Monday 8 April 2013

Festal Set

This Easter Day I wore my old gold set for both the 5.45am and the 10am. I don't believe I've posted about it before, so to celebrate the festal season (and my post-Easter break), here it is:
 
 
On the right-hand photograph you can see the embroidered monstrance which is highlighted with blue and white jewels. The orphreys are woven with gold fibre and the edging is in gold as well - though it's not actually particularly bold or showy, it just catches the light.
 
The set came from the now-redundant church of St Margaret, Upper Norwood, more details of which can be found here. At least I think it's only redundant, it may actually have been demolished. It came to me via the good offices of Church Antiques at Walton on Thames, as has quite a bit of my personal stuff.
 
You will notice that the maniple is not of the same design; when I bought the set it didn't have a maniple so I got that separately from eBay. You can imagine how spectacular the set this once belonged to must have been:
 
Roman chasubles have a lot of strain put on the shoulders which is why the silk tends to go there first. My set it no exception and I've had to do quite a bit of repair work as you can see in this photo:
 
From a distance it looks fine, but although I use the stole quite a bit for special occasions, notably weddings, I don't put the set to too much work. So I was twitching a bit when I came back into the vestry to get ready for the 10am only to see the Roman Catholic congregation's latest stand-in priest, Fr Stan from Poland, breeze in wearing it, sling it off his shoulders and plonk it on the table. The one they'd brought along for him was too small, so he wore mine. There's ecumenism for you.


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