The Glazier

The Glazier, the publication of The Worshipful Company of Glaziers & Painters of Glass, Issue Number 45 Spring 2015, arrived in the post today. It is interesting to me that the title of The Worshipful Company uses a better term than "stained glass", words which are a source of much confusion about glass techniques.

There are two articles inside that feature my work. The first is by Caroline Barnes, arts coordinator at Yeovil District Hospital where I have done a number of commissions - at the moment I am working on panels for a new counselling room for the Special Care Baby Unit. The second article, pages 7 -8 and below, is about my working methods.

Before and After

Before - inside the old marquee

When I took what I thought was a great picture on a rainy day at Kelmscott Manor last summer (above), I thought with regret that I wouldn't be able to use it. To me, the damp and mould on the marquee ceiling in combination with willow leaves & pink petals that have blown in from somewhere else make a spectacular pattern.  I know that this sort of grot, although often celebrated by artists, is not to everyone's taste. So this summer, a new marquee has arrived (picture below), and the patterns on the ceiling only appear when the sun shines through the willow tree outside.  Inside, there is new bunting made from Morris patterns and the perfect white wall on which to hang a panel made from last year's wallpaper printing activity days.

After - inside the new marquee

Panel made of 38 different wallpapers

I included all the wallpapers in the panel, hoping that there would be some return visitors as well as members of Kelmscott staff who would enjoy seeing their designs on display. I wanted to keep a fluttering feel reminiscent of the way they looked hanging from the drying line (below). I've sewn them together in an overlapping arrangement so you can open up the pleats to see a whole panel and they can move around as the marquee sides flap in the wind.

Wallpapers drying last October

WM in Wimbledon

Although I like to imagine William Morris walking through Wimbledon when he went from his house in Hammersmith to his works at Merton Park by foot, that is not really the subject of this piece.

In the background of my parents' lives and my childhood in Wimbledon were William Morris designs. The earliest one I remember is Marigold in olive green on the sitting room walls, it looked very good with the tartan sofa the great aunts are sitting on (below) and with my tartan dress. When I saw the Marigold design used on the cover of Volume II of WM's Collected Letters last year, the memory made me shiver.

Dagmar, Clara and Norah (the great aunts)                                                   Sasha - Marigold wallpaper designed by WM, 1875

The photograph below of my mother's best friend Inge and a dog visiting her top floor flat in Wimbledon for tea is quite a recent one. It would be fantastic even without Pimpernel on the sloping wall - this wallpaper has lasted for as many years as I can remember.

Dog and Inge - Pimpernel wallpaper designed by WM, 1876

Chrysanthemum, seen on the chair below, is not such a favourite of mine. Maybe it's because the fabric on this chair deteriorated over the years, ending up completely hidden by shawls and cushions covered in oriental patterns. Shoving lots of different patterns together is something I am quite used to.

Ray and Kate - Chrysanthemum fabric designed by WM, 1877

I found countless pictures of family members around the dining room table with the Golden Lily curtains in the background. When I brought home my college stained glass panel "Dual Carriageway" in 1985 (below right), where better to put it than next to another set of rich, clashing patterns. The stained glass remained, then moved house with my mother, but the curtains soon went and were turned into drapes for other armchairs.

Peter, Elizabeth, Kate - Golden Lily fabric designed by J.H. Dearle for Morris and Company, 1899

Wild Tulips

Today's tulip drawings and photographs under the mulberry tree behind Kelmscott Manor

When I arrived at Kelmscott last year, I decided that I wasn't going to draw any flowers. I thought it would be inadvisable to start my own work with subject matter so closely linked to that of William Morris. However, I have been regretting the beautiful yellow wild tulips ever since, and am very happy that I managed to get back to see them in flower this year. 

Some of my favourite Morris designs feature the tulip, for example Garden Tulip, below left, one of a series of designs with a meandering line. In Wild Tulip, below right, you can see how closely he observed the shape of the flowers heads with their curled back petals and bobbing heads. Putting them in the background of the design suits their size and habit.

Some typically sensible tips from WM that I will try to remember when introducing tulips into my own pattern work,  "Rational growth is necessary to all patterns, or at least the hint of such growth;…Take heed in this growth that each member of it be strong and crisp, that the lines do not get thready or flabby or too far from their stock to sprout firmly and vigorously; even where a line ends it should look as if it had plenty of capacity for more growth if so it would". From 'Some hints on pattern designing" (1881).

William Morris : GardenTulip                                                                            William Morris : Wild Tulip

Cirencester Angels

I don't know much about angelology and there's so much to learn. I've been visiting and taking photographs of the windows in Cirencester Parish Church; in many of the top lights there are yellow stained glass angels from various periods which are interesting to compare.

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Trinity Chapel - two of four windows                                          Click on any of these pictures to enlarge.

In my opinion, the medieval angels are easily the best and I have read that the glass in Cirencester once rivalled the famous early sixteenth century windows of nearby Fairford. Two different  guides told me with great relish that most of the medieval windows here were deliberately broken by the "women of Cirencester" as they tried to get supplies to the soldiers holed up inside the church during the Civil War. 

The most fantastic angels are the seraphim with peacock feather wings, below right, all the better in my eyes for the breaks and random insertions. They are also the favourite of W.T. Beeby writing for The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society in 1916.

"Their wings, six in number, cover the greater portion of their body, and are wonderfully feathered, with many eyes as of peacock's feathers, and the yellow stain used in the designs is very clear and brilliant. Mr. James Powell, of Whitefriars, than whom there could have been no better judge, thought the colouring of these seraphim as beautiful as any he had seen. They furnish an excellent instance of the brilliance and vivacity of good fifteenth century glass".

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Trinity Chapel - details of medieval angels                                 Lady Chapel - Seraphim with peacock feather wings 

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North aisle, west window - Victorian glass by Hardman                                                      Details

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South window - Victorian glass by Hardman                                                                                                     Detail

The yellow angels theme was continued in the top tracery lights in a number of Hardman windows, two examples are shown above. These angels standing on wheels puts them in the third ranking Order of Angels, two ranks below the seraphim. 

The guides in the church, the same ones who slandered the women of Cirencester, have all told me that the Hugh Easton window (below) is their favourite. Surely it's not because of these military yellow angels with the boring clear backgrounds, maybe it's the rest of the window which I haven't shown because the point of this piece is to look up at the intricate shapes in the tracery and marvel at the ingenious ways that angels have been fitted in to them.

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South aisle, west window - Hugh Easton 1937-8                                                                          Details