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Description

(Two types of style the classical Greek on left and a bit of realistic art deco on right) Taken in my hometown sorry if it looks like low quality JPEG they were up HIGH and taken by my crappy cellphone with THREE flickin cameras

You seen them everywhere hiding and prowling behind your plain sight, camouflaged among other leaf-like decorations of art of architecture and all of a sudden you noticed a beautiful yet somewhat distorted snarling face of one of the great cats, The Lion

Felines mostly large felines are symbols of power and explosive military might but also of riches or “kings of beasts” it’s not just the lions that are the special ones here but also other large felines such as the Chinese being the tiger, many mesoamerican cultures such as the Aztecs being the jaguar, the Benin empire being the leopard

I’ve done some interesting digging around the history and meaning of lion heads but they had been around since the Babylonians and the lion’s special meaning being the symbol of God, The Lion Of Judah or Christianity.
The early roots and uses of animal heads in architecture goes back at early pagan times such as the Egyptians who had the criosphinx or ram headed lion statues placed in their temples or the Babylonian lamassu, the winged heavenly cow and many more.

These statues had significant associated religous meaning behind them either as a symbol of a ruler’s “divine” power or a symbol of a god/goddess. Both the Romans and Egyptians even the Babylonians used the feline head as a decorative fountain spout

As time went on past the Roman’s it was a more of a mere decorative thing seen on jewelry, porcelain bowls, clocks etc but the lion head was more to show of status symbol

Rarely canids/canines are ever featured in western architecture but bovids like sheep and cow heads even their skulls are also featured in classical architecture it’s called bucranium or Bull’s head
but if a canine shows up it’s mostly domestic dogs vs their wild cousins (wolves, foxes mostly) or a rarely a head of a hound dog
here is an example of canines in architectural sculpture

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…

sorry there is a need to gush about this for some reason

Description

(Two types of style the classical Greek on left and a bit of realistic art deco on right) Taken in my hometown sorry if it looks like low quality JPEG they were up HIGH and taken by my crappy cellphone with THREE flickin cameras

You seen them everywhere hiding and prowling behind your plain sight, camouflaged among other leaf-like decorations of art of architecture and all of a sudden you noticed a beautiful yet somewhat distorted snarling face of one of the great cats, The Lion

Felines mostly large felines are symbols of power and explosive military might but also of riches or “kings of beasts” it’s not just the lions that are the special ones here but also other large felines such as the Chinese being the tiger, many mesoamerican cultures such as the Aztecs being the jaguar, the Benin empire being the leopard

I’ve done some interesting digging around the history and meaning of lion heads but they had been around since the Babylonians and the lion’s special meaning being the symbol of God, The Lion Of Judah or Christianity.
The early roots and uses of animal heads in architecture goes back at early pagan times such as the Egyptians who had the criosphinx or ram headed lion statues placed in their temples or the Babylonian lamassu, the winged heavenly cow and many more.

These statues had significant associated religous meaning behind them either as a symbol of a ruler’s “divine” power or a symbol of a god/goddess. Both the Romans and Egyptians even the Babylonians used the feline head as a decorative fountain spout

As time went on past the Roman’s it was a more of a mere decorative thing seen on jewelry, porcelain bowls, clocks etc but the lion head was more to show of status symbol

Rarely canids/canines are ever featured in western architecture but bovids like sheep and cow heads even their skulls are also featured in classical architecture it’s called bucranium or Bull’s head
but if a canine shows up it’s mostly domestic dogs vs their wild cousins (wolves, foxes mostly) or a rarely a head of a hound dog
here is an example of canines in architectural sculpture

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…

sorry there is a need to gush about this for some reason