Stained Glass Made Simple

St Mary, Upavon, Wiltshire, above and below

I gave a talk last week to a local group at www.pewsey-heritage-centre.org.uk and, needing to gather my thoughts and opinions, took a quick tour of some of the churches nearby. St. Mary, Upavon has a celebrated Nativity window (below) designed by Henry Holiday in the late pre-Raphaelite style. It also has a set of windows of plain pale coloured glass in simple patterns that give a lovely wash of colour to the whole interior of the church. In the corner (above right) I spotted a window that had a few bright red borders, as well as the addition of some painting consisting of traditional iron oxide patterns and some silverstain - the yellow stain made from silver nitrate that gave stained glass its confusing name.

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St Mary, Upavon. Nativity window by Henry Holiday 1917

These three examples were perfect for showing what a coloured window would look like without paint, whether the window is improved with a little bit of it, and how the painting and leading should work together to create what we call a "stained glass window". This is always one of the main topics when I talk to people who are not stained glass makers themselves. Is the unpainted window stained glass (it's a leaded light really!), is a window without lead but with silverstain (like the things I do) a stained glass window? You can find confusing explanations of how stained glass got its name everywhere, here's an inaccurate one I saw recently in the seat of learning that is Kings's College Cambridge. 

All saints, Alton Priors, Wiltshire

I found an example of a peaceful atmosphere in All Saints, Alton Priors. This ancient church is now in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust and has a stripped interior, simple furnishings and plain windows. The ones in the main body of this church have very attractive blue metal grills in the leaded framework and an accidental pattern in subtle colours made of shattered glass still in place. The conclusion I drew from these examples was that the stained glass has to be really good to beat a simple leaded window, especially when it includes a view of the beautiful trees and landscapes around this area.

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A pair of windows in All Saints

Wilton, Wiltshire

Sts. Mary and Nicholas Church, Wilton, showing the three apses.            Passage between tower and church.

This is Wiltshire in October, and the unlikely sight of a Romanesque church under a warm blue sky with light streaming through carved columns and ancient stained glass. It was built from 1841-5 by the architects Wyatt & Brandon and contains a collection of 12th - 17th century European stained glass (the best in Wiltshire?) as well as mosaics, marble furnishings, door panels and wall paintings. 

Looking from the gallery towards the main apse.                               Central panel, large late C12th head of a saint

In the seven lights of the main apse (above and below left) are superb 12th and 13th century medallions of French glass, including three from St. Denis, set into 19th century backgrounds and borders. The most striking is the central panel of a large saint's head with beautiful strong colours and painted brush strokes, an amazing focal point for the lavish decoration on surrounding walls, ceiling and floor. 

Light through medallions hits a painted wall.   Huge wheel window at the opposite end of the church contains a decorative mixture of 16th century Swiss and Austrian glass fragments and heraldic pieces.

Figures from the windows in the small north and south apses.

In the two small apses, either side of the main one, are smaller, ancient figures beautifully arranged and restored. I love the delicate paintwork of the angel and saints (above) - the negative/positive hands in the centre and the pink/yellow combination on the right. Here you can also find saints carrying their own heads (I've found differing opinions on which saints these are) with spectacular spurts of blood from the neck.

Martyred saints carrying their own heads - 16th century Swiss or German glass

A tall narrow window in the south aisle stood out because of its bright colouring, and looked vaguely familiar. The central figure of God the Father was made by Arnold of Nijmegen around 1525 as part of a huge window for the church of the Carmelite Nuns in Antwerp. Other parts of the window are in St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London. In both settings the old glass pieces have been skilfully arranged next to sections of glass from other periods and places - much like the Victorian backgrounds given to the figures and medallions in the apses. These are great example of the historical patchwork you find in many stained glass windows.

South aisle window with figure of God the Father/St. Nicholas above a German panel of the pieta.

Thirty Year Old Enamel

Chapel window for L.M.S. 2.4m x 1.2m. & detail of central panels. Recent photos after cleaning.

My first large commission, in 1987, was for my old school, Lady Margaret School in Parson's Green, London. This commission for the chapel marked the school's seventieth anniversary, so for the occasion of the 100th birthday party I decided to revisit and give the window a good clean. No reflection on the cleaning regime at the school, it's just that I have seen what can happen to an unprotected enamel surface over the years, particularly in damp conditions. In this case, the window looked dull and opaque because of the build up of a patina on its surface, but the window was dry and the enamel underneath the grime unharmed, as you can see in the details above and at the bottom of this post. I used cotton wool and the  cleaning paste "astonish" to shine up the greens and yellows. The blue at the top and bottom was always semi opaque and scuffed to look a bit like my water colour design (below).

