Restoring the Art of Liturgical Needlecrafts
Apostolate of the Canons regular of St. John Cantius
The Roman Finish Starch Method for Corporals
Success! The recipe is noodled, the windows in our sewing room have been plastered with corporals, the corporals are now gloriously shiny!
Perhaps you are wondering why anyone would want a very shiny corporal. Well, it isn’t merely for the beauty of it. It’s greatest feature is that it makes it much easier for the priest to see any small particles that may have fallen from the Blessed Sacrament. It also creates a very smooth surface so nothing can get lodged in the grain of the linen, and the process of collecting any stray particles is much smoother. In the case of this hand embroidered scalloped edge, the starch has permeated the threads of the embroidery and flattened them, creating a stiff shiny surface. That has made this beautiful, but not ideal, embroidered edge less of a problem.
Until now I have only seen this Roman Starch Finish on one corporal. The churches in Rome are pretty much the exclusive location where they can be found. A beloved priest somehow ‘accidentally’ grabbed the wrong corporal after offering Mass at one of the side chapels in St. Peters Basilica in Rome, leaving one of our nicest linens behind. What he brought home was this confusing, extraordinary, and absolutely beautiful shiny corporal. It has haunted me ever since.
There was clearly some application of a mysterious finish that looked like chintz, only shinier. It wasn’t particularly stiff or flaky. It was definitely a linen corporal. The underside seemed like ordinary starched linen, but something different was happening to the business side of it. There were rumors that beeswax was involved. That sounded both perfect and terrible. Who doesn’t love honey bees and their whole product line, but we’re usually trying to get wax out of linen!
What the priest knew was that the Figlie di San Giuseppe di Rivalba (Daughters of St. Joseph of Rivalba) were the source of these special corporals. Their order is tasked with the making and care of the sacred linens for the 47 altars in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Their short video on this corporal starching process shows them slathering a purple-ish goo on the linen and then drying it on a sheet of plastic. Unfortunately the good nuns did not include a recipe for this stuff.
This was right about the time when Helen, from St. Thomas Aquinas College in New England, reached out to the St. Martha’s Guild. One of their priests was also enamored with these corporals and wondered if it was possible to figure out the recipe. We went back and forth with bits and pieces that we discovered in the branching rabbit trails.
• Some sources indicated that zinc plates were often used for drying the corporals, being less breakable than glass.
• There was an order of nuns who dried their large linen head coverings on zinc after starching. They were affectionately referred to as God’s Geese.
• Helen read that nurses back in the day used to prepare their traditional nurse’s cap by soaking one in a starch solution and then slogging it onto the refrigerator door to dry overnight. In the morning they would peel it off and form it into the classic nurse cap!
Then we found a post from the good Fr. Z. who was also very interested in this starching process. He had gained information that the ingredients were starch and olive oil soap, and had been playing with various ratios to try to zone in on the ideal combination.
There was the color issue though. Olive oil soap is green, which gave a slightly greenish cast to the corporal. It was enough to make it look a little dingy against a white linen altar cloth. Not a deal breaker, but also not as beautiful as it could be. That may be why the nuns made their starch purple, perhaps by adding some kind of blueing agent in order to shift the color to a cooler, cleaner hue.
We were discussing this challenge with a couple of women who came to our sewing room for a workshop. Brenda turned around and said, “I make white olive oil soap!” She shipped us a few bars from her company, Mill Branch Bar Soap. That was helpful!
So Helen, armed with a proper ingredient list, began experimenting with the recipe and came up with this: (Thank you, dear lady!)
Roman Finish Corporal Starch Recipe
2 C. Water
1/2 C. Cornstarch
Whisk the two together in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Within a few minutes it will thicken and turn slightly translucent. Turn the heat off and let it cool. I put it in the fridge to hurry that along. We tried both rice and cornstarch and decided that the cornstarch produced a creamier paste.
1/2 C. water
Sixteen 2 inch shavings from a bar of white Olive Oil Soap (Use a potato peeler)
Warm the water over medium heat, add the soap shavings and stir until the shavings have completely dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.
Resist the urge to simply throw the shavings in at the beginning of the starch and water cooking. The soap bubbles up and gives the starch mixture a foamy texture. Not great if you’re going for smoooooth.
Gradually wisk the soap water into the cornstarch paste, mixing thoroughly.
Transfer to glass jars and store in the refrigerator. I’ve used some that worked fine six weeks after it was made. Just check for mold if you let it go for a long time.
How to do the Starching
Here’s how we’ve worked out the starching process.
Figure out where you will be drying these. Clean the surface carefully.
Start with a large cutting mat (clean that too). Lay the dried corporal face up and, using your hands, slather it completely with the paste being sure to saturate the linen. We found that starting with a dry corporal ensured that we didn’t miss any spots. Gently slide your hands across the saturated corporal to remove any large excess deposits of starch. Turn the corporal face down and repeat the starching process on the back. Fold the corporal in thirds from the bottom.
Carry it to your window, zinc plate, or refrigerator and carefully adhere it to the surface being sure that it is even and square without any skewing or curvy hems, because once the starch is dry you won’t be able to reshape the corporal.
Using a rubber dough scraper, gently squeegee off any excess starch, scraping the accumulated starch back into the jar. Finger press any bumps and irregular lines so everything is lying flat and straight. Finish with a fairly light pass of the dough scraper. You want a very thin layer of starch between the glass and the linen, but don’t apply too much pressure on the squeegee because the linen texture will start to show if it gets too thin.
A plug for hand stitched altar linens! You will notice that they are so much easier to work with during the starching process than one with a machine hem. The hem edges will lie flat and flush, while the small inside edge of a machine sewn hem will want to catch and fold over under the squeegee.
Be especially careful if your corporal is old, with fragile linen. It looks like the nuns are using the natural sponge to clean up the edges of the wet corporal, but it might be a good alternative for removing excess starch as it would be gentler than the squeegee.
Depending on humidity and the volume of starch, the corporal should dry in 5 or 6 hours. We’ve found that these peel off quite easily, with perhaps a couple of rough edges from dried excess starch. Those brush off quite easily.
We don’t yet have a good fix on how many corporals one batch will starch, but probably around 3 to 5.
We are hearing that these Roman Finished corporals can be used for at least a month before needing to be cleaned. When they are laundered, the starch comes right out.
And here’s another pict, because we just can’t stop gazing at that shine!
Maybe it would be best if you give your priest a heads up before springing this on him. It almost looks like plastic, and you don’t want to confuse him in the middle of Mass.