Designs [19] and rough sketches by Stephen Cox for the altar of St Paul's Church, Harringay, London, 1990. Pen and ink, coloured chalk on squared paper.

Designs (19) and rough sketches for the altar of St Paul's Church, Harringay. Numbered in ink '041 14 1414'.

The old church of St Paul burnt down on Ash Wednesday, 1984 and Father Seeley, the parish priest, wanted a completely new church in a modern idiom. It was rebuilt in a post-modern style by Peter Inskip and Peter Jenkins, completed in 1993. Stephen Cox was commissioned to design the reredos, altar, font, and the stations of the cross. The initial idea for the reredos depicting St Paul was replaced by a view of the crucifixion from behind, over a map of the Mediterranean world showing St Paul's travels. The altar was made out of porphyry left over from the Foreign Office commission and the reredos from travertine, itself formed of fossilised carapaces of sea creatures, a symbolic link with the skull of Golgotha. The drawings track the design and manufacturing process which took place in Egypt. The worked-up photocopies show the reredos in the setting of the church.

The finished altar is in Imperial porphyry and Hammamat breccia and measures 95 x 206 x 119 cm.

E.339:7-1994