Forty years of colour, drawn from a window into a hanging of 2,220 silk squares.
Forty years ago, Beryl Dean was commissioned to design a hanging for the east wall of Chelmsford Cathedral, beneath the East Window.
The result, The Glory, remains one of the most striking contemporary pieces in the building.
The window above, given in 1878, is full of figures, including the Virgin Mary and eleven of the disciples. Rather than compete with its figurative beauty, Beryl studied every colour in the glass, sourced silks in the same shades, and drew them down into an abstract composition of 2,220 silk squares. Five squares of each colour are sewn together to form a cross, and the crosses repeat across the whole hanging. Her students helped her make it, cutting each square, matching it to the glass and stitching it into place.
From the back of the nave, the effect is of intense, shimmering colour. As you walk towards the east end, the crosses seem to move out of the pattern, and the repeated symbol draws the viewer in. The Glory hangs behind the cathedra, the bishop’s chair, and on a sunny morning, light through the East Window falls on the same colours in the silk. It stops visitors and worshippers as they look east, and for forty years it has been the backdrop to daily services, ordinations and the welcome of new bishops and deans.
For a church textile, it was a bold choice. Church embroidery had traditionally been rich in saints, symbols and lettering in gold thread, the work for which Beryl was best known. The Glory is abstract, and the cross is its only symbol. It shows her gift for responding to architecture, and a practice still evolving in her mid-seventies.
This summer it was cleaned by the Warner Textile Archive, the first step in conserving it for the next forty years.
The Glory shows how a textile can respond to the building around it, translating a Victorian window into silk, and gathering a community of makers, worshippers and visitors beneath the same light.
See all of wonderful Threads of Faith entries here.
