Ecclesiastical textiles are the fabrics and embroideries made for use in Christian worship. They include vestments such as chasubles, copes, stoles and dalmatics, altar frontals and cloths, burses and veils, banners, pulpit falls and hangings, often made in silk, velvet and damask and richly embroidered with metal threads and coloured silks.
The finest medieval English church embroidery, known as opus anglicanum, was famous throughout Europe for its delicate figurative work in silk and gold. After the Reformation much was destroyed in England, but Catholic Europe continued to produce splendid vestments through the Baroque and later periods. In Victorian Britain the Gothic Revival and the Oxford Movement led to a renewed demand for church textiles, and firms such as Watts and Company, founded in 1874, supplied embroidered vestments and woven silks designed in a medieval spirit. Liturgical colours change with the church calendar, so vestments were often made in sets. Collectors value fine goldwork, figurative orphreys, good colour and age. Fragile silks and tarnished threads require careful conservation, and old vestments are often reused today as framed panels, cushions and wall hangings in country house interiors.
