My spiritual director is retiring and summoned me yesterday to pass on some 'ecclesiastical impedimenta'. This turned out to be as above: a blue and a black set of vestments. I already have two black sets so that one will be passed on somewhere! It bears the name of the Dutch embroiderers CH de Vries inside so that dates it to before 1962 - I suspect the 1940s or 50s. The blue on the other hand, well, the blue is certainly 18th-century and very probably Austrian. Normally blue is the Virgin Mary's colour, but that may not be the case here as there was a special provision in churches in the Austrian Empire to use blue in other occasions as well. They've been relined and are extraordinarily heavy. They were apparently owned by Fr John Milburn of St Paul's, Brighton, who, when the Second Vatican Council reorganised the liturgy took his and his church's vast collection of antique vestments and cut them into bits so that they could be fitted to the new approved styles. Thankfully he also flogged off the remainder and so some sets, including this one, were salvaged.
It's so generous of S.D., and I too sometimes toy with the idea of what I will do with my tat when I retire and have to move to somewhere too small to house all this stuff. Not sure when I will have a chance to use this beautiful blue museum piece, however!
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