Snapshots from a walk around Shrewton / April 9, 2024 by Sasha Ward

We took a walk around the village of Shrewton as suggested by the Churches Conservation Trust because there are three churches under their care within a 5km stroll, plus two other churches on the same route and two chapel buildings. It’s hard to imagine seven active congregations in this small area. The villages feel isolated because of their position on Salisbury Plain which is no longer a rich, farming area but one dominated now by the presence of the army. Following a footpath along the River Till and with other parts of the route skirting flooded fields, it was interesting to see two sets of flood cottages with signs from 1842 (below left) reminding us of the date … for ever being the anniversary of that awful visitation - The Great Flood of 1841 …. when 3 people died and 72 houses were destroyed by a surge in the river - also hard to imagine.

We started at St Andrew’s in the parish of Rollestone, a tiny church on the edge of a field, everything tidy and well coordinated inside (above). The larger St Mary’s church in the centre of Shrewton has become the main place of worship for the surrounding parishes, inside is some interesting glass including a really effective, beautifully blue, ascension east window (below centre and right) and a screen in front of the tower patched with a catalogue of pressed, textured glasses (below left).

Inside St Mary’s in the neighbouring village of Orcheston I took a snapshot that combines the two categories of churchesinchurches and kitchensinchurches in an understated way (above left). You can tell this is an active, rather than CCT, church also by the window displays, intended to be engaging rather than tasteful. The memorial window is in the porch, not to a cat but to the lucky octogenarian Sophie Hamilton-Moore.

In case you’re wondering what the outside of the churches really look like, this is St. George’s (above left) also in Orcheston, a village with a feeling of being tucked away both in space and time. Inside the small church everything is calm, while outside horses feed in the flooded fields and even the motorbikes are quiet (below left). The last church on our walk was in another of Shrewton’s old parishes, Maddington, with an equally beautiful and subtly decorated interior. In every church you can find a satisfying bit of stained glass detail, this one comes from the bottom of the east window (by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake 1872).

At the Bowls Club / March 29, 2024 by Sasha Ward

The Marlborough group of Arts Together, a charity that brings together professional artists and older people for weekly art workshops, meets in the Bowls Club. The windows there provided a good setting for the latest version of my glass painting project. At the end of week one we had a row of glass pieces on the window sill ready to fire, their black iron oxide paint having been textured and scratched off by the group members. Four weeks later, after sessions of enamel painting on the centre and border pieces, I returned with the panels that I’d leaded up in my studio, mostly to their specifications, and displayed them on the window sill again. The black and white pieces looked so good in the first photo, the question is have we improved them over the following weeks?

Glass by Alan, week one and completed panel.

The example of Alan’s panel (above and below) shows the process from week one, with his enigmatic scraffito drawing on a layer of black paint that becomes the ground for further layers of painting in transparent enamel - harder to do and harder to predict the outcome. The borders are a mix of decorative and sample pieces that make it possible to link the pieces together into a solid stained glass panel, a thing that members might actually want to have.

Glass by Alan, week two before and after firing, week four choosing coloured glass to add in corners.

Glass by Gillian, week one, week two and completed panel.

The example of Gillian’s panel (above) shows an original drawing done with great confidence but not really improved by the enamelling, which she did in a ‘colouring in’ style. Her borders however, with speedy, drippy paintwork worked perfectly the first time, no coloured glass pieces were needed to help out the composition of the panel.

A finished stained glass panel represents several hours of work, with different techniques tried out, skills learned and choices made. In terms of the aims of the group, the activity is more important than the art, which should be enjoyable and sociable. You might think that the purity and simplicity of the black and white drawings are sacrificed during the process, but in this type of teaching it’s more about what you learn than what you make.

Gillian (on left) and friends: Alan and Bill painting.

St Laurence Church, Upton, Slough / March 15, 2024 by Sasha Ward

The chancel, St Laurence Upton cum Chalvey.

The church leaflet says that St Laurence Church in Upton cum Chalvey (a parish of Slough) ‘may justly claim to be the oldest building in Slough’. The oldest part is the chancel, rebuilt in the twelfth century on top of Saxon stonework and redecorated during the nineteenth century restoration of the church. Under your feet but hidden by the carpet under the bell tower (in the foreground above) is the grave of the musician and astronomer William Herschel (1738 - 1822), who lived in Slough for the last part of his life when he was King’s Astronomer to George III.

Left, the south aisle, with Andrew Taylor’s window to William Herschel, 2000. Right, the figure of William Herschel from the bottom of the right hand lancet.

The Victorian restoration also added a south aisle to the church where in 2000 a window was commissioned from the artist and stained glass maker Andrew Taylor to celebrate Herschel and his discovery of Uranus. This planet glows beautifully from the top window, surrounded by fragments of blue and pink with stars and streaks. The two lancets continue in the same vein, where you find the other planets, Herschel’s telescope and the biblical verses that were stipulated in the brief and that have been worked into the design in a subtle way that is also legible. The appearance of the figure of Herschel was reportedly at the suggestion of local school children - the artist managed to include him in a way that doesn’t weaken the design and that gives a sense of scale to his Great Forty Foot Telescope. It’s great to see the model of this and also the design for the window in this part of the church that acts as history and social centre, cafe and shop.

