Gold thread from a Coronation robe, stitched into a modern vision of the Virgin and Child
The Chelmsford Cathedral Banner includes the last piece of synthetic gold braid made for Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation robe. Embroiderer Beryl Dean used it alongside gold sari fabric she imported from India. The banner took her more than 800 hours to stitch and was presented to the Cathedral in 1960.
At its centre, the Blessed Virgin Mary holds the Christ Child, drawn in a Byzantine style and wearing a jewelled crown. Around them are symbols of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit and the Star of Bethlehem, linked by the interlacing wings of angels. The wings show Beryl at her most contemporary: sharp, angular, almost abstract shapes in gold, cutting across the background. On the reverse, the Cathedral’s dragon weathervane stands out against a blue ground.
Beryl was one of the most important church embroiderers of the twentieth century. In the early 1950s, she noticed that fashion, furniture and graphic design had changed beyond recognition since the war, while church embroidery was still stuck in the Victorian era. In 1955, she set up a course in ecclesiastical embroidery at Hammersmith School of Art, and her 1958 book, Ecclesiastical Embroidery, showed how post-war design could sit comfortably in a church.
The banner comes from those years. It is rich and ornate, as you would expect from her gold thread work, but the drawing is modern and confident.
With Mary, the Christ Child and the Star of Bethlehem all on it, the banner is a natural piece to share in Advent.
The Banner shows how a textile can draw on the past while responding to the present, which is exactly what Beryl Dean was arguing for.
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