Gothic architecture: Your first choice when redecorating.

Everybody knows where to find some good Gothic architecture, right? Just ask your local heavy metal fan.

This quiz reminds me of the North Carolina technical drawing class. The instructor said, 'You need to make that line perpendicular.'

The student replied, 'This is the only colour pencil I've got.'

The drawing instructor changed professions. (Seriously.)

Here are the answers.

From: T Roger Smith, Architecture: Gothic and Renaissance, London, 1880.

(Snarky comments added 2016.)

Terms:

1. Lancet arch. See how it sort of pierces upward?
2. Depressed Tudor arch: It must have been listening to Cranmer's sermons.
3. Early English shaft: no comment. No, really.
4. Buttress: Holds up the building from outside.
5. Early English capital: A capital idea.
6. Decorated crockett: Coonskin cap optional.
7. Diaper in spandrel: For those wet days.
8. Battlemented parapet: Everyone needs one – for when the local pamphleteers come around. Pails of water, for the dropping from.
9. Late Perpendicular window head: Better late than headless.
10. Flying buttress: Go tell somebody that joke about Winston Churchill and the flying buttress.

Be the first on your block with a flying buttress. We dare you. Send a photo to the Post.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

18.01.16 Front Page

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