Northumbrian crosses of the pre-Norman age / by W.G. Collingwood.

  • Collingwood, W. G. (William Gershom), 1854-1932.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Northumbrian crosses of the pre-Norman age / by W.G. Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE MANY books have been written about crosses. I own to having increased the output occasionally since 1899, when I completed my friend W. S. Calverley’s posthumous papers on the early monuments of the diocese of Carlisle; and I am far from disparaging the industry and learning of any who have approached the tantalizing subject. This book, however, has an aim of its own. It is an attempt to consider ancient styles as phases of a process, and to place the examples in series. Monographs on the more famous monuments are valuable; so are descriptive catalogues.They provide the material for classification. But until the classes are formed, and then connected into some reasonable scheme, we have not done all we can. To do this convincingly a corpus of the whole body of known fragments would be required; but as there are roughly about a thousand separate pieces, such a work is not easy to handle in one volume. For details regarding stones not mentioned here I refer to articles contributed to the transactions of antiquarian societies, especially those of Yorkshire, Cumberland and Westmorland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Dumfriesshire and Galloway, and Derbyshire, whose officers I thank for leave to reproduce a number of illustrations. Line-drawings rather than photographs are given because they show the facts of design disentangled from the accidents of wear and tear. The sketches are all by my¬ self, and nearly all from direct study of the originals. I hope that what the text lacks the illustrations will supply; and that some readers finding pleasure, perhaps amuse¬ ment, possibly surprise at the wealth of our pre-Norman art, will join in the desire to protect its remains from desecration. Easter 1927. W.G. C.