Twelve Chairs for The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

The illustrations above are the original design drawings for twelve embroidered chairs for the office of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the Assembly Halls, Edinburgh. The embroideries were created in 1994-95 by members of the Edinburgh Embroiderers' Guild using yarns kindly sponsored by Coats Crafts UK.

The concept emerged from hearing a piece of music heard, by chance, on the car radio, Leonard Bernstein's Symphony Number 3, Kaddish for the Dead, about a narrator facing the end of her life, railing at God and then making her peace. The inspirational lines, "Your rainbow, the pretty bow you tied around your finger to remind you never to forget your promise...for lo, I do set my rainbow in a cloud and will look upon it so that I will remember my everlasting covenant". From this came the idea of developing the theme of the numbers 1 - 12 and their symbolic significance in religious terms. As a result the grey skies and the light and the rainbows intermingle with the symbolic images associated with the particular numbers.

Click on the original designs above or the links below to view completed chairs