Finding Details

People are always telling me that their favourite church windows are the simple leaded lights in pale coloured glass that allow you to see the world outside. In St Mary, Warwick, most of the aisle windows are of this type (above) showing off some great shapes in the tracery. However there is one window in the regimental chapel that is filled with light fresh colours in the upper part and delicate local details in the lower (below) where rows of soldiers march across the panes. As a lover of skilled glass painting, I always look out for a good bit of detail, then get drawn into an appreciation of the whole window in terms of colour and composition, and after that I think about the subject matter and what it means.

Regimental chapel windows, St Mary, Warwick by Philip Chatwin 1952.

The main visit of the day was to the beautiful church at Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, which has a superb collection of windows by Morris & Co from different periods and with panels by most of the artists associated with the firm. By all accounts the best is the west window (below), although it’s difficult to get close enough and to see past a huge sign partly covering the bottom of the three princes in the fiery furnace. The fiery flames around the Burne-Jones figures are what drew me in here, then I appreciated the overall glow of the predominantly brown painting (so difficult to persuade clients they want a brown window but so good to see!) and only then did I think about the subject matter.

West window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Edward Burne-Jones 1870.

In fact the best subject matter was only revealed by the camera’s zoom lens, where I saw that the shadowy angels are sharp and delicate figures holding globes showing the first days of the creation, a classic Burne-Jones device. The backgrounds to the figures, which are painted on large pieces of glass in brown iron oxide and silver stain, are not clear but covered in a scaley pattern that modulates the incoming light.

Row of creation windows from the centre of the west window, Middleton Cheney.

The east window (below) includes details designed by William Morris, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Simeon Soloman and Edward Burne-Jones. The overall design of this window is striking and subtle in a different way, with the usual gorgeous backgrounds, familiar figures (such as WM posing as St Peter) and angels in the tracery. The detail I picked out is at the top where Burne-Jones’ brown and yellow crowned heads make a wonderful patterned ring around a piece of rich dark red glass with the adored lamb on top.

East window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. 1865.

There are a pair of windows in the chancel (below) where you can get close and really appreciate the quality of Burne-Jones’ stained glass figures . These are from a later period and show scenes from the life of Christ. The one that caught my eye again uses the most sombre colour scheme, with the white robes of Lazarus standing out from a rocky background, all beautifully painted with contour lines and shading.

North chancel window, All Saints, Middleton Cheney, with details by Burne-Jones 1892.

East window, St Peters, Barford by Holland of Warwick 1845.

Last stop of the day and another example of rows of figures in the church in the Warwickshire village of Barford. The east window (above) is in a colour scheme typical of its period and overwhelming as a whole. But when you break down the colour combination, and repeat it in different variations along the row of angels at the bottom of the window it begins to work, with the patterns and symbols linking the glass pieces together and with a slightly different expression on the face of each angel.

Angels from the bottom of the Barford window

Christ Church, Southgate N.14

North Aisle, left to right: Liberalitas & Humanitas (1899), Prudentia & Justitia (1885), Temperentia & Caritas (1876), Spes & Fides (1876)

I’ve rediscovered my enthusiasm for the stained glass of Morris & Company after visiting Christ Church in Southgate, North London. The windows in this church cover every period of the firm’s production from 1861 until the twentieth century, with designs by William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb and Edward Burne-Jones. The photos I’d seen were mainly those rare early windows designed, made and painted by the partners in the original firm, in the Victorian Medieval style i.e small figures engulfed by patterned borders and backgrounds. But the ones I really liked are shown in the photo below. There are pairs of figures in all the windows of the north and south aisle, they look great from a distance because of this consistency of design and are full of amazing detail and colour. Burne-Jones designed all except the figure of St. Francis which is the latest and is by Henry Dearle (1911).

Left: Detail from Liberalitas. Right: The figure of Justitia

The eight figures in the north aisle are all fantastic examples of the firm’s stained glass style as it developed, with gorgeous patterned backgrounds and drapery in Liberalitas and Humilitas (above left) and the use of amazing coloured glass, particularly in Justitia (above right.)

The next two pairs of windows were made earlier, the figures of Temperentia and Caritas are flowing and curvy, with a pair of astonishing babies, shown below left. The earliest two, Spes and Fides are plainer, calmer and they let in a lot more light.

Left: Babies at the feet of Caritas. Right: The figure of Fides

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South Aisle, left to right: Patientia & Pax (1909), Martha & Phebe (1903), King David & St Francis (1911), St Peter & St Paul (1865).

The figures on the south side are all much darker, particularly the matching backgrounds. Below are details of two of the figures, with beautifully painted faces, hands and clothes. In the set of windows in this church the faces are all different and quite mesmerising. At the end of the row (above right) are earlier windows of Saints Peter and Paul with wildly patterned surrounds, they are figures familiar to me from other Morris & Co windows.

Left: The figure of Patientia. Right: The figure of Martha.

The other pair of windows that show the designs of EBJ at his flowing best are high up on the north wall of the chancel, apparently the first ones where he used photographic enlargement of drawings to prepare the stained glass cartoons. All in lovely light colours and with a great detail of a rip over the knee of the ragged girl (below right) visible even from a distance.

North chancel: Left, Dorcas. Right, The Good Samaritan (1876).

