27 November 2015

Ordinariate Use (7)

The artwork in the Ordinariate Missal is black and white. If you look carefully enough, you will see the initials 'MT' somewhere on most of it. Those initials take one back to the triumphalist all-conquering glory days of the Movement in the 1930s, and to an Altar Book called The Anglican Missal. If 'MT' doesn't give away the identity of the artist (1886-1948), how about these lines from the end of a poem by Betjeman:

"Yet, under the T*****s baroque, in a limewashed whiteness,
The fiddle-back vestments a-glitter with morning rays,
Our Lady's image, in multiple-candled brightness,
The bells and banners - those were the waking days
When Faith was taught and fanned to a golden blaze.

8 comments:

tradgardmastare said...

Will there be one for the laity?

motuproprio said...

Sadly MT was himself an agnostic; nevertheless having worked with Ninian Comper he went on to be the fons et origo of much of the Anglo-Catholic Baroque between the two World Wars. I treasure a catalogue produced by the Society of St Peter & St Paul with such delights as the 'Latimer' and 'Ridley' votive candle stands.

Vincent Uher said...

I am delighted to hear that they have used Travers' images in the missal.

JKH said...

MT's work is also used in 'Divine Worship-Occasional Services'. This is a must-have for any Ordinatarian who may have to rely upon diocesan priests for hatchings, matchings and dispatchings. All that need be said is 'Please use this, Father' and the Patrimony can be rolled out effortlessly to the waiting world. DW-OS is beautiful, extremely good value for money and an earnest of the wonderful People's Missal that will surely come when Providence decides.

Tom Broughton said...

Martin Travers

Tom Broughton said...
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Tom Broughton said...
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Ben Whitworth said...

I first came across Travers as the refurbisher of the interior of St Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street. I assume it is to him that we owe the remarkable sculpture of St Magnus of Orkney in that church, one of only three post-Reformation statues of the saint that I know of (the others being on the organ screen in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney, and on the West Front of Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim). A photograph of the sculpture appears in John Mooney's "Saint Magnus, Earl of Orkney" (1935), every inch the romanticised Viking, with unhistorical winged helmet, and sword in hand. But now he sports an equally unhistorical horned helmet and and holds an axe. I'd be interested to know whether Travers himself made the changes, and if so, when? and why?