Exeter Rondels & The Twin Towers

Exeter Cathedral is known for the stitched rondels on its embroidered cushions. Recently an American visitor remarked on this astonishing rondel, stitched in the 1980s, could it be that it prophesied the 9/11 disaster. There is certainly mention of the Twin Towers, Apocalypse and New York. It would have to be an uncanny coincidence - and this is exactly the case. The twin towers refer to the image on the seal of the cathedral and The Apocalypse refers to The Cloister's Apocalypse - a medieval manuscript which is now kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

Here you can see more of those rondels in their context. I rather like this image of a rather serious-looking Richard below and wonder if the stitcher might have been referring to my nearest and dearest! These are fairly recent cloths, so how careful we must be when presented with symbols and objects of strong associative power to avoid falling into delightful but unrealistic narrative fictions of our invention - now that no-one lives to explain away our Da Vinci Code like presumptions..... !