When I came to Dublin to live, in 1972, I was very happy to be able to attend a Unitarian Church on a regular basis, as before that, I had attended Unitarian churches only sporadically where I had lived: San Francisco, Philadelphia, Copenhagen. In 1972, the pulpit hang¬ing was a smallish square of red damask, undecorated and not too clean I thought. Eventually I wrote a formal note to the Managing Committee proposing that I submit a design for a new one, which I would stitch and present to the church. The idea was approved and then began the painful but exciting process of deciding just how I would stitch it. The design is an abstracted flaming chalice, em¬bellished with some gold thread embroidery, some patchwork (the back¬ground), some gilt leather (the flames), and three cabochon carnelians. Someone asked me once if this had to do with the Trinity, but that is not so.
A gemologist told me that this quartz was sometimes to be found in Northern Ireland and I chose three as an odd number is more pleasing to the eye then an even number. On a trip to London, I got the Thai silk for the patchwork, the gilt leather and the gold threads and spent much of the summer of 1974, I think, doing the actual work. Some years ago, the interior of our church was re-painted and by that time the background fabric was a bit dingy, and the gilt leather had lost its glow, so I unpicked the motif, cut new leather and stitched the motif onto a new background. The pulpit hanging had greater im¬portance for me, more than I could have ever imagined as through it I met both Paddy (McElroy) and Helen Moloney, a fine artist who couldn't sew but had been commissioned to provide hangings and altar frontals for a number of churches over the next years, and it has been very satisfying for me to be able to work together with many fine artists and architects, who would never have known of me if it had not been for Paddy and the Pulpit Hanging.
Jane Almqvist August 2005