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This lovely silk replica of the Chapter House Ceiling can be worn as silken "jewelry," a reminder of Spirit and York Minster...adding a fashionable accessory to enhance your outfit, or hung on one of our bamboo hangers. It also makes a beautiful table overlay.
Dedicated to St. Peter, the Minster is the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of the Northern Province, the seat of the Archbishop of York, Primate of England
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St. Paulinus, who converted the Northumbrians and their King Edwin to Christianity, founded the first Cathedral of York in AD 627.
The exact location of the first Minster is unknown, but the first cathedral on this site was the great Norman Minster begun in 1070 by Archbishop Thomas of Bayeaux. It was built across the corner of the great Roman fortress of Eboracum, where Constantine was declared Emperor in AD 306, the remains of which can be visited today. The present building is the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps and is mostly the work of 1220-1472, but includes much of the architecture of the earlier buildings.
The Minster has always been a focus for events in the north of England, but had royal prominence in the Middle Ages when it hosted the Parliaments of King Edward I in the 1290s, the marriage of King Edward III to Philippa of Hainault in 1328 (an event attended by virtually the entire English aristocracy) and a long association with Richard III.
The ceiling of the thirteenth-century Chapter House was first repainted in the present design in 1845. The delicately-intertwined foliage design is based on the carvings of vine, maple, hawthorn, rose and other plants that form the capitals of the columns around the stalls or seats where chapter members sit.
Plants were highly symbolic in the medieval period, in particular the rose as a symbol of the Virgin Mary and the vine as the symbol of life and Christ. The shapes created are based on the complex grisaille patterns of the thirteenth-century windows, but the reds, blues and gilding represent the colors which once richly adorned the carvings in the medieval period: deep red and blue backgrounds with gilded deeply-undercut relief carving of foliage once made this area a riot of color. Traces of the original color, sadly mostly scrubbed away in the eighteenth century, can still be found in deeply-recessed areas.
Set into the design are alternating shields of the Dean and Chapter (the crossed keys of St. Peter) with the ancient arms of the Archiepiscopal See of York (the pallium which once signified the archbishop's papal authority). The central boss depicts the Agnus Dei or Lamb of God, a symbolic representation of Christ.
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