Thursday, December 18, 2008

You have a friend in Ireland...

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I recently became interested in the provenance of a particular stained glass window. It was supposed to be the image of Mary but the iconography was blatantly pagan. I wrote to the professor in Virginia who took the picture in order to uncover some information about it but the man didn't recall exactly where he shot the photo. He thought it was taken in a Catholic church in Kilrush, Ireland and he attributed it to Harry Clarke. I know that the images in some of Clarke's church windows caused controversy (the eroticism in the Geneva windows a case in point) and that the clergy were onto Clarke's dark side...how could they possibly have overlooked this?

In order to crack the mystery of the window I joined a forum about Irish architecture and contacted a man who was a prominent poster. He is going to Kilrush this week and he is going to take some photos for me. How nice is that? I'm hoping that he finds an answer.

I am still doing minor tweaking on the novella, The Darkest Book on the Shelf, for which I did a bit of research on alchemy, Yeats, and stained glass iconography. That is how I came across this puzzling gem. I'm obsessed with it now and plan on working it into a story even if it is only the briefest mention. TOO interesting!

I will tell you more WHEN I find out and IF the telling doesn't constitute a spoiler to my story!

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