This gives us an authorised sequence of at least five colours—viz. white, red, violet, green, and black. Cloth of gold may be considered as glorified white. Blue, violet, indigo, and purple may be all separate colours, or they may be included in the one term ‘violet,’ as popularly understood. ‘Purple’ indeed is such a wide-embracing word that it may, in ancient documents, signify a material (velvet), while as a colour it may range anywhere between crimson and blue, but it always means something rich and gorgeous.
The altar-frontal, giving the keynote for the colour, should be arranged for first; then the vestments worn by the ministers; and, lastly, all the other textile decorations, which must harmonise with the whole. It should not be necessary to change these latter whenever the altar-frontal is changed, except for Lent. It becomes all the more desirable therefore to choose such hangings as will look equally well with white, green, or red.
For Lent they will all be mostly violet—violet and red—(red decoration on violet should be edged with black)—violet and white—by which I do not mean a bleached, cold, dead white, but a warm, brownish cream, or silver. The violet also must not be crude; blue is preferable generally, and it need not be as dark as it too often is, tending to blackness, especially in velvet. Indigo seems to me the ideal colour for Lent. When one speaks of blue for Lent, of course one does not mean bright or cerulean blue, or azure. These are the blues of our Lord’s garments, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the Seraphim, and have nothing to do with penitence.
The green should not be too blue in tone, and the red is best kept to tawny shades, or real, true red. However beautiful any one colour may be alone, its behaviour in company with others must be tested if it is to be used with them. I must plead for forgiveness if I seem to press this point unduly, on the ground that I am constantly made to suffer from a disregard to this principle when I am asked to devise new decorations to ‘go with’ impossible crudities.
Wherever possible, it is best to arrange all the textile hangings, vestments, &c., to be used in a church at the same time, and to have a definite scheme of design and colour to work upon. Even when the funds necessary to carry it out are not available all at once, the general idea could be fixed upon and the accomplishment of it could follow by degrees. Too often there appears to be a sort of haphazard effect in the decoration of churches—a want of unity, as though each separate thing were an after-thought, bearing no relation to what had been done before. If there are valuable embroideries, &c., already in use, which only require to be supplemented by others, it is merely reasonable to insist upon, and not difficult to arrange, that the new ones do not clash with the old. I do not myself think it necessary to keep rigidly to one date or style so long as the work harmonises as a whole, neither is it necessary for all the shades of every colour used to be identical; but it is quite essential that they should be harmonious.
The principal hangings in use in our time are the Altar-frontal, Super-frontal, Dorsal and Wings. Curtains are also sometimes used to partition off part of the church for a vestry, a belfry, or an organ-chamber.
Besides these there are hangings simply for the purpose of covering bare walls, in the chancel or elsewhere.
As a general principle one may say that curtains which were originally intended to be drawn or looped back may hang in folds, while those used merely as a covering should hang plain.
Wings or riddells, portières, &c., should be full; altar-frontals, dorsals, and tapestries for bare walls should hang plain, and may be treated more pictorially.
The altar strikes the keynote, so to speak, for the whole church. To it, as the culminating point, all the decoration is directed; and by it we are led through the different seasons of fast and festival, marking these seasons by the change of vesture as definitely as by the changes in the ritual and service.