Improving The Local Landscape / August 20, 2016 by Sasha Ward

It's Saturday so the noise from the building sites in this small English country town has stopped. The crane at the end of the drive is parked with a lovely row of blocks dangling in mid air. What is being built may not improve the local landscape, but while the cranes are here I find this landscape more interesting, more drawable. I found the same type of crane in my photos of Swindon this week - can you find a view without a crane in it these days?

View from the top storey of a Swindon car park

The question sent me to my sketch books, I wondered where I'd drawn cranes from previously.

Answers: from a Malmö balcony in 2013 (above), from floor 7, RCA London (one example from 1984 below), and from a school rooftop in Slough - my favourite type of drawing spot.

Wreay Church, Cumbria / August 4, 2016 by Sasha Ward

I was amazed at some photos of stained glass in Jenny Uglow's book "The Pinecone" which tells the story of Sarah Losh, "forgotten Romantic heroine - antiquarian, architect and visionary". The church she built and decorated in the 1840s is St. Mary's, Wreay, five miles south of Carlisle, a trip worth taking if you want to see something original. It's a small Romanesque building covered inside and out with carvings in stone, wood and alabaster and filled with stained glass all using as subject matter forms from the natural world.

The stained glass that struck me on the pages of the book were examples from a series of windows where the usual type of patchwork/mosaic painted and coloured fragments are combined with circular flower head motifs. I love the way the two styles are shoved together and the way that the bold, irregular flower heads fit into the arched windows high up in the walls on every side of the building. They look so incredibly "modern".

Red, white and blue - three of the small arched windows taken from different parts of the church.

The larger windows in the church, although very beautiful too, are of the standard patchwork type. They were an early commission for William Wailes of Newcastle, whereas the clerestory windows were made by a local firm, Geoffrey Rowell of Carlisle. Even more unusual are the windows that alternate with the clerestory flower heads, impossible to work out how they were made until you look at them from the outside. The solid is carved alabaster, the colour is a collage of glass fragments - like black card with tissue paper.

South west corner, group of three windows from the inside and the outside.

South side, group of three windows from the inside and the outside.

Looking west, 3 patchwork style windows and above alternating glass & alabaster windows following the gable line. View from inside and outside, note the carving of pine cones and animals around the larger window.

On the east wall of the nave, above, you can see some of the incredible carvings that Sarah designed and commissioned. The pulpit (bottom right in photo) of a stump and palm tree from bog oak, is particularly great as is the row of angels and trees above the arch. Some of the alabaster, for example the lotus flower candlesticks on the alter, was carved by Sarah herself, the other carvings were done by local crafts people.

The apse is really beautiful, with orange painted walls and globes of amber glass set into niches. My favourite section, shown below, combines a curved painted wall with pierced alabaster windows depicting fossils found in Cumbrian coal mines. It's a wonderful combination of complex wall drawing with a simple pattern of light and shadow in elegant elongated arches around the top of the semi circle and under a lovely wooden ceiling.

Ceiling Shapes / July 25, 2016 by Sasha Ward

Galatina, Puglia, Southern Italy: above, my drawing station on the roof top, below the view I was drawing one hot evening in mid July. The roofs surrounding me across the narrow streets in this historic part of town were full of fascination - lumps, bumps and enclosures to surmount or section off the shapes made by the vaulted ceilings inside the buildings.

sketchbook page, view from drawing station

sketchbook page, standing up to draw the enclosed lump on the roof of the building opposite

Left, sitting room ceiling: Centre and right, ground floor ceilings.

Inside the house all the rooms had vaulted ceilings, the seams from the corner points not quite joining but forming a circle for a hanging lamp. The one in the sitting room had traces of painting, the unrestored ground floor ceilings were criss-crossed with unexplained wires and bare bulbs, emphasising their stellar shape.

On our journey we stayed at Castello di Semivicoli an incredible castle with the guest bedrooms squeezed in to the spaces on the second floor left by the vaulted ceiling bumps. In the huge first floor rooms the vaulted ceilings are decorated in a different way each time, with subtle paint colours and shaped mouldings. I particularly love the wonky geometry as the central medallion shapes are drawn on to the irregular contours of the ceilings that rise to a flatish plane, suitable for chandelier hanging.

Circle, octagon and cloud on the ceilings of Castello di Semivicoli.

