Watts and Co.'s Stunning Spanish Requiem Set

Watts and Co. of London is well enough known to our readers. They are a maker of proprietary silk textiles, liturgical vestments and -- perhaps less well known to our readers -- other textile based products related to home decor and furnishing. In short, they are a company dedicated and experienced in design, both secular and ecclesiastical. 

Generally speaking, one of my own criteria for how I judge new vestments is how well they could convince me into thinking that they aren't new but rather antique. Generally, of course, there are tells, but if you have to take a closer look to ascertain whether they are new or antique, that, for me at least, is generally a good sign.  The underlying premise here is that antique vestment works are generally superior to modern works, and while that may not be true in every single instance of course, as a rule it generally holds up by virtue of the fact that antique works are typically entirely hand done and some of the materials (I think here specifically of metallic thread embroideries and galloons) are made of much more authentic and higher quality materials.

A set of vestments that really caught my attention is a set that Watts produced something in the early 2000's for the parish church of Holy Spirit, Southsea in Portsmouth. This particular set is a black set, done in the Spanish style, as can be seen by the fiddle like shape of the chasuble, as well as the column orphreys. The dalmatic and tunicle similarly take the Spanish form.

Most striking of all are the embroideries and inserts that have been paired with the embroideries, resulting in extremely striking orphrey designs. (Please note, these next two photos are cropped and zoomed in details, so they will not show all of the details precisely, but they will at least give you a slightly better look at them.)

To my mind, this is a very qualitative and striking example of the potentialities that still remain for contemporary vestment design and execution and the average person would see these and likely think them made in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.

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