Conrad Schmitt Studios recently shared a beautiful 'before and after' project that they were involved with at St. Andrew’s Church in Tipton, Missouri. The project involved bringing the nineteenth century church back to life through the use of colour, gilding, stencilling, as well as the installation of an altar rail, reredos and side altar like shrines to either side of the sanctuary.
Of course, this impressive church at one time had all of these features, but as the story only too commonly goes, these were lost in 1968 following the trends of the time (trends which mistakenly thought these needed to be covered over, changed or removed).
Since that time, there have been successive attempts have been made to bring some of the majesty and greater beauty back to this church, (and for an indepth account of the background of the project, we'd invite you to see, Restoration of Tipton Church Nearly Complete in the Catholic Missourian.)
The project really is quite something to behold, so we shall divide these images up into different comparative views to assist you in seeing the amount of work that was accomplished here.
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I personally think there's little need to effusively describe what has been done here and why it works. I believe the beauty of the work speaks for itself.
Congratulations to St. Andrew's, to Conrad Schmitt, and to all other artists and craftsmen that were involved in this particular project.
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