Twentieth century glass in Dieppe

Left: Chapelle Notre Dame-de-bon-Secours. Right: View of Dieppe from the castle, the chapel is on the left horizon.

You see Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours as you come in to Dieppe on the ferry. Originally a chapel of pilgrimage for sailors who offered models of their boats to the Virgin Mary, it now also serves as a place for memorials to those lost at sea. It was suitably bleak outside on the rainy day that I visited, but inside all the windows were filled with the most lovely coloured stained glass from the 1950s - geometric patterns that fill every space. The symbols and figures are arranged seamlessly within this network, the female saints are on the left and the male saints are opposite them - everything is orderly and neat.

Interior of Notre Dame-de-Bon-Secours.

Notre Dame-de-Bon-Secours, interior with Joan of Arc window and wall memorial plaques.

Luckily there was a clear maker’s name and date on the window of the Virgin and child (below right) as I found no other information about the stained glass. The maker (maitre verrier) Francois Lorin is from the third generation of the famous family of stained glass makers in Chartres, where Maison Lorin was founded in 1869. These windows are dated 1951, they confirmed to me how interesting French post war glass is.

Notre Dame-de-Bon-Secours. Left: St Genevieve window. Right: Detail with maker’s name and date.

Left: The church of St Jacques, Dieppe by David Roberts 1826. Right: St Jacques Church by Walter Sickert c.1899.

This was the best type of unplanned stained glass trip, I had no idea what I would find inside the huge, much painted (examples above) Gothic church of St Jacques. In the fifteenth century its lower walls were opened up to accommodate chapels that were originally dedicated to the patron saints of their founders. There are nineteen altogether, with sculpture, paintings and stained glass made from the fifteenth to the twenty first century inside.

St Jacques Church, The Chapel of St Sepulcre with stained glass by Anne Le Chevallier 2000.

The first chapel on the right, dedicated to St Sepulcre, has a wonderful combination of gothic tracery, seventeenth century sculpture and modern stained glass. These fantastically light and subtle windows are the work of Anne Le Chevallier (born 1937) who joined the Le Chevallier studio founded by her father-in-law. They are dated 2000 but have the French post war sensitivity to grisaille painting and pure abstraction that complements this type of church architecture so well.

St Jacques Church, Detail of the Chapel of St Sepulcre with stained glass by Anne Le Chevallier 2000.

St Jacques Church, The Chapel of St Anthony of Padua.

The next chapel along, dedicated to St Anthony of Padua, contains a window that is a riot of colour, imagery and lettering with a strong blue background. In a different way this glass also perfectly complements the dark, gothic stonework. In it I can see boats, buildings and figures, but I’ve never seen anything similar to this obviously twentieth century work and the only information I can find about it is written on the bottom of the third opening - OFFERT PAR LE CLERGE, then a word on a piece of blue green flashed glass hidden by the stonework, then DES VERRIERE.

St Jacques Church, Detail of stained glass in The Chapel of St Anthony of Padua.

A more ornate chapel at the far end of the church is dedicated to St Yves. It contains the tomb of local hero and ship owner Jehan Ango (1480-1551), also a twentieth century painting and three windows which are attributed on the brief information board to Jacques Gruber (1870 - 1936). These are beautiful, delicate creations, with loose geometry and symbols in pastel colours surrounded by rich spiky borders that depict sea life. Quite unlike the stained glass that Gruber made for mansions and public buildings, they don’t fit in to either the art nouveau aesthetic or the post war revival of church stained glass.

St Jacques Church, The Chapel of St Yves with stained glass by Jacques Gruber.

Finally, my first visit to see some French hospital art - six windows that were moved from the hospital chapel when it was demolished and reinstalled in the new reception area in 2007. They were designed in 1949 by the artist Pierre Le Trividic, a painter from the school of nearby Rouen, and commissioned to replace ones destroyed during World War II when thousands of Canadians died during the unsuccessful Allied raid on Dieppe. Stained glass was a new medium for Le Trividic, and his windows are a mixture of huge figures, crests and landscapes as he tells the story of the connections between Dieppe and Canada. It’s a cafe, but its carefully designed to show off the stained glass which has been given a new lease of life.

