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Obituary: GILBERT KILBRIDE

by
03 March 2010

A correspondent writes:

GILBERT KILBRIDE, who died on 15 February, aged 69, was a weaver and vestment-maker whose work is in churches, monasteries, and cathedrals around the world. He produced vestments of outstanding simplicity and beauty, the result not only of his great technical ability as a weaver, but also of his sensitivity to liturgical requirements.

His father, Valentine KilBride, a member of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, founded by Eric Gill and Hilary Pepler on Ditchling Common in Sussex, had set up the family silk-weaving and vestment-making business in 1925.

On leaving school, Gilbert began an apprenticeship with his father, but at that time did not feel that this was the life he wished to lead. Instead, he followed other interests, spending some years as an actor before qualifying as a master mariner and working on cargo ships around the coasts of Britain and Northern Europe.

In the early 1980s, Gilbert turned again to weaving. His first wife, Jenny, with whom he founded the folk group Juice of Barley, died in 1985. When the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in Sussex closed in 1989, he left seafaring for good, and moved the looms and equipment to his workshop in Llanover in south Wales.

Here he continued the family tradition of buying spun silk in skein form, dyeing it to the exact shade required, weaving it on 150cm-wide hand-operated dobby looms, and wet-finishing the cloth on an out­door tenter frame. The finished cloth was then made up by his second wife, Wendy, whose skills matched his own.

Gilbert’s work was a direct product of his firmly held beliefs. His upbringing at the Guild had instilled in him a love of craftsmanship, a respect for materials, and a clear-eyed familiarity with religious institutions and practice.

He had an absolute mastery of the tools he used, and was extra­ordinarily inventive, skilfully ad­apting equipment, much of which was more than 100 years old, to make it more efficient. One of the pleasures of visiting the workshop was to hear and see these historic looms, not as silent museum pieces, but in full operation.

Perhaps his best-known com­mission was the gold enthronement cope and mitre made for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in 2003.

Although content to work alone for long hours, Gilbert was a hospitable and warm-hearted man. He loved nothing better than a robust discussion — often well into the night and after a good dinner — when he would defend his views on politics, religion, and the state of the world in general with characteristic wit and determination.

But essentially he was a quiet man, who had very little interest in material gain or public status. Above all, he never compromised in his determination to produce work to the highest possible standard and to live a life he believed to be right and good.

After a long illness, which he bore with great fortitude, he leaves his widow, Wendy, four sons, a step-son and daughter, six grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and a step-grand­daughter, born four days before he died.

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