8 BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 31st ANNUAL EDITION Traces of grey/blue paint mimicking Portland stone on one of the softwood console brackets in the Orangery. (Photo: Lee Prosser) of the flowers and leaves only 20 years after their creation – an extraordinary thought, but one which has not yet been proven by close observation and initial analysis. Instead stone colours were used to refresh and lighten the work. A similar finish was also applied to the pews. On most of Gibbons’s carvings, these early treatments were usually obliterated by the Victorian propensity either to strip and chemically bleach, as Rogers did at the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, or to darken everything in line with the oxidised oak of the pews and pulpits, often by using a Vandyke varnish or even brown paint. The effect, as at Hampton Court, was to make the beauty of the carvings recede into a gloomy background; in some ways we have inherited this view and this has become our understanding of his work. There may also be other aesthetic considerations at work. At Queen Anne’s Orangery at Kensington, constructed in 1705, the apse arches at either end of this fine building are framed by limewood festoons of flowers and fruits, springing from pine console brackets and meeting central cherubs’ heads. The fairly rough carving and the use of softwood had fostered some doubts that the carvings were actually by Gibbons, but the discovery of payments in the National Archives shows that they are indeed the product of his workshop. A late 19th-century photograph shows the carvings apparently painted, and paint analysis undertaken in 2020 showed that two layers of paint had been applied to the fresh, clean wood – here apparently no problem with dirt and grime, but instead an attempt to make the carvings appear like stone and perhaps more precisely, Portland stone. Much of the paint survives, but is only visible in close proximity and during the restoration it was decided not to repaint the carvings. This was a period when Gibbons was moving more into stone carving and the fashion for decorative wood was falling away. Aesthetics must therefore play a part. At All Hallows by the Tower, the magnificent font cover was one of the stars of the exhibition in 2021, but a close look reveals traces of white paint in the inner crevices of the composition. Sitting as it does on a font of fine grey or white marble, it would seem natural that the cover should also align, and perhaps we ought to be revisiting this wonderful example with that in mind. The reinstatement of the carvings in Queen Anne’s Orangery at Kensington Palace in 2021. (Photo: Lee Prosser)
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