Assisi windows and walls

The Basilica of St Francis in Assisi - Lower Church

The stained glass photo above was in the first stained glass book I remember getting. I have always wanted to visit these windows that are in the Lower Church in Assisi, and unbelievably the experience was even better than I could have imagined. The vaulted ceilings covered with frescoes that I know so well from my equally treasured Giotto book turned out to be my favourite part of the whole place.

The atmosphere upstairs is more like a Gothic cathedral, with the first and largest set of stained glass windows in Italy (all heavily restored) surrounded by Giotto's frescoes of the Legend of Francis. The pastel coloured glass in combination with the wall painting was so exciting to see. Photography is banned inside - great not to be surrounded by people with cameras and to know that I'll have to return for a longer visit to draw the colours and rich detail working together.

The Basilica of St Francis in Assisi - Nave of the Upper Church

Being the artist in residence

The Brewhouse on Saturday was busy as it always is, with visitors of all ages drawing on polystyrene tiles which they used as printing block to make strips of wallpaper. Last time, we used the wallpaper to line the walls of the cardboard playhouse, this time we left them fluttering on the line in the beautiful courtyard.

This brings me to the end of my time in The Brewhouse and the answer to my new most frequently asked question: " What are you making this (or that) for ?" 

The answer is that the things I have been making have not been commissioned - as my work usually is - for a particular place. Sometimes I say, "it's supposed to be art, to look nice". And the point of the activity day was in the doing not in the end result; the point of my residency was in the experience we had as much as in the things that we made.

Kelmscott Design No. 2

This design shows the rooves of Kelmscott Manor from the south, where the huge vine grows. I have included the background stripes that I see in the Oxfordshire landscape, especially now when the low sun shines through rows of trees. I wanted the design block to rotate 180˚, so it could be used for a tape : above is the design for packing tape now in production: below is my installation in the brewhouse window of the wallpaper version of the design with a central section taken out for the corresponding glass panel. I was delighted that the lines joined up and that the white ground on the paper and glass did not make the room too dark.

Brewhouse window from the outside at dusk, lights on, looks intriguing.

William Morris' bed curtains

The bed: My drawing of a caterpillar embroidered on the bedcover: One of the curtains.

I have been skirting around WM's imposing bed with the beautiful curtains and cover, placed provocatively between my favourite DGR drawing and Jane's embroidered version of it (see my earlier blog post). I have also admired the embroidered details on the cover by May and Jane of the river and of local flora and fauna in an observational style.

The design of the curtains is linked to WM's trellis wallpaper, but their style has always reminded me of the 17th century crewel work curtains by Abigail Pett in the V&A Museum. In a time when most of our art book illustrations were in black & white, I used to go to the V&A for children's Saturday sessions. I have never forgotten the name of Abigail Pett - a rare non anonymous woman. I have also continued to find inspiration in textiles, carpets, printed sources and all manner of decorative arts, as William Morris did. My first glass commission for a public building (Lansdowne Hospital in Cardiff, still in the black & white era), shows the same influences I think - the birds were drawn from my stamp collection.

Above: Abigail Pett's curtains in the V&A. Below left: A favourite book. Below right: My first public commission.

Airbrushing

The glass version of Kelmscott Design Number Two has taken a long time to finish, but here it is in my studio in Marlborough. Top left: first enamel layer before firing. Top right: completed and laid out on a tracing of the wallpaper version. Below: backlit and ready to be fired. This design is also a repeat, it's an irregular quadrilateral that rotates.

My renewed interest in airbrushing - and possibly also in the brown and yellow combination mentioned previously - comes from last year's project for Airbus in Bristol. This was the restoration of a magnificent window made in 1936 by Jan Juta for the headquarters of The Bristol Airplane Company. Working with Creative Glass in Bristol, we remade seven broken panels, including the huge one with the propellor and the one with the compass, both shown below. The blocks of colour and the thin strips of clear and etched glass in combination with small areas of airbrushed detail have crept into my new work subconsciously.