The Twentieth Century Experiment: Placing a Gothic Y-Orphrey on a Roman Chasuble

Think of the "classic" y-orphrey and one's mind naturally tends toward gothic vestments -- specifically gothic revival vestments (for while the y-orphrey could be found in the actual gothic period, it was by no means universal or absolute; many other orphrey patterns -- some of them extremely complex -- could also be found, not to mention the Tau cross or single column orphrey). 

What many may not realize is that as the gothic revival took hold and we began to see the revival of some of these forms, elements of this would also appear even within the context of the Roman 'pianeta' -- what some refer to simply as a Roman chasuble or "fiddleback" (an imprecise, somewhat pejorative term that is best avoided in my estimation). As such, we can find a number of examples, mostly from the twentieth century, which experimented with placing a y-orphrey on this shape of chasuble and while I wouldn't call it 'common' it certainly isn't rare either. 

To my mind this was an experiment that wasn't particularly successful, but I believe it is worthwhile to make our readers at least aware that there was this type of design experimentation taking place. In a way, it is much like how the earlier gothic revival adopted styles and elements in their early vestment work that was more typically seen in renaissance and baroque vestment design, such as the use of Latin crosses.

So with all that in mind, I've pulled a few examples of this type of cross-over approach coming in different liturgical colours. Based on the designs of the fabrics and orphrey galloons, I would place most of these as having been products of the 1940's and 1950's. 







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