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Sir John Ninian Comper (1864-1960), the great twentieth century church architect and designer, was born in Aberdeen. His father, John Comper (1823-1903) was a leader of the later Anglo-Catholic phase of the Oxford Movement in Scotland and his god-father was John Mason Neale (1816-1866), liturgist, hymn-writer and one of the founders of the Cambridge Camden Society. Late nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism with its tradition of enriched liturgy, altar lights, vestments, the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, the eastward position and mixed chalice was therefore the natural religion for Comper to express himself within, when he decided to pursue a career as a church architect. Comper began his career in 1882 when he became an assistant to G.E. Kempe, the stained glass practitioner, as a glass painter; and in 1883 he was articled to the firm of Bodley and Garner (which later developed into Watts & Co) where he stayed for five years. In 1889, Comper went into partnership with William Bucknall, his brother-in-law, another employee of Bodley and Garner, a partnership that lasted until 1904.
Up to 1906, his work was mostly in the Late Gothic revival style. This style aimed to re-invent Gothicism by marrying its traditional style with industrial capability and the plastic arts. Comper had two distinct styles: Beauty by Exclusion (1889-1906) using a single style throughout as seen in St. Sepulchre's Chapel, St. Mary Magdalene's, Paddington; and Beauty by Inclusion (1906 onwards), a marrying of a variety of styles into a perfect and practical whole as seen at St. Mary's Wellingborough.
Comper was part of the establishment, his clients including many members of the aristocracy and influential and wealthy clergymen. Throughout his career and particularly in his second creative phase, he produced pictures without words, the apogee of all that is great in Christian art in the twentieth century, which also
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encompass 1,900 years of Catholic taste and doctrine. Comper has achieved all of this in a time when tradition and beauty has often been thrown out in the quest for stripped and unsympathetic modernity.
Although Comper built a few compete churches, the bulk of his work, some five hundred commission, was undertaken in the field of church furnishings. The refined layout in his churches, with their expressive and masterly fulfilment of interior decoration, also adorn and fulfil their liturgical purpose.
Sir J. Ninian Comper is one of the major church architects of the 20th Century, if not the greatest. He marries the many ecclesiastical styles down the ages with a very modern and accessible approach to the importance of the liturgy, the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament (the practice of which Comper was influential in making practically possible) and the teachings of the Gospel, all of which lead us to the numinous - or put another way encompassing the spiritual, indicating the presence of divinity or simply awe-inspiring.
Comper's last major commission in terms of a complete building was at St. Philip's, Cosham. Peter Hammond writing in 1960 in his book Liturgy and Architecture said of the church that: "..St. Philip's, Cosham, competed in 1938, bears little resemblance to anything that the man in the street is likely to associate with functional architecture. Yet, there is no church built in the country since the beginning of the century which is so perfectly fitted to its purpose. It is the work of an architect for whom architecture is essentially the handmaid of the liturgy, and Christian tradition something far more vital than a storehouse of precedents and historical detail. This church functions as the great majority of modern churches - for all their display of contemporary clichés - do not. It is a building for corporate worship: a building to house an altar."
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