documenting chicago's 19th and early 20th century architectural ornament revisited

a renewed and increasingly obsessive interest in painstakingly photographing architectural ornament on downtown chicago's landmarked buildings has been a welcome change from spending hours on end digitizing any and all ephemera and photographic images tied to the first chicago school of architecture - another project that has consumed much of my time in 2018. 

i'm pleased that the following selection of photographic images concentrating on chicago building ornament has finally been edited and added to the ever-growing architectural ornament archive i created several years ago. the majority of the images were taken over the past two weeks, where i've successfully managed to set aside time each day to work on a particular building of interest, experimenting with various lenses and lighting conditions.

i continue to gravitate towards buildings undergoing exterior restoration where ornamental terra cotta has been repaired replaced. i'm absolutely fascinated with the various materials and methods employed to recreate ornament, which i took to an extreme in 2017 when i documented the restoration of the gage (1899) and jewelers building (1928). that work can be viewed by clicking on the links below.

INSTALLATION OF GAGE BUILDING'S RECREATED TERRA COTTA CARTOUCHE COMPLETED, BOOK TO FOLLOW

RESTORATION WORK ON 1927 JEWELERS BUILDING EXTERIOR TERRA COTTA WORK RESUMES AS SPRING ARRIVES

on a side-note, i hope to make my way to see the richard nickel ornament collection at edwardsville, along with several buildings further south in st. louis over the summer. additionally, i'm eager to collaborate with city museum with the hopes of creating a book covering their extensive and publicly accessible  architectural artifact installations (e.g., chicago stock exchange cornice, schiller building spandrel, etc.).