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Emily Young:
Angels and Archangels at Salisbury Cathedral
750th Anniversary
In 2007, the Reverend Canon Treasurer at Salisbury Cathedral asked if I would like to put some angels into the Cathedral as part of the celebrations for its 750th anniversary; in November 2008 we installed four great Archangel heads around William Pye's great font in the nave, with two smaller angels heads in the Trinity chapel and two more in the cloister, one for each century of the churches life. They are carved from Purbeck stone. The four large heads are approximately a ton in weight. They will stay there until February 2009, when seven of them will return to the world; one will remain.
The word angel is derived from the Sanskrit word anjiras, meaning messenger from the Gods.
Traditionally angels have been the bearers of messages from heaven, both good news and punishments; and these worked stone angels also carry a message from the heavens, inherent in the stone itself; stone tells us of the history of the earth; in the C18th century British geologists discovered, through studying the fossil record, that the time scales of the creation of our planet were longer by far than previously thought. This new knowledge allowed Darwin, for instance, to formulate his theory of evolution.
From those early explorations of the Earths stony record, the ages of the solar system, the galaxy, and the known universe were gradually discovered. No longer conjecture or myth.
These are the modern messages from the heavens, telling us of our place in the cosmos, and how small and frail we are, how rare, surprising, delicate and precious, our planet is. And old, some four and a half billion years.
Salisbury Cathedral is a sacred space; the Earth can be described as sacred, a planet sized temple to natures astounding creativity.
All these pieces of sculpture, these worked stones, were made to honour this beautiful creation, our Earth, our home; and our capacity to treasure it, and all who sail on her.
Emily Young, January 2009
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Emily Young, Archangel Gabriel, 2008
click here to download the catalogue as a pdf
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