Thursday, June 9, 2011

As an undergraduate Art Major, I was required to take Art History courses. The texts were filled with photographic reproductions of the various monumemts, sculptures and paintings--most in black and white and a few in color. Appended to the architectural monuments discussed in the texts were postage stamp-sized floor plans.

Much later, as I was preparing my second publication--i.e., A Dictionary of Buddhist and Hindu Iconography, 1996--I found a need to reproduce plans of certain monuments. Again I was faced with postage stamp-sized floor plans. These were unacceptable. Photocopying the plans and enlarging them also produced unacceptable results. This coupled with the necessity to gain permission to reprint copyrighted material was a lengthy and expensive process in both time and money. I, therefore, decided to 'redraw' the plans in a size that was acceptable to my endeavours. At the time I employed Adobe PageMaker 6.0 as my drawing tool.

In redrawing the plan for Bangkok's Wat Phra Chetupon (Wat Po), I became aware of a number of interesting proportions and their associations with other elements in the plan, particularly as they applied to a mandala. This led to my sixth publication--i.e., The Iconography of Architectural Plans: A Study of the Influence of Buddhism and Hinduism on Plans of South and Southeast Asia 2002--in which I devoted a full page to each of the monument's plan. Again I employed Adobe PageMaker 6.0.

In 2007, my Monuments of India and the Indianized States: The Plans of Major and notable Temples, Tombs, Palaces and Pavilions was published containing nearly four-hundred plans and details. I have granted, without cost, numerous requests for reproduction rights of these plans.

In the past few years I have devoted my time and energy to the drawings of Sacred Monuments from the Christian oeuvre. These are published in this blog. They may be used without my permission. I only request that proper bibliographic notation be employed.