Registration

5
Scope of Research
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Because of the relative dearth of anglophone sources on
this subject and my ignorance of German and Czech, I
have leaned on interviews, partial translations, and the
advice of my supervisor Dr. Anderson for an understanding
of key German sources. Nevertheless, all errors of fact
or interpretation are my own.
Some of the most thorough and insightful research on the
subject of Late Gothic vault construction is being conducted
by Dr. David Wendland at the Technische Universität
Dresden, and by Drs. José Carlos Palacios Gonzalo
and Rafael Martín Talaverano of the Universidad Politéctinca
de Madrid. Dr. Wendland and his researchers have
built, at a scale of 1:1, a ceiling of prismatic vaults found
in Albrechtsburg Castle using materials, tools, and techniques
faithful to Late Gothic practice. By doing this they
confirmed for example that once the folds in the vault
were defined by timber centring (formwork), the vault
surfaces in-between could easily and most likely were
built freehand; and that construction problems posed
by the need to cut many bricks were in fact no problem
at all, as the soft bricks of the period were easily carved
into shape by hand-held tools. An installation designed
by Dr. Wendland and his researchers which represents
the building site of a Late Gothic prismatic vault will soon
be opened to the public at the castle. This installation is
discussed on pages 23–26. Dr. Palacios Gonzalo is also
engaged in experimental archaeology, and videos of his
students trepidatiously removing the centring from under
1:5 plaster vaults can be viewed online. 55 All three scholars
have recently published conference proceedings on the
design of Late Gothic vaults. 56
It is my hope that the measured drawings, VR panoramas,
and other photographs of the buildings surveyed 57 will by
themselves represent a non-trivial contribution of materials
for research into the Late German Gothic; but as a
line of original research, there are only two ways in which
this project can hope to have value beside the work of
German, Czech and other academics working in this field.
The first is the breadth of analysis which will be possible—
at the expense of a degree of accuracy and detail—in a
field in which papers typically focus on a single church.
The hypotheses tested by the aforementioned experimental
vaults were based on detailed surveys of Late
Gothic vaults in Germany and Spain (where German construction
techniques have been observed). Drs. Palacios
Gonzalo and Martín Talaverano have used hand-held laser
distance measurers in their surveys, but also full survey
stations to fix points in plan and against reference points.
Dr. Wendland uses full survey stations exclusively.
In my visits to churches, typically of several hours and
never with exclusive access, points directly below rib
intersections were located by eye, as the use of a level
on uneven stone floors without assistance would have
multiplied the time taken to take measurements and increased
the risk of the laser 58 missing the bottom surface
of a keystone in the moment the measurement was taken.
All conclusions drawn from comparisons with these measurements
are treated as tentative, and only indicative of
where further scrutiny ought be applied. Furthermore, as
only the heights of keystones were measured, there are
questions on which this data will not speak at all, such as
those pertaining to the curvature of ribs.
Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarships Journal Series