Following on from recent articles about ceramic icon corners that can be beautiful and discreet, yet clearly visible signs of faith (here and here), several reader requested more ideas on a similar line, and especially information about places that might be able to help provide materials. Here is someone who can create such images, and also carve beautiful shrines in wood or stone to house them in, Jerome Quigley of www.waysideshrines.com
I met Jerome this past week at an Art and Faith event at St Pius X Catholic Church in Rock Island, Illinois; he explained to me that he creates the carvings himself in wood or an artificial granite, a kind used for heavy kitchen surfaces and which can be carved like wood.
Jerome can respond to commission, and even more interestingly, he has a process whereby he can set images into porcelain. This is not a print, but rather one in which the pigment is set directly into the chemical structure of the substrate porcelain, similar to the way in which pigment is incorporated into the plaster in frescoes. From these photos taken from his website, you can see that thus far, he has been responding to a market that is looking for outdoor shrines in a garden or woodland setting, but it does not need to be so.
The tradition of reproducing paintings on porcelain goes back to the 19th century at least. I have recently seen several handpainted porcelain copies of the highest quality made in that era. The look of these hand-painted antique reproductions is the same those that Jerome makes. Here is a 19th-century example, in which you can really see the innate luminosity of the porcelain.
I spoke to him about the possibility of creating icon corners consisting of three images, and he was confident that he could produce something beautiful, either set into one of his standing shrines, or a different design that might be set into a building wall. It would need demand from customers for this to happen, but I am sure if the demand was there he could help create outdoor icon corners.
The tradition of reproducing paintings on porcelain goes back to the 19th century at least. I have recently seen several handpainted porcelain copies of the highest quality made in that era. The look of these hand-painted antique reproductions is the same those that Jerome makes. Here is a 19th-century example, in which you can really see the innate luminosity of the porcelain.
