Beryl Dean MBE ARCA 1911-2001 was an important innovator in the field of 20th- century ecclesiastical embroidery, as a practitioner, as an inspirational teacher and as a writer. Through her writings, lectures and the exhibitions she has given, Beryl Dean has done much to influence public and professional awareness and forward the cause for well-designed church textiles appropriate to contemporary use. Her style was figurative but powerful, demonstrating a dramatic use and understanding of tonal contrasts. She possessed a command of scale rarely found in those who work within the confines of the embroidery frame. Her pieces are arresting, both from a distance and close to, where inspection reveals a multitude of intricate pattern qualities, surfaces and techniques. Although not outwardly religious, she was in sympathy with the aesthetic adventurousness of the Liturgical Movement as it developed in Britain after the Second World War. Her remarkable book ‘Ideas for Church Embroidery’ (1968) was in effect a post-war modernist visual primer, which included the new landscape revealed by micro- photography, images of pueblo pots, Henry Moore sculptures and Picasso aquatints.
Dean came to ecclesiastical embroidery almost by chance. She grew up in Bromley, Kent, the artistic first child of middle-class parents. In 1929 they were persuaded by sympathetic neighbours to allow their daughter to train at the Royal School of Needlework. Although she swiftly became a skilled needlewoman, she found the course narrow and went on to study at Bromley School of Art, where she learnt millinery and dress design under the outstanding guidance of the school's head, Elizabeth Grace Thomson. While at Bromley she had made her first important religious embroidery panel, Madonna (1934), now in the textile collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her career as a dedicated embroiderer began after a commission from the Needlework Development Scheme in 1953. Intended to raise standards in embroidery, the scheme was linked to schools, colleges of art and women's organisations and had been set up in Scotland in 1934 and revived and extended to cover Great Britain in 1945.
Dean created five exemplary pieces for the scheme, four of which were ecclesiastical. While at the Royal College of Needlework, she had been taught by Rebecca Crompton and she took Crompton's radicalism into the field of church embroidery, using new, unexpected materials and a bold mix of figuration and abstraction. Dean recalled: At first people were horrified at the use of materials like suede, kid, pearls and cellophane on ecclesiastical embroidery. Shop assistants almost refused to serve one with dress or furnishing fabrics if they knew it was for church embroidery. Dean was a remarkable teacher, not least because she involved her students in her major commissions. The five handsome copes completed in 1975 for Canterbury Cathedral were created by her adult education class, as were her ambitious Jubilee cope and mitre presented to the London Diocese in 1977. Her finest work represented a synthesis of old skills - stumpwork, white work, or nue and other metal- thread techniques - and daring artistry. She was conscious that changing liturgical practices, not least the celebration of communion with the priest facing the congregation, had implications for vestment design.
We are very privileged to have garments made by Beryl Dean here at All Saints’ church Newland. The embroidered Chasuble and stole form part of the festal set of vestments designed and made by Beryl Dean. The design depicting motifs representing the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley is unique to this church.
The pulpit fall can be seen in its permanent position on the pulpit and is designed to link the colours of the sanctuary and the nave and draws heavily on the architecture of the church in its interpretation Worked in Gold Thread beads and laid on handwoven silk. The design of the chasuble and stole is based on motifs (snails, fish & waterweed) representing the River Wye (leaves and plants) representing the Forest of Dean. The Chasuble has panels of embroidery on both the back and front for either an eastward or westward celebration of the Eucharist.
The sheer volume of work and the continuity of production throughout a long and active life, provides a daunting example to those who have followed. Through her teaching she has influenced future generations and has laid foundations on which others may build. She has given credence to the role of the craftswoman-designer who, in the field of ecclesiastical embroidery prior to the 1950s, was not regarded seriously. Certainly, until this date, it was generally the architect who dictated the detailing and the design of church furnishings. Beryl Dean helped to break that tradition, imposed in the 19th century, and made it possible for the embroiderer to once again be respected as both designer and maker of church textiles.
Sources: The World of Embroidery, Volume 52 No.5, © Judy Barry, Independent Newspaper 21 May 2001