Left, Andrew Taylor’s window design. Right, lower left panel with text from Psalm 8: Verses 4 & 5.

The windows in the chancel, all by James Powell and Sons from the 1890s to the 1920s, are wonderful too, delicate enough for this low, quiet space. Here are pale, almost monochrome angels behind the richer figures of saints on jazzy painted backgrounds, full of stars.

Either side of the altar, St Lawrence and St Stephen, James Powell and Sons 1895

North side of the chancel, St John Evangelist, James Powell & Sons 1902

Mark Angus in Slough / March 6, 2024 by Sasha Ward

Slough, looking towards St Mary’s Church from Trinity United Reformed Church and the same view through the stained glass inside.

Slough is the home to some of the finest twentieth and early twenty first century stained glass; Alfred Wolmark’s celebrated 1915 abstract window in St Mary’s Church; one of my largest handmade commissions now in storage as the building it was in, a community type centre called ‘The Centre’, has been knocked down; and Trinity United Reformed Church with all of its windows by the British artist Mark Angus.

Trinity United Reformed Church. Three walls, all eleven windows by Mark Angus, 1995 and 2002.

I was interested to see Mark’s work in a modern, fairly neutral building where the windows get no help from the atmosphere inside in getting a religious message across, which is one of his stated aims. The church member who showed us in said how much the congregation liked the windows and that they had invited Mark back to complete the set when more money was raised around 2002.

The windows are like pictures in an exhibition, not visually linked to each other in what seems an unusual decision for the space. The symbols and signs that indicate the meaning of the windows (still, an explanatory card seems to be needed for each one) take precedence over an interior design approach and the result is quite exciting.

East facing corner; blue window representing The Ascension in to Heaven with St Mary’s spire visible through it.

The full height Ascension window (above left) works brilliantly, with big bits of streaky blue blown glass and liberal use of the device that links all these windows - little strips of lead floating across the main lead lines in a technique that was intended to ‘liberate the lead line’. The only painting that I could see was a faint wash with sgraffito details for hands and faces, the only etching those stars in the window below right. This means the stained glass is more transparent than it often is, how good to see the buildings outside, and to see the strong colours reflected on to the window reveals and sills even on the north side of the church.

I’ve included a photo of each of the small windows below - do they go together and do they need to?

South east wall; St Andrew in the middle.

North west wall; windows commemorating Reverend Jamie Ross, Minister’s wife Ina Ross and Moira Stephen, ‘Spirit of Dance’. I think these are the three windows made in 2002.

North west wall, "‘Cycle of Life’ window on the right.

Details from the last two windows on the north west wall.

Mixed Media Drawings / February 23, 2024 by Sasha Ward

In the Pauline Boty exhibition at Gazelli Art House is a stained glass panel new to me, the fourth of hers that I’ve seen. These student works from the late 1950s and early 1960s hold a great fascination for me, they are full of her unrealised potential and also of my own memories of being a stained glass student in London. That was seventeen years or so after Boty’s time, the world had moved on but stained glass didn’t seem to.

Pauline Boty, Untitled (Architectural details, Edwardian Woman) c.1960/61. Collage and stained glass panel.

The best thing was seeing the collage (above left) that shows how she worked out the design of the stained glass panel.

The best thing at my next stop, the mansion now exhibition space that is Two Temple Place, was a postcard on sale in the shop showing the design for part of one of their celebrated windows (below left). These Clayton and Bell beauties from 1895, landscapes with people and buildings at sunrise and sunset, put everything else I have ever seen in this exhibition space into the shade. These are a different type of drawing, done not to work things out but to show someone what the finished window will look like.

Clayton and Bell, water colour on paper.

I used to be able to get away with presenting that sort of drawing for a commission. I mean an ink, watercolour or pencil sketch that didn’t try to look like glass, other than by showing some lead lines. My final design for a rooflight in the new extension at the Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum (below left) mixes views I’d drawn along the coast in Bournemouth with scenes from the rooms in the museum. These views and scenes had gone through many versions by the time they became part of the stained glass panels, with areas working better in one or the other medium, for example the scratchy trees along the cliff tops in watercolour and a particularly good pier in painted glass.

Left: Design for rooflight at the Russell Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth. Sasha Ward 1990. Right: Stained glass rooflight, 3 metres in diameter.

Since that time, 1990, I haven’t often used lead in my large commissions for buildings. Alongside a changing glass technology, where the design is screenprinted onto large sheets of float glass in transparent and opaque enamels, came a different drawing and design process. It seemed untruthful (under the influence of ‘truth to materials’) to have my hand sketches made into stencils and screenprinted. Instead I started drawing shapes for stencils sometimes incorporating photographic imagery, and as the years went on, drawing on the computer. All of this translated very easily into the screenprinting process and also meant that the design could look like the finished artwork would - something that the commissioning bodies particularly liked. An example of this is the hanging panel I made in 2006 for Dewsbury Health Centre (below). The arches in the design remind me of Pauline Boty’s untitled panel, but also of how far I had moved away from making those spontaneous looking, scruffy mixed media drawings.