• At night when I go to sleep… 14 angels on a journey

    Eusebius, Latest projects, Restoration
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    14 angels on a journey

    Pack and go

    “At night when I go to sleep… fourteen angels follow after me.” If you were raised Catholic and are over 30, then perhaps you'll remember this prayer before bedtime. This week I too had fourteen angels in the yard, but they did not follow after me. Indeed, I've them packed for shipping. There are seven old angels out of tuff stone and seven copies in new muschelkalk limestone, for flying buttress no. 32 of St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem.

    Disassembled

    There are in total 98 flying buttress figurines on the church. They were quite rapidly made in the years after World War II, partly in a rather cubistic Reconstruction Style. Ideally, the church council would rather have retained the original statuettes, but the decline was going so fast that it led to the risk of falling parts.

    The Eusebius Church's website says about this:

    "All the flying buttress pictures have been taken down a few years ago for safety reasons. These sculptures were all made of Ettringer tuff and can not be reinstated. The flying buttress images are to be copied into muschelkalksteen, wherein the powerful Reconstruction Aera sculptures will be brought back to their original lustre. The statuettes fit into themes such as: Noah's Ark, the Apocalypse, the Apostles, the Vices, Proclamation of the Gospel and the Last Judgement. It is being considered to design a number of completely new statues on the theme of 'Bridge to the Future'.’

    89 more to go

    After much debate, it is now decided to replace 98 all of them, and the good news is now after much humming and hawing that there is also a budget ... Stide and I have now copied 9 of those (Stide 1, I 8; Stide is mainly busy with carving large and small corbels), but it looks like we will be even busier with the other 89!

    As I mentioned in the previous post these seven sculptures represent the trumpet angels of the Last Judgment. Fortunately, there is only one that honks… Sculpture no. 7 is the top one of the series, and is partly sunken in the wall surface at the top of the flying buttress. This figurine had a number of deep holes between the wings and therefore was a bit more laborious to carve.

    New designs

    A number of the old figurines has been so severely damaged that there won't be much left to reconstruct. Therefore,, just like in the 50s,, some new designs will need to be made. This perhaps around the theme "Bridge to the Future ', as the Eusebius Church website already reports above. I don't know whether it will partly fall to me, though I hope, of course, it will. It is not surprising that new sculpture is made for old churches; any restoration will add something to the history book that such a church forms.

    Perhaps you've heard of the examples below?

    biker-with-girl-breda
    A Polish motorcyclist with Breda girl on a misericord in the Great Church in Breda, the Netherlands
    an astronaut at Salamanca Cathedral
    an astronaut at the Cathedral of Salamanca in Spain
    Angel
    'angel with cell phone’ by Ton Mooy at St. John's Cathedral in 's-Hertogenbosch

    To the next flying buttress statue

  • Seven trumpet angels for Eusebius's Church in Arnhem

    background, Eusebius, Restoration

    Good news

    Two weathered Tuff trumpet angels of Eusebius' Church in Arnhem
    Two weathered Tuff Angels with trumpet

    As you may perhaps remember… There was good news for the Eusebius Church in Arnhem. The Church was allocated by the Dutch National Service for Cultural Heritage 1,9 million for restoration.

    It is not enough for the whole Church to be restored, but we can go ahead a whole lot anyway. For me and my colleague Stide that means green light for carving another seven flying buttress statuettes.

    Read the first message about this restoration here.

    Trumpeting angels

    the old Tuff trumpet angels must first be repaired
    The sculptures have to be repaired first

    I started with the first one of this series. This group of flying buttress no. 32 depicts seven trumpet angels. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this theme was derived from the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible , in which John the Evangelist describes an overwhelming vision he had. Among other things he describes seven angels with a trumpet, and every time one starts to sound the trumpet another incredible disaster starts to unfold over the Earth and its inhabitants. It didn't make me any happier, but if you desparately need to read it, you can do so here.

    Impregnation

    These seven little angels with their horns have been depicted on flying buttress number 32 together and were carved, around the years 1950-1960 from Ettringer tuff stone. They deteriorated so fast that these figurines were impregnated in the 90s using a special acrylic resin procedure, which should have kept them for eternity. Or at least a long way in that direction. But strangely enough the decay turned out to be going on after that time as well, and loose parts were falling down, after which it was decided to disassemble the statuettes as a precaution and store them. Even in their crates they kept falling apart. Which is why I was asked to copy them in German Muschelkalk limestone.

    Repairs

    Trumpet angels precut from a block of limestone
    Precutting out of a block of limestone

    Various loose parts of the trumpet angels were already fixed with glue by the contractor. But each figurine missed some pieces and also the washed out soft parts or 'bims’ resulted in large gaps. Because I'm using my copying saw to speed up the process I need to first fill up the holes. In doing so, I noticed that the figurines won't absorb any water on their outside, but at their core, however, they do. That's why I suspect that the so-called 'Full Core Acrylic Resin Impregnation’ did not work as intended in this case, or on this material.

    Cutting and copying

    Trumpet angel for St. Eusebius' Church in Arnhem. The original was quite simple and roughly worked. The copy is sharper, but the same
    The original was quite simple and roughly worked. The copy is sharper, but with the same surface working, with chisel strokes clearly visible.

    After repairs I cut a little angel out of a block of new Muschelkalk limestone, and then I started carving. As with the previous sculptures, it is intended that the coarse character of the reconstruction statuettes is reflected in the copy, with the chisel strokes and traces of tooth chisel.

    Ten virgins

    By now I found out that the two girls that Stide and I carved last time refer to the Bible as well: they are a few of the five foolish and five wise maidens. Jesus liked to tell his teachings to the disciples in parables, and one day he told them about the coming of the Kingdom of the Heavens. 'If you wait for that and forget to maintain your energy levels, then you're not ready when the bridegroom comes', he told them. In his parabel he told them about ten waiting girls, and all ten were carrying a lamp, but only five of them had extra oil as well. You can read the whole story, including the (I think later added) catastrophic end of grinding teeth and wailing here in Dutch.

    Nasty the next article about these flying buttress statues.

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