Stitched back to life
Threads of Faith : Sacred Stitches – Bradford Cathedral – Khaki Altar Frontal
Known affectionately as the Khaki Altar Cloth, this altar frontal was designed by Bradford-born embroiderer Louisa Pesel (1870-1947). It brings together artistic achievement, local history and the restorative power of making. During the First World War, soldiers recovering from shell shock worked Pesel’s design in cross-stitch on linen, under her supervision, as part of their rehabilitation.
The frontal was created for the chapel at Bradford’s Abram Peel Hospital, which treated soldiers experiencing shell shock and neurasthenia. It is a powerful example of embroidery used to support recovery. It was given to Bradford Cathedral in 1920 and stayed in use until concerns about its fragility required its retirement.
Louisa Pesel was born in Bradford in 1870, the eldest of five daughters. After Bradford Girls’ Grammar School, she studied Design at what is now the Royal College of Art, where she was taught by Lewis Foreman Day, an influential figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Her career was unusually international for a woman of her time. From 1903 to 1907 she taught at, and became Director of, the Royal Hellenic School of Needlework and Lace in Athens. Her interest in archaeology and historic textiles took her to Egypt, Turkey and India, where she collected fabrics and embroidery, and she later published books on the techniques, history and symbolism she encountered. On returning to England in 1908 she joined the Guild of Embroiderers, and from 1910 the Victoria and Albert Museum commissioned her to make work and give lectures. She later moved to Winchester, where she led a major cathedral textile project, designing and creating kneelers, alms bags and cushions.
The frontal’s stylised floral pattern reflects Pesel’s study of Greek island embroidery, drawing on colours and forms found in the natural landscape. Worked in pink, blue, burgundy and green, it transforms natural-coloured linen into an object of beauty, meaning and collective endeavour. The frontal and super-frontal are linen, embroidered in cross-stitch with stranded cotton and edged with silk fringe. The attached altar covering is also natural-coloured linen.
Now too fragile for regular use, the frontal can be viewed by appointment or on one of Bradford Cathedral’s Ecclesiastical Textiles tours. It featured on Antiques Roadshow (pictured) in 2025, during Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture, bringing fresh attention to a textile that links the city’s artistic heritage with a story of care and recovery. Pesel has also returned to public view through Tracy Chevalier’s novel A Single Thread, in which she appears as a character.
The Khaki Altar Frontal shows that cathedral textiles can carry stories of healing as well as worship. It connects a Bradford designer with an international outlook, the soldiers who stitched it and the community that cared for it, and it carries a lasting belief that creative practice can help people rebuild their lives. It also links neatly with Winchester’s Quire Stall Cushions, also shaped by Pesel’s work.
See all of wonderful Threads of Faith entries here.
