St. Austin Catholic Church Project
While this is not our latest project, we are often asked about the process of designing and creating the furniture in the church.
In 2007, St. Austin Catholic Parish was anticipating the celebration of its 100th anniversary of its founding in 1908. When the parish approached Mark about creating new liturgical furniture for the church, Mark wanted to be sure that they were not just turning to him because he and his family had been parishioners since the early 1980s. He encouraged the parish to contact and get design proposals and bids from other woodworkers in the Guild of Austin Artisans that Mark belongs to along with several other skilled wood craftsmen . The church committee had mentioned to Mark that they had saved the brass gate and marble from the old communion railing that had been removed many years ago. Mark went down to the dusty storage area to examine these elements and determine how to work these into his final design proposals.
The committee ultimately decided on Landers’ Studio as their choice to build the new church furniture primarily because he was the only one that incorporated these essential elements as well as reflecting many existing architectural elements in his final design proposals.
All of the furniture would be built out of white oak and stained to match the stain of the existing oak columns of the sanctuary. This photo shows the oak lumber in the “rough” before being transformed into the altar and ambo. The altar with the brass omega symbol and the marble columns match the existing marble and wood so well that one would never know this altar was not original to the church. Landers used fifteen parishioners to help move and assemble the 700 lb. altar. Once in place, a concealed caster system allows one person to easily move the altar for different liturgies. The ambo not only incorporated the marble columns, but Mark also picked up the Celtic braid carving design from the columns of the baldachino for the crest rail of the ambo (or pulpit).
The credence table and the cantor stand base also imitate the existing wood columns on a smaller scale. The pediment of the baldachino is reflected in the back of the presider’s chair with the chair’s side panels echoing the crossbar patterns on the screens of the sanctuary. The middle cross pattern was done in rosewood to stand out from the stained oak of the rest of the chair.
