A Little Book Of ANGELS

---

Angels – the beautiful winged spirits that intercede between God and humankind – are central to Christian iconography. The archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her she was to be the mother of the Messiah; Jacob fell asleep and dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending it. Carved in alabaster or marble, painted on wood in roof bosses or corbels, luminously depicted in stained glass windows, angels are to be found inside almost every Christian church. Mike Harding has travelled Britain, visited its finest cathedrals and quietest country churches, and sought out the most magnificent array of angels, from Saxon carvings on a tomb in Derbyshire to the wonderful twentieth-century stained-glass windows of Harry Clarke. Here, in his superb photographs and words both erudite and quirky, are seraphim and cherubim, pre-Raphaelite angels and Baroque angels, the fallen angel Lucifer and delicate angel musicians playing harps, lyres and dulcimers.

2008

---

Hardcover: 96 pages
Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd (1 April 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1845133056
ISBN-13: 978-1845133054

Product Description

Mike Harding’s first four Little Books for Aurum, published nine years ago – Gargoyles (9781854105615), Green Men (9781854105639), Misericords (9781854105622) and Stained Glass (9781854105646) – have each sold between 20,000 and 30,000 copies and reprinted numerous times. Now at last, as Aurum also re-jackets and re-launches these original books, Mike Harding publishes four new titles, with a stunning new cover treatment. The first, Angels, features Harding’s own superb colour photographs of angels in stained-glass windows, alabaster statues and painted ceilings in churches and chapels all over Britain, as well as locations further afield, such as San Raphael in Venice. They range from remarkable mediaeval art like the lute-playing angels at Cawston in Suffolk, through Victorian angels by William Morris in Derbyshire, to modern stained-glass angels by the great glassmaker Harry Clarke at Sturminster Newton in Dorset. As with all Mike Harding’s Little Books, this is a beautiful little gift book as well as an erudite monograph, at a superbly competitive impulse-buy price.