King Charles’ secret moment shield made with wool from Down Under

London: King Charles III will be anointed behind a specially commissioned screen that will give him more privacy than his predecessors during the most sacred part of next weekend’s Coronation service.

The crowning of a sovereign is one of the most ancient ceremonies, deeply religious and steeped in pageantry.

Detail of the anointing screen, which will be used in the coronation of King Charles III and has been handmade by the Royal School of Needlework.Credit: Getty Images

Buckingham Palace has announced the King and his wife, Camilla, the Queen Consort, will be surrounded on three sides by an embroidered anointing screen, held by poles hewn from an ancient windblown Windsor oak and mounted with eagles cast in bronze and gilded in gold leaf. It was built by a team of more than 150 people.

Several key elements of next weekend’s coronation were revealed on Friday, UK time, including the addition of Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and Dame Joan Collins to a special concert at Windsor on Sunday.

Fictional bear Winnie the Pooh, created by English author AA Milne, will also join the party, in a moment likely to rival last year’s Platinum Jubilee where the late Queen shared tea with Paddington Bear. Winnie will join Sir Tom Jones and adventurer Bear Grylls in a series of pre-recorded sketches revealing little-known facts about the monarch.

The anointing tradition dates back to the Old Testament, which describes that of Solomon by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet, and was one of the medieval holy sacraments emphasising the spiritual status of the sovereign. Its most important moment is the “unction”, the sacred act of anointing a monarch with holy oil, which signals the person was chosen by God.

Embroiders work on part of the anointing screen during a visit by Charles and Camilla to the Royal College of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace, Surrey.Credit: Getty Images

The cloth for the screen is made of wool from Australia and New Zealand that was woven and finished in British mills. Two sides feature a simple cross in maroon gold, blue and red, inspired by the colours and pattern of the Cosmati pavement at Westminster Abbey where the anointing will take place.

The main panel, which will face the congregation, features a tree with the names of the Commonwealth’s 56 member states embroidered onto individual leaves. The screens are 2.6 metres high and 2.2 metres wide.

The open side will face the abbey’s high altar. The King will be out of sight of the congregation and television cameras for his private moment with God in a way that his mother and grandfather were not at their coronations. They were anointed beneath a canopy that left them visible to all around them.Traditionally, the moment is not photographed or televised. At Elizabeth II’s coronation, an opulent canopy of rich gold fabric was held aloft over the monarch’s head.

The screen, designed by iconographer Aidan Hart, will allow greater privacy as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, pours holy oil specially blessed in Jerusalem, from a golden ampulla into the 12th-century coronation spoon. The archbishop will then anoint the King by making a cross on the hands, breast and head, and perform the same on the Queen Consort, who will become simply be the Queen after the coronation.

Embroidered at the bottom is the quotation: “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” from the medieval mystic Julian, or Juliana, of Norwich, the author of the earliest surviving book in the English language by a woman.

Hart, who lived as a hermit in Shropshire for six years before marrying, specialises in painting and sculpting sacred icons and drew on the stained-glass window that marked the 50th year of the late Queen’s reign.

“Each and every element of the design has been specifically chosen to symbolise aspects of this historic coronation and the Commonwealth, from the birds that symbolise the joy and interaction among members of a community living in harmony, to the rejoicing angels and the dove that represents the Holy Spirit,” he said.

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