We Have Icons!

We finally got our icons (printed on canvas, museum quality ink) and they are every bit as beautiful as advertised. The Platytera is 4 feet by 6 feet, and the Pantocrator is five feet in diameter. We had to take one of the chains off the chandelier and tie it up aside then set up a scaffold for the Pantocrator installation.

A good friend I've worked with for years is an expert wallpaper installer (designers fly him to New York to hang 300.00 a yard silk hand printed wallpaper...yeah). He donated his time to us.
It was a tricky install because the ink is water soluble and even sweat from your hands will smudge it. We had to be extremely careful to not get wallpaper paste on our fingers, or sweat while we handled the icons. (The next time we'll seal them first before installing them rather than afterwards.)

This is Terry trimming the Pantocrator border and finding the 90 degree positions. We dropped a plumb bob from the top of the dome and measured 4 directions to be sure we had the true center, then snapped chalk lines and ran a framing square to get the 12 and 3 o'clock positions on the ceiling. We had an interesting discussion about the nature of the Incarnation while he was prepping the Platytera.

This is the installation of the Pantocrator, it took 3 of us to position it so the 90 degree noon and three o'clock marks on the icon matched our marks on the top of the dome, and then a couple trips up and down the scaffold to make sure it looked right before he did the final smoothing. Sometimes what "IS" right doesn't "LOOK" right.

This is Seraphim, our resident chandelier expert. It took three of us, two ladders and 50 feet of rope to do the removal and now the reinstall.
This is a view of both icons from the back of the nave.
This is the Platytera over the altar.

And the Pantocrator with the chandelier back in place. We'll probably do some kind of border and gold leafing around the icon and the bottom edge of the dome later.