Pattern finding in a monolithic game of join the . . .
A childhood fascination with all things Ancient Egyptian and Anglo-Saxon anticipated my lifelong passion for both history and archaeology. These interests eventually led to an undergraduate study of Northumbrian sculpture and a subsequent doctorate focussed on Manx monuments. This was the time when I first seriously attempted to make drawings of the material I was studying.
It is valid to ask, in an age when techniques such as digital photography and laser scanning exist to accurately record a sculptured surface, why the art of drawing is not completely redundant. So, why bother to create a drawn image? In fact, it seems to me that there is good reason to continue to draw, for while photography and scanning produce useful imagery there remain some things they cannot do. Drawing a subject allows for additional essential information to be incorporated and an interpretation to be made of that object. Usually, a photograph will be illuminated from a dominant light source, which by convention is positioned to the upper left of a subject, although other sources may be added. Scanning normally adopts a similar standpoint. But a drawing permits use of surface illumination from several light sources, not only surrounding a subject, but also permitting lighting to be pitched at different rakes (from an oblique perspective to a fuller illumination), lengthening and shortening shadow on a surface.
Drawing produced in this way, particularly if combined with specialised photography, can reveal significant evidence from a worn and damaged 1000-year-old surface, indicating more detailed imagery and capturing unexpected subtleties and nuances. This enables a more accurate recovery of the sculptorÂ’s original carving, evidence that hitherto appeared lost. Trained eyes and the human brain are the interpretive tools that add another important dimension for the recovery of information from a worn surface which computers alone cannot currently perform.
Thus, the primary reason for exhaustive visual examination of the ancient, sculptured objects in this field is to try to recover a more complete representation of the original carving in order to better comprehend the significance of their design programmes. This process of analysis and reconstruction has informed my view that individual images should not be understood in isolation, nor even as a programme on a single carved face of a sculpture, but that each monument represents an entire developing programme to be read anticlockwise around all its surfaces. In the case of Manx, Scottish and other insular sculptures of the early middle ages these narratives appear to be concerned with the problem of human redemption. This understanding embraces all elements carved on a sculpture's surfaces including iconography, abstract designs, and inscriptions, whether written in Greek, Roman or runic script.
August 1, 2021 by Dr. Ross M.C. Trench-Jellicoe
