invented there
in the mid-19th Century, the regular, rectangular, coloured glass tesserae
were attached to the drawings face down before being dispatched to England.
From December 1902 to May 1904, George Bridge's mosaicists, already working
in the Holy Souls Chapel, hammered each section into place with mallets
and flat pieces of boxwood, before removing the drawings to reveal the
mosaics, now face up, below.
In the Holy Souls Chapel opposite, Bentley and Symons seem to have been
given pretty much a free hand by the donors, the Walmsleys, in choosing
the designs. Though it must be said that the result is more Victorian
(Art Nouveau in the case of the representation of Adam) than the Byzantine
for which Bentley was striving. After an unsuccessful attempt at prefabrication
in the studio, installation of the mosaics was by the traditional, direct
method and the tesserae were inserted individually into oil-based putty
on the chapel walls and vault. George Bridge had installed the mosaics
for the façade of the Horniman Museum in London in 1900-01, using
tesserae he had largely made himself.
The Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine is in complete contrast to that
of the Holy Souls. Judge Brampton knew exactly what he wanted and chose
Clayton & Bell to carry it out. J R Clayton disregarded Bentley's
instructions to avoid anything Gothic and used the style he normally used.
James Powell & Sons had invented the modern technique of opus sectile
and were expert at it. The Venice & Murano Glass Company was equally
accomplished at producing mosaics and Antonio Salviati, its previous head,
claimed to have invented the 'modern Italian method' in which they were
prepared face downwards in the studio - the method employed here.
The Holy Souls Chapel mosaics are sombre, funereal, late Victorian pictorial
on a background of silver. Those of the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine
are glowing, vibrant, late Victorian Gothic on gold. Both are impressive
in their own way, but they have little in common.
First
published in Oremus the magazine of Westminster Cathedral September 2004.
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Read more about Cathedral Mosaics -
Part I - Trial and Error
Part III - The Arts and Crafts Men
Part IV - The Impossible Dream
Part V - A Russian Perspective
Part VI - The Journey proceeds
Part VII - The Mystery Mosaics
The Just Judge in Opus Sectile.
St
Gregory and St Augustine in Opus Sectile
.
'Not Angles but Angels' in the Chapel of St. Gregory and St. Augustine
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