Enclosures / July 4, 2016 by Sasha Ward

Holy City  St. George's, Hanover Square, London:  Old Town my panel from 1985:  Kelmscott Design No. 1  from 2014 — *Holy City* St. George's, Hanover Square, London: *Old Town* my panel from 1985: *Kelmscott Design No. 1* from 2014

Enclosures have turned out to be a major subject matter for me. I am drawn to walled cities, or really representations of walled cities, like the stained glass one I photographed recently (see last blog entry). I found a small glass panel called "Old Town" that I made in 1985 and a glass painting based on Kelmscott Manor in its walls garden from two years ago - these three images, lined up above, have obvious links.

On my last visit to The National Gallery I was captivated by a large Velasquez painting, an enclosure but just of a piece of ground, no buildings. I realised that it was the actual enclosure that interests me, not only the way that it organises a picture but also what meanings it could have.

"Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar" 1632-7 Diego Velasquez

In my current work, I have been designing a long thin window which happens to have a series of linked enclosures. I like them to have open points so you can get in and out. I also like them to have straight sides - an oval or a circle makes you feel trapped like the wild boars above. The enclosures in this design are bordered by flower beds rather than walls. They started by containing a string of plums, this went as the design progressed but came back again in the final glass panel.

Garden Plums, sketches showing development of the design — *Garden Plums,* sketches showing development of the design

Finished window in my studio, 300 x 1300 mm.

Garden Plums detail: gold and pale green enamel, the textures and colours look great. — *Garden Plums* detail: gold and pale green enamel, the textures and colours look great.

The window is on its way to Poland, the third one for the house of my friend & glass artist Frances Federer. Read her entertaining, informative blog about her journeys between England & Poland here

Some of the Best Stained Glass Sites in London / June 22, 2016 by Sasha Ward

I followed part of the map of the West End in Caroline Swash's recent guide book one morning last week and saw a variety of stained glass sites that were new to me. Three churches, glass panels on the street and one hotel that wouldn't let us in because of a function. It was a great way to spend the morning and good to recognise some of my favourite themes in the work we saw .

Here's how to buy the book

Inside All Saints, 7 Margaret Street W1W 8JG: East and West ends of the church

All Saints Church, Margaret Street is a richly ornamented brick church by William Butterfield, built and decorated from 1850 until his death in 1900. Particularly good is the combination of different types of lavish decoration - mosaic inlay, painted ceiling and wall panels, tile panels and stained glass windows - working together to create a wonderful interior that has been recently restored.

One reason why these elements work so well together is that the figures on the walls and windows are all the same size, scale and style. Both the tile panels and the figurative windows are the work of Alexander Gibbs following Butterfield's designs (for the tiles) and specific instructions (for the glass).

Tile panel opposite window of the Archangels (click on images to enlarge)

Favourite themes emerged during this visit to the first church: model building carried by St. Peter in the tile panel above, and in the stained glass, geometric architectural detail - like building blocks - above the figures. See details from the window of Saints Katherine and Alban below.

Stained glass in All Saints by Alexander Gibbs 1870s

The second church, St. Peter's Vere Street, is used as offices for the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It took a while to get into the building and then we were only allowed to view the window above the alter. All the other Burne-Jones/Morris windows are partly visible through secondary glazing with badly placed bars, office partitions, furniture and people at work (meaning no access). However, the Burne-Jones angels are beautifull in their pink robes, surrounded by a William Morris vine repeat pattern with tendrils and shaded leaves, a variation that I haven't seen before on another of my favourite themes.

Details from window above the alter in St. Peter's Vere Street, designed by Burne Jones, Morris & Co. 1880

Then on to the street to see exterior glass panels, canopies and screens in new buildings, with whole blocks being rebuilt or refurbished. Alexander Beleschenko's panels in Princes Street (below left) were made in 2004, the workmen were there for another block going up next door. On the CBRE office building on the corner of Henrietta Place and Wimple Street (below right) there is a frieze of model buildings between the first floor windows, a great subject for a decorative scheme in this crowded part of town.

Rushing now to get in and out before a service began, the last church was St. George's Hanover Square, notable for its 16th century Flemish stained glass that was remodelled to fit the windows here by Thomas Willement in the 1840s. However the glass that interested me, the walled city in brown & yellow (two favourite themes in one) is in the side chapel. In her book, Caroline Swash tells you its history and the reason why it looks so new - this is the kind of information I like and so rarely get!

"In 1926 Sir Arthur's son Reginald Bloomfield made further alterations, adding a side chapel with glass by F.C. Eden. During the Second World War, this was blown out in the bombing of London and later replaced by a copy taken from Eden's original design."