Many of our readers will be familiar with Fynders Keepers, a brokerage firm founded in 2001 with an original mission dedicated to finding and re-selling antique church goods and items back to churches for continued liturgical use. This is still a service they offer of course, but they have now also expanded their raison d'être to not only include the discovery of antique items, but now also the creation of new one's.
One recent project they undertook in this vein was at St. Benedict Catholic Church which they describe accordingly:
A gothic high altar was custom built for St. Benedict Catholic Church from old black-and-white photos, using the original relief found in the crawl space below the sanctuary. After almost 100 years, the original high altar has returned. The dark-finished reredos rises in spired pinnacles around polychrome statues.
The original high altar in question is shown here:
As was mentioned by Fynders Keepers, the central panel -- which depicts St. Benedict with his early disciples, St. Maurus and St. Placid -- was fortunately preserved, having been discovered stored under a crawl space:
In that regard, they were very fortunate to not have lost the entirety of their historic high altar, and specifically preserved the main central image of it. Still, a great deal had been lost. Enter Fynders Keepers who fabricated a close replica of the original reredos as well the altar itself -- which in this particular iteration is now a freestanding altar set apart from the reredos.
Let's take a look at what they've accomplished here.
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| The reredos |
The altar includes three panels that showcase carved, polychromatic scenes related to the Sacrifice of Christ and the Mass: (1) the Sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham; (2) Christ, the Lamb of God; (3) the high priest Melchizedek offering bread and wine.
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| The priest, Melchizedek, offering bread and wine |
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| The sacrifice of Isaac |
The reredos also includes gilt gothic tracery and the symbols of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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