Historical architecture by Viator

[Viator]

Except the Japanese architecture I am interested in general in medieval strongholds, churches and abbeys and I made few models of a kind. Let me share few images of European sacral architecture.

The first is the simplified model of a late medieval Danish-style church in 1/300.

[Viator]

The next model is a Maxent Abbey church from the wide range of SECANDA architectural papermodels, No. 15.7, originally in 1/100, scaled down to my favorite scale 1/300.

"Maxent abbey was founded in 862 by the last king of
Brittany, Solomon, to shelter the monks of Redon
threatened by Scandinavian incursions. Prestige
monument built at his own expense and located near
one of his residences, Solomon destined it to become
the family then dynastic necropolis. His wife, a few
high dignitaries then himself were therefore buried
there. Alas, Scandinavian invasions quickly brought
down the Breton kingdom... [Finally,] The church was
razed to the ground in 1893. This model attempts to
reconstitute the building as it was in the ninth century"

[Viator]

The oldest survived Czech stonewall stronghold is Primda (Přimda), built in 1172 by the German von Vohburg family. The model of a donjon of this castle with partial walls and reconstructed upper floors and wooden parts was published in Czech "ABC" youth magazine No. 03/2020 in 1/380 scale (printed in approx. 1/300).

[Viator]

Later I made few simple generic town houses (perhaps from the Bastelbögen-Kaukapedia pages) to put them together with the donjon, making an impression of a contemporary town with the 19th c. architecture merged with the ancient monuments.

Unfortunately, the real thing is rather poorly preserved and never had been rebuilt from the ruins.

[Viator]

In the same set of Bastelbogen old town buildings there was a small church. While scaling down to 1/300 I removed the clocks from the tower, replacing them with louvres, thus obtaining more ancient look.

[Viator]

The oldest complex of the Cistercian Senanque Abbey in Vaucluse (France), founded in 1148.

The papermodel was designed as a one-card model by Architecture Modelisme. I didn't know what was an original size of their sheets but I decided to scale down the model to the extents so I printed the scanned sheets roughly in 1/1800.

This time the real thing is still existing and this model shows the actual real thing "as is", which allows me to compare these two on the last image.

[Mike Stamper]

That's a nice "little" collection

Some of the kits reminded me of the Instant Durable postcards and a recent thread
Postcard Models by L'Instant Durable

There is quite an irony about a site that is in the thread - The V&A collection. Most of their kits were donated by a friend Bob Fredus who died in November. He and I had a big exhibition at The museum of Childhood (a branch of the V&A) some years ago. More recently I emailed the V&A and asked if they had a particular kit. They replied yes but it was against their policy to make copies! It now looks as if Pintrest has loads of the V&A postcards that appear to be down loadable !

I look forward to more castle pictures!

Cheers
Mike

[Don Boose]

I like these models and appreciate the historical and design notes.

Thanks for posting, Andrew.

Don

[Viator]

Thank you, Mike, for the feedback!
My experience with Victoria&Albert Museum till now was limited to the area of medieval manuscripts and I must omit that they were involved in the model designing. The more that you were involved personally too. Very interesting!

The copies on the Pinterest and few other galleries are mostly LoRes, but as for me they are often plausible.

Don-san, not at all!
To the contrary, thank you very much for your kind comments.

[Philip]

Beautiful work, Andrew. As always.