Absence Explained

Back in the spring, I took a break from blogging. I was working on a commission pretty much all the time, and didn't really have anything else to talk about. Thinking that it wasn't really fair to show images of the commission to the blogosphere before the client saw them, I just took a break. But now the pieces are finished, and here they are, for the world to see.

I had been asked to create a 5 piece altar set for St Thomas Episcopal Church, in Richmond, Virginia. The stained glass in the church is from about 1910, and is a sort of prairie/Frank Lloyd Wright style. Each window has a simplified dogwood motif, and that's what I decided to use for the altar set.

This is a detail of the altar frontal. This is the right side, and the left is identical. The entire frontal is 72" wide and 7" deep. The dogwood is painted and couched on silk dupioni.

The chasuble is a festival garment worn by the priest. This one is made of raw silk, and the design is painted and couched onto heavily stitched silk dupioni.







Here is the stole, also made of heavily stitched silk dupioni, painted and couched. The other two pieces are lectern and pulpit hangings, and have the same design on the heavily stitched dupioni.

I worked constantly on these pieces for most of the spring, and delivered them to St Thomas right before we left for Spain.