Stained Glass Figures

East Window by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. 1870, St. Martin's on Brabyn's Brow, Low Marple 

The Church of St. Martin's, Low Marple, near Stockport, was designed and built in 1869 -70 by the Arts and Crafts architect, John Dando Sedding. 'The Firm'  (Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.) made three windows for the church; the east window (above), includes figures designed by Burne-Jones, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Visitors come specially to look at this example of a faulty and unrestored window by the firm. As with many windows from this period by a number of stained glass companies, the paintwork quickly deteriorated - came off, not faded as the guidebooks incorrectly say. This defect, caused by using borax in the paint, was something that William Morris corrected by repainting and firing much of the glass in the firm's early windows, but not this one. Here, the appearance of the mostly unpainted glass, with details and patterns removed, reveals the overall design of the window in quite an appealing way. 

St. Peter from St. Nicholas Beaudesert (left), from St. Martin's Low Marple (right) 

You can learn a lot about stained glass techniques from this window. As you can see in the detail (above right), the silverstain (transparent gold colour) is still there in WM's familiar self portrait as St. Peter although most of the opaque black lines have gone. The comparison with the same figure from Beaudesert also helps.

Since I've started looking at stained glass by Morris & Co. I've had a lot of fun spotting the reappearance of figures throughout their works in tapestry and embroidery as well as stained glass. In this church I found a fourth version of Burne-Jone's Mary, with its paintwork almost intact. 

Marys left to right: St. Martin's Low Marple 1873, St. Nicholas Beaudesert 1865, St. Mary's Sopworth 1873, St. Martin-on-the-Hill Scarborough 1868. 

Christopher Whall at Low Marple: The Lady Chapel added in 1895, South West Window 1899, West Window 1892.

The church is also notable for slightly later works by Christopher Whall. The Lady Chapel, with an eccentric 3D ceiling and an altar painting of The Annunciation, is worth going to see. And in his beautiful West Window is a character I had seen and admired recently in Leicester Cathedral (below). It is interesting to compare the differences in colour, background pattern and detail in the two versions of essentially the same figure. 

St. Martin from Low Marple (left), from Leicester Cathedral 1907 (right)

I generally identify the stained glass of Christopher Whall by the way he paints people's facial features. The faces of the angels in the great East Window in Leicester Cathedral are typical. When you zoom in on the little people in the boat in the otherwise untypical Whall South West window at Low Marple (below) you can tell that this window is one of his.

Details from Christopher Whall windows, Leicester Cathedral 1920 (left), Low Marple (right)

The Four Marys

The Mary Window, St Martin-on-the-Hill, Scarborough 1868

I have seen three Morris & Co. windows recently that use the same Burne-Jones cartoon for the figure of the Virgin Mary, in the centre above, and I've written about two other versions, below, in previous posts. This post is called "The Four Marys" in honour of the strip cartoon from "Bunty" magazine and for the other Marys alongside the Virgin Mary:  Mary of Bethany at Scarborough, Mary of Cleopas at Sopworth and Mary Magdalene in both churches. However, I find that I am not particularly interested in the iconography, or the stories that the guidebooks to the churches tell about the artists, possible models and local patrons involved. What I look at is the way that the figures have been inserted into the window shapes and how they contrast with the backgrounds used in each case: richly coloured and geometric at Scarborough, small figures in quite a basic scheme at Beaudesert, popping out of the lancets but with a more sophisticated organisation of the background at Sopworth.

The Mary Window, Sopworth, Wiltshire 1873                                                                  Saints Mary and Michael, Beaudesert 1865

Below, in ascending order of preference, are three shuffled Virgin Marys. What a difference the colour contrasts and patterns used for furnishings and fabrics make to the very same figure whose clothes and lily can be made to join perfectly. The dark iron oxide paint on the later version has lasted much better than the paint recipe that the firm used in its early years.

Familiar Figures

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West window, St. Helen's Church, Welton with Melton, Yorkshire. EBJ                   Malmesbury Abbey, 1901          Click to enlarge

Visiting churches with windows made by the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, and after 1874 by Morris & Company, throws up familiar figures. In St Helen's Church, Welton (about ten miles west of Hull) there are five Morris & Co. windows with figures mostly designed by Edward Burne-Jones who had a local family connection. The large west window has beautiful roundels above and King Ethelbert on the right who I immediately recognised from a recent trip to Malmesbury Abbey , initially by his magnificent leggings.

The St. Nicholas at Welton (below centre) was familiar to me from his facial features: when you look at the earlier window at Beaudesert you see a different portrait of the same figure. I find the background details particularly interesting - ways of depicting underfoot plants, borders and backgrounds. I love the illusionistic dark blue curtains on poles behind the Welton figures - this photo of Mary comes with a real decaying tassel and cobweb in front of the window. 

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The Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas from Welton Church, EBJ  : An earlier version of St. Nicholas from Beaudesert

Saints Ursula & Catherine from Welton Church, EBJ & WM                                                       The St. Catherine at Kelmscott Manor

In the same church I stood enthralled in front of St. Catherine, thinking how great the combination of book, sword and beautiful green dress was. Nothing interesting in the background to distract you here. The fun part of window spotting is remembering where you've seen someone before, and this St. Catherine is also on an embroidered brown velvet curtain at Kelmscott Manor, it is one of my favourite items there. I checked by putting the embroidered face on top of the stained glass one that the details are no different, only the size and the colour. Although I am reluctant to believe the guides, all the ones I have consulted attribute this figure to William Morris who supposedly couldn't do people.