Edmund de Waal speaks at HMC chapel

Edmund de Waal, artist, potter, writer, and Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester this academic year, invoked the writings and thinking of William Morris in reflecting on the reopening of the College’s chapel on Wednesday 26 February. His address formed part of a public service at the chapel to mark its reopening after a major renovation project funded by the generous support of benefactors.

Edmund de Waal delivers a reflection in the newly reopened chapel

Edmund Blok

He began his reflection by declaring that “We are surrounded by angels”, a reference to the chapel’s celebrated stained glass windows, which were created by Morris and Edmund Burne-Jones.  The chapel’s organ pipes – another of its unique features – were also painted by his firm Morris & Co.

De Waal drew strongly on Morris’s status as a radical designer and social thinker in evoking the spirit of Harris Manchester’s chapel.  Alluding to Morris’s conviction that furniture should be solid and well made, de Waal described the altar as a “good citizen’s altar...robust enough to withstand the travails of college life” and praised the chapel as a “place [that] has justice and humility at the heart of it”.

Earlier, de Waal paid tribute to the “beautiful restoration of this chapel, the painstaking cleaning of the windows and the carvings, the rethinking of the lights above us [and] carpets below us”.

Following the service (one of a number of celebrations this term marking the Chapel’s reopening), the College’s annual Charter Dinner took place. This event celebrates Harris Manchester College receiving its Royal Charter in 1996 and becoming a constituent College of the University of Oxford.

An exterior view of the chapel's stained glass windows, created by William Morris and Edmund Burne-Jones

Edmund Blok