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

Wedding season

I've had a lot of fun making stained glass panels of marrying couples' initials (as presents) over the last few years. However, as fellow makers will know, having a lot of fun isn't the same thing as doing a good piece of work. When I started this week's panel, I decided to make it look like fun, with a jaunty angle and a rainbow.  I haven't photographed every panel I've made, one I remember (M&J) doesn't even appear in the pages of a sketchbook. And a note to self: dating your work adds so much interest, I wish I'd done it more.

Stages of Making

Left: Strips of 6mm float glass                       Right: After first firing, the simple part of the design.

This summer I installed a commission in the garden of Booth House, a Salvation Army Lifehouse in Swindon. It's a donations panel, with removable glass tiles so that names can be added to the work, mounted on a fence and therefore with no back lighting. These constraints made it a technically complicated commission so I photographed the stages of making, showing how the glass went from a pile of strips in my studio (above left) to the finished piece at the bottom of this post. 

Left: Lee at Booth House with one of his pieces before firing.  Right: Sgraffito pieces from the workshops after firing.

The design also had to incorporate contributions from the residents of Booth House who were invited to join glass workshops. Their sgraffito drawings on enamelled glass tiles with inscriptions in mirror writing really enlivened the simple composition. This is based on rows of staggered plants climbing up an imaginary trellis. Everything from the workshops was included in the finished artwork so the design changed and grew during the making process.

When you take your work outside, it suddenly looks very small, dwarfed by the big wide world. To fill a reasonable amount of space on the fence, I worked out that I needed to make 72 pieces of glass, each measuring 120mm x 250-350mm. Every piece is unique - with a tiny number scratched in the enamel after the first layer of green/brown painting and firing (top right). The second layer of painting added plain colours as backgrounds for the names, these commemorate people and organisations who have made donations of various kinds to Booth House. 

Left: first batch of glass pieces on the lightbox before second firing.  Right: all the pieces have been painted twice, half of them still need their second firing.

Left: the master list                                                        Right: piece no. 51, just the name left to add

That was really the fun part over. The fired pieces had to be taken to the tougheners, then brought back to the studio along with 72 pieces of mirrored glass slightly taller than the enamelled pieces to create tiles with two stepped edges, able to slide in and out of the frame.  Next I cut three layers of laminating stuff and taped them between the enamelled and mirrored glass, ready for lamination. The last process was sandblasting names onto the front of some of the tiles. And the most time consuming part of the process - scraping off the stuff that oozes out during lamination - didn't even appear on my master list. The piles of glass pieces looked great, really bright and reflective on a sunny day in the studio (below left). The colours of our green, shady garden were reflected when I piled them on the table outside.

Reflected colours: inside the studio (left),      in the garden (right).

Corner in the garden of Booth House                                          Detail with reflections

The frame for the glass pieces is an ingenious thing devised by friend and neighbour Fred Baier. We customised strips of composite decking material and slotted them together on two boards which we installed on a section of fence that creates a little corner. The colours on a summer's day couldn't be brighter, with reflections from the garden and the wall opposite and a spectacular merging of colours, names and patterns at the corner joint. I took a photo from Spring Gardens car park that overlooks the garden, of one of the residents looking for her painted piece (bottom right), showing how the mirrored enamel stands out even from such a distance.

Detail showing corner and neat end caps                                                    From Spring Gardens car park

Faces and Fragments

I was travelling through Oxfordshire, "church crawling" as I believe it's called, when I drove straight past the wonderful sight of one set of stained glass windows visible through the other. Unusually this church, St James' Aston, was open, empty and very light inside, with a coordinated set of patterned windows and a few commemorative figurative ones that I ignored. 

St. James, Aston, West Oxfordshire

The even light of a dull summer's day was perfect for viewing and photographing the stained glass. There are 18 of these lancet windows with up to three medallions of coloured glass, crazy patchwork style, in each with a dedication below. I have always loved this way of making stained glass, it's as fun to look at as it is to make, with unexpected juxtapositions and colour combinations. These fragments don't look that old and could some of them have been made especially for the scrap box (cheating in my book)? The latest date on a dedication panel is 1970, that's all I've been able to find out about the windows so far.

Inside the nave, plain apart from glass medallions, kneelers & pews - all very attractive.

These top two ovals are my favourites; like many of the ones shown here the medallion is centred around a face, expressive, poignant or sliced down the middle. I really admire the compositional skill of the artist who put these together, I stayed for ages gazing up at them. Scroll down for more photos, all of them are from the eight nave windows, and as usual, click on an image to enlarge.

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