Tourist post, part three (and the last one!)

[catspaw]

They do say the devil's in the detail - in Dunblane Cathedral, not so much. The various woodcarvings on the pews and in the choir are utterly gorgeous.



All of the pews in the nave and in the aisles have the most beautiful wood carvings at each end.





Although what relevance the camel has, beats me to know! *g*

The choir too has a really lovely set of cherubs put just about everywhere you could think of putting a cherub:



But the ones that really tickled my fancy were the ones that acted as seat dividers in the choir stalls themselves. There were monkeys, elephants, pigs, sheep, dogs - you name it! Here are three of my particular favourites, an elephant



a dancing bear, complete with head straps and chain



and best of all, a dog



Not any old dog,mind you - it's got a man's face! I wonder who pissed off the carver enough to get immortalised this way?

These are all late Victorian additions to the Cathedral. On the high altar though, there are a selection of mediaeval misericords with the original carvings:



And this one isn't the best photo, unfortunately, but I found this little chap irrestible *g*





So that's that. Congrats to anyone who's made it this far ;-)

Comments

[historyterry.livejournal.com]

I love those carvings. I wonder if the guy doing the camel had originally been carving a sheep, and then found a knot in the wood? Lovely, skillful carvings.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Now that never occurred to me - but it makes perfect sense! They are really beautiful though, aren't they?

[ailis-70.livejournal.com]

These are pretty amazing. That dog one especially. Someone certainly had some talent.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, talent in spades. The dog really tickled me because it does look dog like - but it looks man like too. *g* Very clever.

[sharp2799.livejournal.com]

Now that's odd...I found the camel to make perfect sense (native to the homeland in the Middle East?) but had trouble making sense of the others! LOL

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

*g* Good point. I wasn't thinking of it in those terms, because where the camel was, every single other carving was of native animals - hare, dove, chicken, squirrel, and so on. So the camel came as a surprise *g*.

The elephant and bear made sense to me in the choir stalls, not only because of the company they were keeping but because they were in the part of the church where there were a lot of older carvings. All the animals on the choir stalls came from the mediaeval bestiary and had a much older feel to them, even though they were still largely modern.