Vestment thoughts of the day

Sorry about the silence; I won't be posting too much in the coming weeks since we're in the throes of thesis draft finishing. The atmosphere in the library has already reached the level of giggling and pencil-case-throwing, so who knows how much sanity will be left when we reach by April 4.


I start giggling whenever the books I'm reading about Anglican church embroidery sound so very ... English. For example:
In 1920 Hinda M. Hands (tell me that is not a made-up name) warned about all the crazy silk colors available to modern altar guild ladies, since “without a cultivated ‘colour sense’, an embroider can run riot among an embarras de richesse with most disastrous results!” *Gasp.* My gracious! Although if you've ever looked at the blog Bad Vestments, you know this to be true. 


Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (his awesome actual name) started the Gothic revival in the 1830s and was never tacky. He also eventually became Catholic, sadly disappointing Team Anglican. As a 1980s publication told me:  "Pugin – “that wonderful man” as [William] Burges always thought of him – had tainted the [ecclesiological] movement with a whiff of incense. [John] Ruskin supplied an anti-papal deodorant." Because Speed Stick is always a good analogy when talking about church aesthetics. 


In honor of St. Patrick, I'll leave you with some of my favorite green vestments I've studied. They're all stoles for some reason.

At St. Ignatius of Antioch, NYC

At Church of the Transfiguration, NYC

At St. Mark's Philadelphia