John Piper artistic output was very diverse encompassing as it did painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, stage design, photography, stained glass and writings on art and architecture. However perhaps one of the least known aspects of his work was as a tapestry designer. The creative excitement which Piper found in design work, including tapestry, is well expressed in his own words, A designer may understand tapestry thoroughly, may be learned in its history and contemporary practice and possibilities, but design remains design until someone's imagination brings it to life in the new medium. I have had the pleasure - thrill is really a more appropriate word - of seeing this happen with my own designs for the stage, for colour reproduction, for stained glass and for tapestry. It is always exciting for an artist to see his work successfully realised.

Piper's best known tapestry is probably that for the High Altar at Chichester Cathedral which was commissioned in 1963 by Dean Walter Hussey and installed three years later. Hussey was a noted patron of ecclesiastical art, having commissioned Henry Moore's sculpture Madonna and Child (1944) and Graham Sutherland's painting Crucifixion (1946) for St. Matthews Church, Northampton.