A Manual of Church Decoration and Symbolism

By The Rev. Ernest Geldart, Rector of Little Braxted
Oxford & London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1899
220 Pages | LII Plates and Numerous Illustrations

Before Ernest Geldart became a priest, he was an architect—and he never really stopped being one.

Trained in the office of the celebrated Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse, Geldart went on to spend decades designing churches and ecclesiastical furnishings. His surviving work includes designs for chasubles, veils, embroidery, banners, altar frontals, screens, carved ornament, and painted decoration. A Manual of Church Decoration and Symbolism gathers that practical experience together with more than thirty years of studying historic church art and ornament.

This is not simply a Victorian dictionary of Christian symbols. It is a working manual for the people responsible for making a church beautiful: the embroiderer designing a banner, the vestment maker searching for an appropriate emblem, the parish guild preparing the chancel for a feast day, or the designer deciding how color, proportion, lettering, flowers, heraldry, and sacred imagery should work together.

Part One — Doing the Work

Geldart begins with an unusually practical question: what makes church decoration good—or bad?

He warns against decoration that obscures permanent architectural features, interferes with worship, becomes excessive or repetitive, uses unsuitable materials, or draws attention to the individual decorator rather than the purpose of the church itself.

His argument is not against richness. Geldart loved color, gold, carving, textiles, flowers, and ornament. His concern was that beauty should be governed by proportion, craftsmanship, reverence, and good judgment.

Among the practical subjects covered are:

• The proper use—and abuse—of church decoration

• Twelve principles for successful ecclesiastical decoration

• Wreaths and garlands, including materials and methods of construction

• Floral decoration, cut flowers, everlastings, and flowers associated with particular occasions

• Liturgical colors and their traditional symbolic meanings

• Numbers and geometrical forms used symbolically in Christian art

• Temporary screens, structures, and font covers

• Banners and flags, including methods for making them in silk, canvas, embroidery, paint, stencil work, and appliqué

• Lettering and texts as permanent church decoration

• Memorial inscriptions and chronograms

• Appropriate texts for the seasons of the Church year and for different parts of the church

The chapter on banners is particularly valuable for textile workers. Geldart discusses the choice of materials, construction, keeping fabric square, lining and finishing, and several methods for creating decorative designs on cloth.

Part Two — Reading the Symbols

The second half of the book becomes an extensive design reference for the traditional visual language of the Church.

Geldart explains not only what Christian symbols mean, but how they have historically been represented and combined. For anyone designing embroidery, vestments, banners, altar hangings, or church furnishings, these chapters provide a remarkable source of ideas.

Subjects include:

• Christian emblems and the saints associated with them

• Traditional representations of the Holy Trinity

• The Holy Name and the origins of familiar sacred monograms

• More than twenty emblems of Our Lord, including the Agnus Dei, Alpha and Omega, anchor, fish, vesica, pelican, phoenix, pomegranate, rose, fleur-de-lis, ship, and Good Shepherd

• The holy Angels and the traditional orders of angels

• The four Evangelists and the arrangement of their symbols

• The Apostles and their traditional emblems

• The articles of the Creed historically associated with each Apostle

• The Prophets and the ecclesiastical calendar

• Saints arranged alphabetically with their traditional attributes and emblems

• The aureole and nimbus

• The principles of heraldry

• Historic shield shapes and proportions

• Arms and symbols associated with individual saints

• Arms of the English bishoprics

• The development of crowns and coronets

• The history, symbolism, and forms of the mitre

A Design Sourcebook for Vestment Makers and Embroiderers

For the modern ecclesiastical artist, one of the greatest strengths of this volume is Geldart's understanding that symbolism and craftsmanship cannot really be separated.

His discussions repeatedly return to the way sacred imagery appears in needlework, vestments, altar cloths, banners, painted decoration, carving, and architectural ornament. Flowers such as the rose and pomegranate are considered not merely as symbols but as historic decorative motifs used by generations of embroiderers.

The result is something closer to a nineteenth-century ecclesiastical design library than a simple book on symbolism.

When a design calls for an Agnus Dei, a pelican, a Tudor rose, an Apostle's emblem, an Evangelist symbol, a heraldic shield, or a traditional form of the fleur-de-lis, Geldart provides the historical language from which to begin.

Why It Belongs on a Vestment Maker's Shelf

Geldart was not writing about objects he had only seen in books. He designed ecclesiastical textiles and furnishings himself.

Surviving examples and drawings include designs for chasubles, ecclesiastical veils, embroidery, banners, and altar frontals. His magnificent festal altar frontal at Rochester Cathedral demonstrates the same combination of architecture, symbolism, textile design, embroidery, and historic ornament found throughout this book.

That practical background gives A Manual of Church Decoration and Symbolism a usefulness that many books on Christian iconography lack.

It teaches both sides of the work:

how to make the object—and how to choose what belongs upon it.

Near the end of his acknowledgments, Geldart cheerfully calls himself “a plagiarist and a borrower,” explaining that his book would have been poorer had it been entirely his own.

It is a revealing statement.

Geldart's purpose was not to invent a new decorative language for the Church. It was to gather, study, illustrate, and hand forward the visual language Christians had already developed over centuries.

For the embroiderer, vestment maker, church artist, designer, historian, or parish seeking to understand that language today, this volume remains a remarkably useful place to begin.

Format: Paperback
Size: 6" × 9"
Length: 220 pages
Illustrations: LII plates and numerous illustrations

About This Historic Reproduction

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Ecclesiastical Sewing has digitally remastered the original text and illustrations so that this valuable resource may remain available to future generations.

Because this edition preserves the character of the original publication, occasional blemishes, irregularities, or imperfections found in the historic source material may remain. These have been retained where appropriate in order to preserve the integrity of the original work.

Modern readers should also be aware that nineteenth-century authors often wrote for an audience assumed to possess a substantial background knowledge of Scripture, church history, symbolism, architecture, and the decorative arts. The writing therefore differs from modern instructional books, which often explain every step or concept in detail.

That is also part of its value.

Rather than simplifying the historic tradition, Geldart invites the reader directly into it.