Steatite Icons and Material Symbolism

One of the points many OAJ contributors have been trying to bring across is that the medium out of which sacred art is made and the artful human act of fabrication are important on a symbolic and theological level.  This question of materiality and production have become crucial ones in our age of mechanical reproduction…

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Carved Wedding Crowns

I recently had the chance to make some wooden crowns for a seminarian planning his wedding.  I had occasionally seen wooden crowns in recent Orthodox weddings and so I knew it was not completely an innovation.  In discussion with the patron we decided on a tiara form, which would include a miniature stone icon and…

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Learning Icon Carving with Hexaemeron

Icon carving is an art which has been experiencing a great renewal in Orthodoxy all across the world.  In the last 15 years we have seen several amazing icon carvers appear, with Aidan Hart in England, the Azbuhanov couple in Russia.  The art of miniature carving has also been  finding  a quality it had lost…

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Contemporary Georgian Art

There is a facebook page called “Contemporary Christian Art” but most people would not notice because it is all in Georgian script.  Although boasting hundreds of pictures of early art from all of Christendom, the most remarkable aspect to those of us who are not in Georgia is how it prominently features contemporary Georgian liturgical…

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