Ceramic at Birmingham Oratory

Back in Birmingham today for a check up appointment for Len. I popped over the road once more to Birmingham Oratory, where I had seen this large ceramic artwork last time. It was commissioned from Alan Boyson, a noted ceramacist, in the mid 1960s to decorate the entrance to St Philip's Grammar School, which adjoined the Oratory.

It depicts St Philip Neri, in whose name the Oratory stands, protecting a group of seven boys dressed in cassocks typical of boys' dress in the sixteenth century. His family intended him to go into business but he had a religious conversion and was eventually ordained a priest. He believed in simple, homely way of approaching Catholicism and founded an order of secular clergy whose mission was to go out into the world and serve the people. He was a great believer in education, hence the subject of this ceramic, which also shows a dog and a cat. He liked animals.

It's a very impressive work, that was sadly badly damaged when the grammar school closed and was demolished, but it was restored in 2010 and now adorns the wall of the cloister at the Oratory.

It's a sad reflection on our times that when I first saw it, and had not read about the history of the piece, I could not but think of the present day scandals affecting the Catholic church. I wonder if, in times past, it seemed to be no sin to accommodate temporal feelings with spiritual virtue.

And a red letter day it turned out to be. Our bags arrived back from Heathrow, intact. We celebrated by watching episode 4 of Bodyguard which we had missed by being away.