playing with marble

If ever you're in Exeter, there's a lovely church worth visiting. You pass it as you walk into the city from Exeter St David's station. It's St David's Church on the top of St David's Hill, and Betjeman described it as the 'finest example of Victorian church architecture in the south west'. Except it's not really terribly Victorian at all as it was built 1897-1900 by WD Caroe and is considered his masterpiece. 

The exterior is a little confused as its Arts & Crafts simplicity is compromised by a little too much Gothic decoration and unnecessary additions, but we loved the interior which is startlingly beautiful, rich but understated. It has impressive and unusual ribs over narrow side aisles, a barrel-shaped wooden roof, lovely stained glass by Kempe, lots of Arts & Crafts detail in stone and carvings and glass, and even a wonderfully designed door handle. The real treat, though, was the inlaid floor in  the sanctuary made with many colours of marble and stone and great numbers of repeating patterns, looking for all the world like hard, cold quilts and using what I recognise as many traditional, quilt designs.

So there was me thinking how amazing that quilt patterns can be found in churches - until I did a little research later and found that it's the other way round: quilters have been borrowing from other sources for a long, long time. These fabulous patterns were created by Lee Brothers of Bristol, but they were following a much older and better known set of brothers. It's a Cosmati-style pavement inspired by the work of several generations of the thirteenth-century Cosmati family of Rome who produced exquisite inlaid stonework in churches (not just floors) and in doing so seem to have created the templates for many quilt designs.

A little further delving revealed the fact that there is a superb C13 Cosmati Pavement in Westminster Abbey which has been restored recently. As I was going to be in London today, and as I hadn't been to the Abbey for at least 25 years, I thought I'd go and see some real Cosamti quilt inspiration. Well, I should have known. £18 to get in (St David's is free), crowds milling everywhere (St David's is empty), no photography (St David's doesn't seem to have a problem with it), and the pavement is raised up and roped off so you really can't see it properly anyway, unlike the floor in St David's to which you can get as close as you like. (But you can watch this.) Add to the fact that the Abbey is so full of stuff everywhere it looks like a hyped-up mad version of Sir John Soane's Museum and it's all a bit suffocating and difficult to enjoy. (The far quieter cloisters and the Chapter House are much more peaceful and quietly beautiful.) 

But I am glad there are many more brilliant Cosmati creations, ancient and more modern, to be looked up and marvelled at, and maybe seen one day.