Chichester-Constable Chasuble

The Chichester-Constable chasuble, English, late 14th century. The Chichester-Constable chasuble, English, late 14th century. Copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 42.193.2.

The so-called Chichester-Constable chasuble is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It was made in England, in the opus anglicanum tradition, in the mid-fourteenth century. It measures 129.5 x 76.2 cm. It used to be larger, but was cut to its present (fiddle) shape in the sixteenth century to conform to contemporary fashion. Some of the off-cuts were used to make a stole and a maniple.

The chasuble has been said as going together with the Butler-Bowdon cope, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Both garments have a velvet ground material, which became popular for opus anglicanum by the early fourteenth century. The designs are also very much alike. To work the embroidery on the velvet, the ground material was first covered with a fine silk or linen interlayer, on which the design was drawn out. The central scenes of both garments are the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi and the Coronation of the Virgin. The chasuble was also decorated with seed pearls, but most of them have been lost.

Sources:

  • BROWNE, Clare, Glyn DAVIES, and M.A. MICHAEL (2016). English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Catalogue No. 54, pp. 218-221.
  • KENDRICK, A.F. (1933/1967). English Needlework, London.

Metropolitan Museum of Art online catalogue (retrieved 6 November 2016).

WV

Last modified on Friday, 03 March 2017 12:29
Published in Religious vestments and other textiles
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