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Ok! We (finally) had our 2000th post yesterday, and the great Ferrebeekeeper jubilee continues apace. I promised give-aways, special posts, contests, and…pageantry. Now I have plenty of weird art and cool toys to give away (provided I can think up a contest), but what do we do for Gothic pageantry (it’s Gothic because, well, what other sort would we feature?)?
Alas, my plans to hire great troops of pipers, marchers, ornate festival birds, and dancers have come undone because of coronavirus concerns (although hopefully you are all enjoying the very special fireworks displays which I orchestrated throughout the nation). Thus, due to, uh, the constraints of this era, our pageant will have to come together in our imagination rather than in the real world. We can list out the elements here though and fantasize them coming together as a sort of parade!
When I thought about what sort of Gothic pageant we would want, my first question was whether those splendid glistening white peacocks are available in Gothic black. It turns out that they very much are (although such peafowl are quite rare)
Next I wanted pipers, and when I looked up “gothic pipers” I was taken straight to Ferrebeekeeper’s own long forgotten post concerning pig bagpipers (which were a popular medieval ornament for reasons which are now subject to debate). Obviously these musical pigs are perfect, so after the sable peacocks lets have some of them.
Following the peacocks, pigs, and pipers, it would be good to have some soldiers (who esteem pageantry on a supreme level that only the most flamboyant showfolks can ever hope to match). I have taken a page from the pope’s book here: my favorite soldiers (for decorative novelty use only, of course) are late medieval/early Renaissance billmen with ridiculous heraldic garb. The pope’s own Swiss Guard are instructive here, although of course pipers in our procession would be wearing magenta, vermilion, and icterine.
I think a legion of such characters would be extremely impressive (especially coming immediately after the black peacocks and the musical pigs).
Next we would need fashion mavens dressed in resplendent gowns covered with lace appliques and dark ribbons. I couldn’t find the right picture on line (and I started to get scared/alarmed by how many dress pictures there are), but this sort of thing should do.
Finally, we would need a parade float to serve as centerpiece. My favorite underrated artist, the matchless Piero di Cosimo, was famous in his time for designing parade spectacles and, although the actual originals are, of course, long gone, I imagine that his floats would be much like the monster in his masterpiece, Perseus Rescuing Andromeda. I would have a similar float to Perseus and the monster, except it would be Cronus mounted upon an enormous flounder.
Sadly, this is how my brain works and I could go on and on like this forever…creating ridiculous fantastical processions which the world will never see, but I think we had better wrap up by putting the entire extravaganza in a great pleasure garden with a Gothic folly tower in the middle.
The The real world example which best suits my taste is St. Anne’s Church in Vilnius, Lithuania (pictured above) which I think is the prettiest building ever, however the master illuminators of Belgium also loved such structures and they drew them without any real world constraints which bedevil architects.
Imagine all of those strange magical animals and people and frogfish passing in front of this, and I think you have imagined the Ferrebeekeeper parade we would have staged…if only we could fully assemble outside right now (and if I were an impossibly rich archduke of fairyland).
The fun of this exercise is really imagining what sort of procession you would craft if you were a grand parade master and could do anything. Tell me your ideas below! Maybe we can incorporate some of your plans into my next parade…as soon as I finish teaching these pigs to play the pipes and sewing all of these orange and purple striped tights for mercenaries.
One of the things which has surprised me most about this blog is how popular crowns are. Currently Ferrebeekeeper’s most popular post (in terms of traffic) is about the crowns of ancient Egypt. Because there are sooo many examples from practically every culture and timeframe, crowns are my go-to subject when I can’t think of anything to write about. In addition to a dazzling rainbow of visual styles from all history, crowns showcase the strange vicissitudes of history. Many crowns are steeped in stories of murder, cunning, and circumstances so peculiar they seem like something out of fiction (indeed it is the coronal outlier which sits harmlessly on a velvet pillow in a museum or cathedral for centuries). Yet people’s interest in these jeweled hats supersedes the fascinating historical tales behind individual crowns . When I wanted to write about catfish mascots or mollusk mascots I had to search the edges of the internet, but went to write about “royal” mascots I was overwhelmed by material—dancing queens, comic kings, playing cards, whiskey brands, tattoos, and all sorts of royal iconography on every sort of consumer good. Clearly even in our democracy, people are drawn to the symbolism and stagecraft of royalty.
