No mere chair : decoding the design, symbolism and construction of the old and new bishop's thrones in Hong Kong's St. John's Cathedral

About five years after British Occupation of Hong Kong in 1842, the foundation stone of St. John’s Cathedral was laid by Sir John Davis, the first Hong Kong Governor, on 11th March 1847. Being the second oldest building built in the colonial era of Hong Kong, although St. John’s Cathedral is not the official church in Hong Kong, it is the sovereign’s church. The Cathedral, together with the City Hall and the then Supreme Court building (i.e. the current LEGCO building) symbolised the 3 pillars of British sovereignty, namely: Religion, Administration/Military and Judiciary. \n\n\n\nOver the past hundred and sixty years, St. John’s Cathedral has grown with the Hong Kong society. Some of its growth has been reflected on the church building and the development of the St. John’s Cathedral compound. Yet, books on it were few on St. John’s Cathedral. Moreover, like general studies on church architecture, those books mainly focus on the buildings, and the interior furnishing, which is also an important component part of the church architecture has been overlooked. Among different church furnishing, the Bishop’s Throne is perhaps one of the most important pieces of interior furniture for a cathedral. From a Christian perspective, one might argue that the altar is far more important than the Bishop’s Throne as it is the centre of activities during worship. For example in Eucharist, the Christian celebration of the Last Supper, which is seen as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice, a priest or minister celebrates at the altar, on which the bread and the wine which represents the body and blood of Christ are placed; also the area around the altar is seen as endowed with greater holiness. This is certainly very true, however, from the conservation perspective, the Bishop’s Throne deserves the same level of attention as the altar does. In fact, the name of “Cathedral” comes from the word “Cathedra” which is Bishop’s Throne in Greek, and a Cathedral is a church into which a Bishop’s official cathedra is installed.\n\n\n\nThe dissertation aims at understanding the construction, placement, and symbolism of the Bishop’s Throne in Hong Kong. It will focus on the current and original Bishop’s Thrones in Hong Kong’s St. John’s Cathedral. The purpose is to research and document the construction, placement, design, and symbolism of the two Bishop’s Thrones in there. I hope that this dissertation will serve as a basis for future conservation of the Bishop’s Thrones in the way that it can minimize potential negative impact on the Bishop’s Thrones’ authenticity by any future conservation work\n\n\n\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\n \n\n\n\ni

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.