Conde-en-Brie / Condé-en-Brie

Baptismal font of the second half of the 13th century [classé monument historique], badly damaged; the font is illustrated in La deuxième bataille de La Marne (1919: 148) [source: www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/comment/Marne2/Marne2-5.html] where it appears as a roughly hemispherical basin with an octagonal upper rim the shape of which transfers down the sides onto the very deep carving of a series of eight angular canopies housing trefoil arches; the inside of the arches appears to have been occupied by figures or motifs, some of which have still survived (a mutilated figure looking like an angel, etc.); the spandrels created by the canopies have pointed towers in them; the base is roughly cylindrical and also damaged, though decorated originally. A plain wooden lid of octagonal shape covers the basin.