Now, obviously, I want people to click on my blog posts and then enjoy perusing them! Yet I have always tried to be deliberately impertinent in how I write about crowns because I find their innate meaning to be troubling and I find the objects themselves to be almost as silly as they are impressive. Examples of crowns as high-status/royal items go back to the dawn of civilization, however the Greeks crafted an explanation of the meaning of crowns from within their religious/mythological symbology. Allegedly the sparkling points of light are meant to indicate a corona—a halo of light which indicates divine favor or divinity itself (this same idea was appropriated by the Christian church as a visual shorthand for saints, apostles, and angels).
So crowns (objects built by human hands) are meant to convey some sort of heavenly/supernatural status. It is indeed a telling combination: however it doesn’t reflect the divine right of kings but our species tendency to self-abasement in front of hierarchical authority. Primatologists (or their subjects) would understand this intuitively: put a shiny thing on your head to appear taller and more dazzling. This need for hierarchy allows us to organize and do amazing things, but it makes us susceptible to terrible leadership mistakes. To quote Sir Terry Pratchett “It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: “Kings. What a good idea.” Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”
I hoped that by writing about crowns I could deconstruct this concept a bit. Crowns are always being usurped by con-men, stolen by knaves, walled up inside cathedral storerooms, or melted into ingots by misguided revolutionaries. Although they are exceptional works of craft (and made of rare expensive materials), their history shows them to be anything but supernatural! They don’t reflect on a king so much as on his subjects who are inclined to take him at his word when he puts on a ridiculous spiky golden hat and says he is better than everyone.
It’s been a while since we wrote about pigeons (after all, turkeys take up most of the national bird bandwidth in November). Let’s get back to the subject with a brief examination of the fanciest of all fancy pigeons–the beautiful fantail pigeons!
Whereas wild pigeons have about a dozen feathers in their tail, fantail pigeons have thirty to forty feathers in their tail. As indicated in their name, they can fan these ornamental feathers up in a magnificent ornamental crest–like that of a peacock or a turkey.
Darwin mentioned fantail pigeons in the first chapter of “On the Origin of Species” as an example of the rapid changes which artificial selection could render to an organism. Even though fantail pigeons seem to be a human creation, they look like they take a great and justified pride in their splendid appearance. I think the fantail which is the normal pigeon color of grey with iridescent trim is particularly spectacular!
Shandon House, Scotland (circa present)
Here is one of the most beautiful Gothic houses I could find on the internet: Shandon House, a 19th century Scottish revival manor/castle overlooking Gare Loch in Scotland. The house was built in 1849 on 31 acres of beautiful Scottish hills. It was owned by various grandees (shipping magnates, tobacco merchants, and such), before becoming a boys’ school, but the school then closed in the mid-eighties.
The region where Shandon House is located is dominated by Faslane Naval Base, one of the three ports of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom (and arguably the most important). So Shandon House was purchased by the Ministry of Defense…but since the Ministry of Defense has no actual use for dark fairy tale castles, the house has been derelict for over a decade, and may now be beyond repair. As far as I can tell, the MOD is incapable of finding buyers and hopes to knock the house down (although its designation as a historical landmark makes such an outcome somewhat unlikely).
It is a shame the house is decaying away, since this is truly an elegant and imposing structure. On the other hand, who would actually live here other than evil sorcerers, mad scientists, Dalmatian coat enthusiasts, and other suchlike Disney villain folk?
The Library at Strawberry Hill
Horror writer Horace Walpole was one of the foremost figures responsible for the Gothic revival style which swept the English speaking world during the nineteenth century. Ferrebeekeeper has dedicated a post to his bizarre literary monsterpiece “The Castle of Otranto” and we have described the history of his own bizarre Rococo Gothic manor house “Strawberry Hill”. What we never showed you was the sumptuously decorated Gothic library of Strawberry Hill, which is surely one of England’s most splendid and eccentric rooms.
In the library, great white pointed arches reach up a green ceiling (dark green prior to a recent restoration and pale green after) towards a sumptuously painted ceiling. On the ceiling knights ride through intricate decorations around Walpole’s great “W”. Though he was the Prime Minister’s son, a baron, and a powerful politician, Horace Walpole was foremost a man of letters. His beautiful library reflects that interest and is a real work of art in its own right. It is not hard to see why the room, like the house, influenced a whole century of imitation and cast aesthetic echoes down to the present.
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