Early design by Stephen Cox for the reredos showing a man's face behind a grid. Designed for St Paul's Church, Harringay, London, 1990. Pencil, watercolour and gold-leaf.

Full-face grid. Early design for the reredos showing a man's face behind a grid. This design derives its theme from St Paul behind the grid of prison bars, combined with the face of the Buddha.

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.

E.342-1994