Monumental Industry: The production of tomb sculpture in England and Wales in the long fourteenth century

Edited volume of essays based on a Church Monuments Society study day held on 25 October 2008. This important collection of essays focuses on the production of church monuments in the ‘long fourteenth century’, rather than on the interests of the patron that have been the primary centre of attention in most recent work. By the fourteenth century, tomb production was a veritable industry in its own right. Monuments were no longer the prerogative of royalty, the higher ranking clergy, and founders of religious houses, but were accessible to a wider section of society.
The contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives. Whereas some espouse an archaeological approach, other essays are art-historical, with excerpts from literary texts providing further comparisons. Several authors use the results of petrological analysis to underpin their conclusions, while drawing links between monumental sculpture and other surviving sculpture of the period, the potential of both of which have not hitherto received sufficient attention. Surface finishes are also discussed. Moreover, full transcriptions and translations are provided of all the known tomb contracts of the period, together with commentaries on the monuments, those commemorated by them, and the craftsmen who made them.
Medieval commemoration and tomb monuments are attracting increased interest from scholars. This corpus of cutting-edge research will shed new light on an aspect of medieval craftsmanship which, for the most part, can be seen only through a glass darkly.