Left: Original design for the chapel window.  Right: Bottom of the final design (compare with the same section in glass shown above).

I dug out the design when I got home and remembered that they had initially asked for just the central six panels (above right), then extended the commission to cover the whole window. I reworked the design, swapping the colours around so that I had more of the lovely layered green. On the day of my visit I found the design quite basic, but I think it also looks strong and the geometry works well with the architecture and as a framing device for the birds. I used birds because of my previous commission where this was the stipulated subject matter. My bird shapes and their regular placing in the composition came from my stamp album where stamps were sorted by subject matter rather than country. The bird detail at top left (below) looks like a good copy of Uruguay (below right).

Some of the bird pages in my old stamp album.

In these four details you can see the layers of transparent enamel contrasted with areas of silverstain, opaque iron oxide, clear glass and acid-etched details, all in pretty good condition.

Pugin Patterns

Since a visit to Pugin's house and church in Ramsgate, I've had the picture of these roundels (above) on my wall to remind me about good stained glass design. They are from a series in the cloister of St. Augustine's Church, and were designed between 1846 and 1858 either by Augustus Pugin or his son in law John Hardman Powell. Their design shows how Pugin used plant forms as flat patterns to fill up the space they were intended to enrich, keeping them formalised and abstract rather than three-dimensional. As our guide to his house, The Grange, commented 'no Pugin, no William Morris'.

Windows in South Aisle West, Pugin Chantry South and Lady Chapel East

The church interior is fabulous, both in terms of the integrated design details and furnishings and, as we were invited to notice, by the way that every view is interesting. The layout is unexpected, the windows are all spectacular and full of meaningful details. In the three pictures above, I have tried to show them in their architectural context. The top lights were all made in 1848 and 1849, while the lower panels are from the 1850s and 60s. Pugin died in 1852, like the roundels the later lower panels were designed by John Hardman Powell from the firm Hardman of Birmingham who were the makers of Pugin's stained glass from 1845.

Wallpaper fragments and the reprinted version in a different colourway

Seeing Pugin's wallpaper design somewhere had made me want to visit the house. The scraps that have been found and preserved (above left) and the version that has been reprinted and hung in the hall all use great colour combinations. The colours continue in the painted borders in the chapel, and the bird pattern reappears around a stained glass map of Thanet in a sitting room window. What I like about this house are the details and the links between the decorative finishes.

Chapel window with Pugin portraits & coloured border: sitting room window

Pugin's two sons, Edward and Peter Paul, became architects too, and made alterations to the house and church. They are shown in the bottom of one of the chapel windows (below), the other one (above) shows Pugin on one side and his third wife and daughters on the other in traditional pose and in clear, bright colours.

The Colours of Compton Verney

Lothar Götz room in "The Art of Perception"

The last gallery in the excellent exhibition at Compton Verney The Art of Perception contains a mural by Lothar Götz. I couldn't resist taking some photos (above), although they look like everyone else's photos of the room, that is simple and effective. The colour combinations however are not simple, and they remind me a lot of the restored eighteenth century glass in the newly restored Compton Verney Chapel, the colours in the middle one of the three (top window, below) match the mural particularly well. 

Three restored C18th stained glass window tops in the north side of the Chapel

Inside the chapel, and one of the windows on the south side

The chapel, built between 1776 and 1780, is a rare example of a place of worship designed by Capability Brown. The beautiful white interior has been restored, and the windows replaced with leaded lights containing hand-made glass, most of it clear as much of the medieval glass fragments that the original windows contained had been sold off in the 1920s. What remains of the eighteenth century glazing are the three window tops on the north side in the glaring colours you see in stained glass from this period.

Stained glass in the north windows of the Chapel

I love these type of windows, with complicated decorative patterns and bits of detailed painting, where geometry clashes with nature. The link I have made to my own work goes right back to 1995, and a series of small windows made during a residency in Bournemouth and Poole (below). It's not only the loops, but also the pink/blue/orange combination and the thrill of putting clashing patterns and details up against each other.

My windows for Sea View Centre, Poole & Forest View Centre, Bournemouth made in 1995