Where socialism meets stained glass

People's History Museum display, including illustrations by Walter Crane and his self portrait.

In the People's History Museum, Manchester, the story of working people in Britain is told through displays of cartoons, photographs, documents, banners and even stained glass. The section that includes William Morris and Walter Crane is shown above, on top of a photograph of Clarion van 3. The Clarion Vans spread the socialist word, touring from 1896 -1929. Van 3, made in time for a large Clarion gathering in Shrewsbury in 1914, was named after William Morris, to a drawing by Walter Crane that includes a stained glass sign and decorative panels between the windows. Photographs of the equally attractive Vans Nos. 1 and 2 below.

WM at Silbury Hill

A year ago today we went on a drawing trip to Silbury Hill. My drawings were intended to start a series about places local to me. I haven't done anything with these drawings yet, but am looking at them afresh in the light of William Morris' letter to his sister Emma in April 1849 (WM aged 15). The muddy path he took from Avebury is the one I was on for drawings I & II below.

'On Monday I went to Silbury Hill which I think I have told you before is an artificial hill made by the Britons ….. we went through a mud lane down one or two fields and last but not least through what they call here a water meadow up to our knees in water, now perhaps you do not know what a water meadow is as there are none of them in your part of the world, so for your edification I will tell you what a delectable affair a water meadow is to go through; in the first place you must fancy a field cut through with an infinity of small streams say about four feet wide each the people to whom the meadow belongs can turn these streams on and off when they like and at this time of the year they are on just before they put the fields up for mowing the grass being very long you cannot see the water till you are in the water and floundering in it except you are above the field luckily the water had not been long when we went through it else we should have been up to our middles in mud, however perhaps now you can imagine a water meadow : after we had scrambled through this meadow we ascended Silbury Hill it is not very high but yet I should think it must have taken an immense long time to have got it together .

Looking across Silbury Hill towards Avebury (showing the water meadow and the muddy path) by Ray Ward

Ray worked his drawings into a series of illustrations for Adam Thorpe's book On Silbury Hill, published in July by Little Toller Books. 

WM at Marlborough College

This is where William Morris was at school for 3 years, he lived in A house (interior, above left) with its simple winding staircase - now no longer a boarding house and filled with flags. The College Chapel has one window commissioned from Morris & Co. in 1875. As usual what I look for are the WM designed background patterns, a lovely dark green with bright orange fruit in the centre and a familiar looking acanthus leaf below.

In the library archive is a shelf of rare Morris related books, including a vellum bound Kelmscott Press "Sidonia the Sorceress" presented by WM and shown below. (Click to enlarge)

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"The fact is, my dear fellow, that at present the absolute duties of my life are summed up in the necessity of taking care of my wife and my daughter, both of whom in one way or other are in bad health. My work of all kinds is really simply an amusement taken when I can out of my duty time". From a letter from WM to John Bruce Glasier, 1892.

In the 1890s this amusing work was mainly for the Kelmscott Press, and as I read these late letters I became increasingly interested in the ornamental capitals that he was designing at that time. There are different plant types used seemingly randomly around the letters, as you can see in the open pages above, and also different ways of integrating the letter with the background foliage. 

The four letters on the left (above) are separate from the foliage, the next two show stems twining around the letters (and making them less legible as far as I'm concerned), while the two on the right are pierced by the stems of flowers and vine tendrils. There are lots of these pierced letters, their appearance is, to me, disturbing and 3-dimensional.

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.