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and flowers can be recognised that he had gone more and more 
to Nature herself—gone in fact into the fields and woods and 
copied in stone the common plants he found growing at his feet. 
To continue the architectural aspect of the subject a little 
further, a change came again after this naturalistic period and 
the mason showed signs of returning to conventionalised designs 
of the natural plants, so that the botanist finds the number of 
flowers and leaves grow more scarce, and the source of the craft- 
man’s inspiration more difficult to trace. 
The art of the period from A.D. 1350 onwards sought to 
twist the conventional foliage into regular or geometrical patterns 
and to ignore the natural growth of branch and stem. 
By the beginning of the 15th century the carved forms were 
largely abandoned, and were replaced on capital and arch by 
mouldings more or less deeply cut. 
It is thus the 14th century, and especially the first half of it, 
that possesses most interest to show the development of “ flowers 
in stone,” a period poetically described by a recent writer as 
“ the moment when carving burst into full leaf—the June of 
architecture—before there was a sign of the crumpling which 
evidenced approaching decay.”* The word “ flowers,” however, 
must not be used with too narrow a meaning, but rather as in¬ 
cluding several portions of the plant. 
At the beginning of the Naturalistic period the Cathedrals of 
Wells and Bristol and many other buildings excel in floral sculp¬ 
ture. Of the most beautiful examples reference need only be 
made to the shrine of St. Frideswide in Christ Church Cathedral, 
Oxford, and the vaulting of Exeter Cathedral with its many hun¬ 
dred bosses. In the shrine erected about A.D. 1289 there are no 
less than twelve different plants represented in the carvings of the 
spandrels and in the Exeter bosses the number of floral decora¬ 
tions is very large by repetition. From these two sources it is 
possible to realise how completely the Naturalistic School in its 
short reign of forty wears was inspired by the flora of the fields 
and woods, and the carvings clearly show that the subjects were 
derived from trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants reproduced in 
genuine naturalistic form and with great decorative effect. 
Beginning with trees the Oak is the most frequent. The 
artist seems to have taken for his model in man}' examples the 
true English Oak with its short, oblong leaves. Sometimes the 
leaves are arranged singly in a running but formal border; or a 
similar use of the plant shows sprigs of acorns alternating with 
the leaves and appearing again amidst the foliage of the finial. 
And yet another example depicts the acorn in some cases to have 
fallen away leaving only the empty cup amongst the clusters of 
fruit. At other times the artist was inspired-by the Turkey Oak, 
which is common along all the Mediterranean coasts, and is dis¬ 
tinguished from the British by the long, narrow and much serrated 
* Prof. W. R. Lethaby; “ How Exeter Cathedral was built,” 