Dieppe Hospital: windows by Pierre Le Trividic 1949.

Design Process

These squares show a small part of a large work that I have designed to cover an 18 metre long hospital corridor, from floor to ceiling on both sides. The squares illustrate the design process in 15 stages - a process that is interesting to me because of the way it shows the design developing, and that is unlike a traditional work in progress piece that illustrates the stages of making.

15 stages in the design of one square, from floor to ceiling, taken from the centre of the design. The solid band 2/3rds down represents the crash rail.

This is a commission for a public place with many interested parties involved in the discussion about the artwork. So not all the decisions to alter or add things are mine - which is as it should be. Colours were changed completely, geometry was reduced to a minimum, detail and texture were introduced, and the interpretation of the given theme, which was ‘nature’, ended up more pastoral than patterned. There are lots of things - and echoes of things - that have to be avoided when you’re making work for a space as sensitive as the approach to a mortuary.

15 stages in the design of another square, from floor to ceiling, taken from the end of the design.

However there are discarded aspects of the design that I miss - the sharp straight lines to contrast with the ovals that went after square 4: the empty spaces in square 5: the simple patterns in square 6. I made paper models of some of the stages to help us look at the design - below are the versions that include squares 4 and 15. The design will be printed on to PVC panels and installed in the corridor soon. Fingers crossed.

Royal Liverpool University Hospital

This was a commission that I thought would never get finished. A new Liverpool Hospital has been built next to the old one which is due for demolition. During the course of its construction, the main building contractor, Carillion, went bust, faults were discovered in the building and with the cladding that had been used causing further costs and delays which were added to by the pandemic. The selected artists, who had been contracted to Carillion, stored their work and waited to see what would happen next. Understandably, my enthusiasm for the project started draining away as the seven oval glass panels I had made were stored behind my kiln for five years.

Drawing for glass and wall design at Ward 7A, 2015.

The selected artists had each been asked to design work for walls next to the four ward entrances on their allocated level, mine was the seventh with bright green accents. Hospitals often ask for artwork that is organic and curvy, definitely not geometric, a look that I have struggled with over the years of doing commissions for health care settings. On this occasion I decided to go for no straight lines or interlocking patterns, taking inspiration from the natural world rather than the urban environment. For each location I designed a swirly drawing that would be printed on vinyl wallpaper with shaped pieces of glass mounted on top of a pool of pale colour.

The wall next to Ward 7A (above and below) changed shape and colour during the course of the years, with a piece of glass that is the biggest and I think the best. It was hard to photograph on installation day with reflections from a screen opposite and equipment stored up against it (below).

Ward 7A during installation, left wallpaper, right with glass on top.

Ward 7D, from drawing to glass, 2015 & 2022.

Ward 7D is similar, and for this one my first drawing (above left) shows the initial concept where lines and circles spiral into the pool of overlapping colours. However, the blank wall had been too much for someone to resist, and when I visited just before installation I saw that a square access hatch had been cut into it so I moved the glass up and some white lines around on the design. This wall is opposite a window which provides some great reflections of the the new building (below right) which is white and grey and spiky in design.

Details of wall and glass at Ward 7D.

Drawing for Ward 7C, 2016.

The wall leading up to Ward 7C had room for two glass panels above the crash rail. My watercolour drawing for this one (above) is closest in feel and colour to the work installed. The changes I made to the shape of the lines and the positioning of the panels happened because of a fire alarm that I had to keep well away from. The detail (lower right) shows how the ceiling lights are effective in picking up the lines sandblasted on the edge of the glass and mixing them with fine white lines printed onto the background vinyl.

Entrance to Ward 7C

Details of the glass at Ward 7C

Drawing for Ward 7B

The wall leading up to Ward 7B, six metres long, is the one that didn’t change so neither did the lines on my watercolour drawing (above). It’s a piece of wall between bays of windows - wouldn’t it be lovely and simple to be able to go back to doing windows again! This series of three looks the simplest and cleanest with an unfortunate resemblance to a row of washing machines.

