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The beautiful crucifixes, candle sticks, and
sanctuary lamp, so different from the common stock were made
after special designs by the St. Dunstan's Guild of the Boston
Society of Arts & Crafts. In design as well as
workmanship, hark back to the distant time when the craftsman
was the designer as well as the maker of all objects of
Christian art. They are of brass, the corpus on the
crosses being of solid silver.
It might be stated here that no single object in the entire
church has been purchased from a catalogue or from stock, that
every detail had been design for the special place it was to
occupy in the edifice.
The communion railings, extending across the entire width of the
church is built of Alps green and Conamara marble, interspersed
with spots of Numidan bresche sanguine, and Numidian Cipolin.
The pilasters contain panels of Venetian enameled mosaic in
which gold predominates. The double center grates were
cast in bronze by the Winslow Brothers Company of Chicago, and
are finished in verte antique. This firm also made the
bronze tabernacle doors in the main and side altars. It
may be well to mention here that only one of the side altars has
a tabernacle, which is all that is required, as the Blessed
Sacrament cannot be deposited in more than one place at one time
in the church, it is useless therefore to have more than two
tabernacles, one in the main altar and one in the side altar
which is used during Holy Week. An old European custom is
to do away with the tabernacle on the main altar altogether, and
have the Blessed Sacrament deposited in a separate chapel, as
was done in the new Westminster Cathedral in London, an is
customary in most of the churches in Rom.
The ** baptismal font, located in the tower,
is cut out of pure white Italian marble having a cover of oak
picked out in gold, and suspended by means of a counter weight
to facilitate it raising and lowering. It must be stated
that all the marble work was skillfully executed and accurately
put together by the Duquesne Marble Company of Pittsburgh.
** The baptismal font is no longer located in
this area, it is now on the altar.
A word should be said regarding the electric
light fixtures. These were also made according to special
design, of hand wrought iron by the Birmingham Guild of Arts and
Crafts in England, who are represented in this county by Mr. G.
P. Norton of Pittsburgh. The ecclesiastical character of
the fixtures are maintained by the introduction of emblems,
suspended from a ring held in place by means of chains.
Black was used because of its unobtrusive color and because it
was more serviceable for this purpose than brass.
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