A miter once worn by the Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury, Bishop of Connecticut, has returned to the Episcopal Church in Connecticut after a five-week restoration.
Textile Conservation Workshop of South Salem, New York, restored the miter, which reportedly had been held for years by a college fraternity. Seabury bought the miter in 1786, two years after his consecration.
The Rev. Kenneth W. Cameron, a former diocesan archivist and a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, is credited with recovering the miter from the fraternity.
The miter sat in a custom wooden box, with a lock and glass door, from 1971 to 2014, “covered inexpertly with UV — very dark — film,” said Meg Smith, archivist of the Episcopal church in Connecticut. It was transferred to an acid-free manuscript box in 2014.
Although a donor had expressed interest in funding the restoration, Smith said, the bishops and canons decided that the Episcopal Church in Connecticut should pay for the project.
Adapted from a report by Pam Dawkins, Episcopal Church in Connecticut