Bridget piece open
English Oak, Mahogany, embroidery.
This piece is breathtaking, truly. The images I’m posting here do not, cannot do it justice. Rae worked on this for over 3 years, researching, collecting images and stories, designing the embroideries, finding the wood.
Detail, center section
Bridget: Lady of Faith Lady of Infamy is a tribute to the Irish Goddess and Saint. It contains images from each iconography, and deftly shows how they interact and mingle. The three panels represent the goddess on the left, the Saint on the right,
and in the center, an image of the woman who was both, surrounded by the many names given to her, and symbols linked to her: Horseshoe, Acorn, Holly, ferns, a yellow flower I don’t remember the name of… She also put a copper cauldron, in the style of her Water Cauldron, below her image in the center panel.
detail of Goddess panel
The left panel features a sacred spring, with a flame rising from the water, and an ancient Oak tree shading and sheltering it. The pool is circled with rocks, there is grass, a small Rowan tree, the sun setting in the distance. (or is it rising?)
The right panel has the tower from St. Brigid’s Cathedral in Kildare, a celtic stone cross, and the eternal flame
tended by the Brigidine nuns, who are “unlike any other Catholic Order, for they embrace the Goddess aspect of Brighid and honor that fully.”
Detail right pane
The triptych is embroidery floss on linen, and I watched it slowly form. I even timed Rae working on a section, calculated how long a square inch took to finish, and then extrapolated. There are over 600 square inches of embroidered area in the piece, and it took her between 3 and 5 hours to do a square inch, depending on how many different colors it included, how often she had to change needles or thread, and how much attention she could give it.
I had some scraps of English Oak from a project long ago, and so Rae was familiar with the deep brown, open grain. We found some at BVC Hardwoods (Thanks, Larry!), and Rae designed the cabinet/frame to look cathedral-like. When closed, you see a pair of Mahogany Celtic crosses, with velvet behind them.
Doors closed
Overall, a true object of devotion and beauty.