Corona by A. W. N. Pugin

Corona (partial view)

Designer: A. W. N. Pugin (1812-1852)

Manufacturer: [not mentioned, but surely John Hardman]

c.1840

Height: 20" inches (51 cm)

Diameter: 48" (122 cm)

The inscription on the corona runs, "Domine Da Nobis Lucem" (God gives us light). The corona came from the Bishop's House, Birmingham.

Image and caption material © copyright The Fine Art Society, London, with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd. The Society has most generously given us permission to use information, images, and text from its catalogues on our website. This generosity has led to the creation of hundreds and hundreds of the site's most valuable documents on painting, drawing, sculpture, furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, metalwork, and the people who created them. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with the Fine Art Society.

Commentary below, and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

Pugin himself defined the corona as: "A crown or circlet suspended from the roof or vaulting of a church, to hold lighted tapers on solemn occasions." He added,

There was scarcely a church in antient times which was not provided with a corona, richer or plainer in design, acccording to the wealth or dignity of the foundation. Sometimes they were formed of triple circles, which, when filled with tapers, produced a pyramidal form of light. The number of tapers in these coronas was regulated according to the solemnity of the festival, and at the solemnity of Easter the great corona which usually hung in the centre before the great Rood, presented a most glorious and lively emblem of the Resurrection. [78]

Other coronae designed by Pugin can still be seen in St Giles, Cheadle (built 1841-46), and coronae are mentioned in a review of the Hardman-Pugin section of the Birmingham Exposition of Arts of 1849, in which both designer and manufacturer are praised warmly. "One great merit which all Mr. Hardman's specimens present is, that while retaining sufficient of the general forms of the ancient types to satisfy the most deeply-rooted association of idea, they yet vary so interminably in detail as to supply the all-important elements of freshness and originality" (54). Both those involved should indeed be praised, since Pugin's quick sketches always left much to the manufacturer, in a process that Pugin felt "conferred dignity on the workman's task" (Gere and Whiteway 54).

Why would there have been a handsome corona like this in the Bishop's House? The "house" (1840-41; demolished in 1960 to make way for a new road system), was opposite St Chad's, Birmingham (1837-41), and was not just a house, but a "part institutional, part domestic, part religious building" (O'Donnell 65), with a hall and chapel on the first floor. The corona must have come from the latter.

References

"Exhibition of arts and manufactures, Birmingham." The Journal of Design and Manufactures (1850): 51-69. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Web. 27 May 2014.

Gere, Charlotte, and Michael Whiteway. Nineteenth-Century Design from Pugin to Mackintosh. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.

O'Donnell, Roderick. The Pugins and the Catholic Midlands. Leominster: Gracewing, 2002.

Pugin, A. Welby, Architect. Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume: Compiled and Illustrated from Ancient Authorities and Examples. London: H. G. Bohn, 1844. Internet Archive. Uploaded by the Research Library, Getty Research Institute. Web. 27 May 2014.

Last modified 27 May 2014