It’s Friday we can indulge ourselves with a visual treat. The late fifteenth century nave roof at Salle in Norfolk has an extraordinary amount of its original medieval polychromy. Much of the work is a powdering of standard motifs, the IHS, crowned MR’s (Maria Regina) for Our Lady – but there are lots of gorgeous tendrils of foliage between. Then a fabulous series of bosses, angels and grotesque heads. Of course the colours have softened down over the years, but the effect of the colouring is still striking.
Friday indulgence – Medieval Polychromy

Lovely to see how freely they worked.
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Do you think the monograms are stencilled or drawn out freehand?
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Just love the whole thing. I think they must be drawn out freehand: there seem to be differences between them
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That's my thoughts too John, sometimes they are clearly stencilled, but not in this case.
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I think its a combination of the two, judging by my own experience, the letters appear stencilled, and these would be applied first to keep the scale – but the ” scroll work” can be done by hand once you have the “rhythm going” on a design like this. (love your blog.)
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