Holiday Break

With the Advent, Christmas, and New Year Holiday Break upon us, there has not been much time to get in the workroom, let alone time to work on any projects. The children home from college for winter break converted the workroom to other uses for a few weeks.

As a consolation for not being able to work on any  Ecclesiastical Embroidery Projects, time is being spent reading and learning the history of vestments.  Over the summer months, I was able to acquire several books, thus expanding my library on the subject of vestment making, embroidery, and designs.

It has actually turned into a blessing to spend a few hours looking through and reading many of the volumes in the collections. Our church is working on installing two sets of stained glass windows.  The basic themes are determined, but there is a need to develop ideas for symbols and images for the windows.  The ideas and themes used in Ecclesiastical Embroidery are often great themes for use in stained glass as well.  While paging through several volumes looking for photos of descending doves, I spent some time paging through this volume.

Book about European Ecclesiastical History

The above title was written by Marike van Roon, Head Curator at Amsterdam University as her dissertation was added to my library last summer and has become a favorite.  Beginning at around the 1800s, the book lays out the history of European Ecclesiastical History through the 1960s.  There is a nice mix of primary source material in the form of sketches and illustrations from texts and authors of the period, while stunning black and white, and color photography of actual vestments pieces are the icing on the cake.

There is a wealth of information in this text and I do not have enough time this evening to do the book justice. Although not written in English, there is an English summary near the end of the lengthy text. This is a volume for those interested in the history of vestment making, as well as for the collector who loves beautiful photography of vestments. It is well-researched and complete. And now I had better get back to completing my task of looking for photos of descending doves…

Solo Dei Gloria

Be sure to visit our online store front Ecclesiastical Sewing where you may shop for Liturgical Fabrics, altar linen fabrics, church vestment-making patterns, liturgical machine embroidery designs,  church vestment trims and notions and so much more. You may also find us on  Ecclesiastical Sewing on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Sign up for our mailing list at the bottom of the page on our online store front and receive a free copy of our Small Linens Booklet as our way of saying thank you for following along.

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