Kameleon tekstildesign liturgical textiles, chasubles, banners, pulpit hangings, lectern hangings

Chasubles for Ålfoten Church


The village of Ålfoten has a small, very old, wooden church. Oral tradition says that the church was built in 1610, so according to this, 2010 is the 400th anniversary of the church building. The parish council contacted me in 2007 as they would like to have a green and a white chasuble to be finished in time for the celebrations. I visited the church and took a lot of photos before I started on the design process.

The interior of the church is very simple. It has walls made of hewn timber logs which have only the patina of age, - no paint. The only painted items are the pulpit and the large altar piece. The church has an old, red chasuble which is still in use. The parishioners wanted the new ones to be the same size, and approximately the same shape.

The main forms of the decor on the new chasubles are inspired by the decor on the old one. Inside the main forms there are rectangles in different sizes and colours, inspired by the divisions of the altar piece.
White Chasuble

Green Chasuble

The altar piece is the same age as the church itself, but was (re)painted in 1767. It has a curious detail, which was pointed out to me: The white oval wreaths surrounding the branches on each side have some red "berries" in their sides, tops and bottoms. A closer inspection reveals that one of the berries is green, - and only one; - the bottom one to the right. Nobody knows for certain why one berry should be different from the rest, so one can only guess at the reason for this. In any case, it is a special feature of this altar piece, which I chose to reflect in the decor on the back of the green chasuble. One of the grapes to the right is green instead of red.