Since the advent of the gothic revival, we've become rather fixated on symbols -- perhaps to a fault at times. I say 'to a fault' because not every vestment requires an explicit symbol (the vestment itself stands in its own right). Still, when done correctly, the end results can be quite appealing. One of the more popular vestments out there that falls into this pictorial vein is a certain type of French vestment, typically all in gold, sometimes all gold, other times gold with brightly coloured figures. What many may not realize is these were 'catalogue vestments.' Now what do I mean by that? What I mean is that these were not, bespoke offerings that were custom designed and made as one-off's for a single client. They were vestment designs that were intended for mass production and sale.
Generally 'catalogue vestments' are fairly 'conservative' and 'safe' being designed with the broadest tastes in mind -- after all, that's a safer bet for a company since the more conservative a design is, the less you are hitting specific tastes and thus, as the logic would go, the wider your possible customer base. For that reason it is amazing that the particular vestments we are going to look at today were produced at all. Far from being a 'conservative' offering, we're dealing with a very bold and distinctive design that was offered in a couple of forms. First, a metallic gold version, and second, a polychrome embroidered version. Let't take a look, beginning with the all gold version that is likely to be more familiar:
Here is the exact same design, but this time offered in fully embroidered colour.
Of the two, it would seem that the metallic version was the more popular of the two -- which is hardly a surprise to me since fully coloured, fully pictorial vestments are very much a niche taste and market.
The imagery found on the back of the chasuble shows the Holy Trinity, with Christ ascending in glory. Angels fill the heavens in adoration, while the Virgin Mary stands below, surrounded by the twelve apostles who look heavenwards in adoration On the front, we see angels once again, this time surrounding the Virgin and Child.
This particular imagery was drawn for the Joseph-Alphonse Henry company (later known as Truchot J. et Grassis) by the French artist Gaspard Poncet (1820-1892) and was produced for sale sometime around the turn of the 19th/20th century.
This style and type of offering did, however, prove popular in its metallic gold incarnations in particular, with only some of the details being embroidered in colour. They would eventually develop into the type of offering one can see in this cope, a product which can still be found in various sacristies throughout both the old and the new world.
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| Another vestment made in this same tradition, designed by Pierrette Pasquier for Truchot J. et Grassis |
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