Wallpaper and glass for Ward 7C

Corridor at Ward 7C and detail of glass panel during installation.

Overall, I am delighted with my last hospital commission. The no straight lines design looks effortless and was very easy to alter over the years and to install. Above all the colours look great, the transparent enamels on the glass are strong against the pastel coloured wallpaper and complement the tricky green on level 7. It’s hard to find your way around this building, hopefully this commission will help you remember the way and give you a boost of energy as you watch the patterns swirling around.

My wallpapers

My designs for wallpapers are one offs - digitally printed for a specific place. This aspect of my practice has developed alongside the glass panels I make, sometimes the wallpapers are seen through a glass wall panel, sometimes they are a solid wall to contrast with a coloured window.

In my commission for the paediatric mortuary at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, the wallpapers played an important part in linking together a series of rooms that we decorated with new colours and artworks in glass and vinyl. The project was completed last year when I described the vinyl door vision panels here and the main glass artwork here. After a recent visit to check out the new furniture that completed the scheme I saw how well the wallpapers worked in the tricky spaces.

Model of the tricky spaces - five rooms with no external windows

I designed the wallpapers to a brief that asked for abstract artworks, with little reference to the outside world. Because of the unique nature of the space and the sensitivities of the people who would use it, they needed to be nothing like you would have in your home, and nothing like you would ever see again. The designs followed a series of workshops with staff and bereaved families who gave their opinions forcefully. Back in my studio I made a series of watercolours and collages that drew on the workshops and formed the basis of my designs.

A favourite collage, I tried not to stray too far from this in the following designs for five wallpapers.

Design for Room 2. Waiting Corridor. 2.6 x 6.8 metres

Photos of the trickiest narrowest space, the waiting corridor.

Design for Room 3. Children's Viewing. 2.6 x 2.6 metres

Photos through the viewing window to the viewing room wallpaper.

Design for Room 4. Children's Bedroom. 900mm x 6.4 metres

Photos from the viewing room to the Children’s Bedroom wallpaper and glass panel.

Design for Room 5. Babies’ Viewing. 2.6 x 1.8 metres

Photos into babies’ viewing room and through the viewing window.

Design for Room 6. Babies’ Bedroom. 900mm x 6.4 metres

Photos through viewing window into the babies’ bedroom with wallpaper and glass panel.

Approach corridor

Vinyl/glass/vinyl window at Manchester Children’s Hospital: 1800 mm square.

Sunburst was not the title intended for the piece I have just installed in a white corridor leading to the paediatric mortuary at Manchester Children’s Hospital. However in the record breaking February sunshine this week and framed by the corrugated sides of the hospital building outside, it glows like a gentle star. As you can see in the photo below left, dramatic shadows and colours are cast on to the floor - surely the best thing about stained glass. Evidently I hadn’t dared imagine the effect would be so good as the collage of my design on to the photo of the space shows (below right).

Left: Feature window at the entrance to the paediatric mortuary. Right: Photomontage of the same space.

This feature window is part of a commission for artworks in the series of rooms that make up the mortuary. It was almost two years ago when I designed the work following consultation with staff and bereaved families and to a brief that asked for the artwork to be abstract, with no representational imagery and using gentle colours and shapes. Last month I wrote about the colour scheme and the door vision panels; there will be more on the wall designs (digitally printed wallpaper), wall panels and viewing windows when the new furniture arrives to complete the rooms later on.

Below is a page of sketches showing the development of the design for the feature window. I was concerned about working with - rather than fighting against - the horizontal bars and not blocking the wonderful view.

12 sketches showing development of the design

Window detail: vinyl on the left in this picture.

The feature window is made up of a hefty piece of laminated and toughened printed glass (2500 x 780 x 17mm) flanked by two pieces of printed transparent vinyl applied to the surface of the existing window. I hadn’t tried this combination up against each other before, and was apprehensive that the colours on the vinyl would look weak against the sparkling enamels on the glass. But they compliment each other well, the white/shadows are just as strong, and the pattern cast on the floor is colourful but subtle.