The Big Picture

As fellow photographers of stained glass in churches will know, it's easy to get a good picture of a detail. It's possible to find something in the window that you like, even if the overall composition is a bit of a failure. But to me, the design of the whole window and how it works in the building is the crucial thing. These examples below show five of the magnificent windows in St. James' Church, Trowbridge, by two important nineteenth & early twentieth century firms, Powells of Whitefriars and Joseph Bell of Bristol. The church has a comprehensive guide to the stained glass which tells you about the makers and donors as well as the iconography. 

Duke Chapel, The St. James Window - Powells 1932. Memorial to the four members of the Palmer Family, wool manufacturers, who died on active service. Shows the life and legends of St. James.

The details that interest me are less about the story telling and more about the glass painting. I am often drawn to the landscapes behind the figures, such as the garden in the St. James window (above) and the mountains behind St. Stephen (below). However, I think you'll agree that the St. James window is a mess, while the earlier Te Deum window (below) is beautifully balanced. With not too much white glass and delicate colouring, this window sends out a glow from behind the altar.

East Window - Powells 1910. Memorial to the churchwarden Burchell Rodway. "Te Deum Laudamus".

Looking at the windows from a distance, I found the earlier window by Powells (below) the most satisfying. I love the combination of geometries in the pattern-making, where circles are on diamond backgrounds within vague octagons, leaving rounded sections between for the historical figures. As you can tell, I care more about the shapes between them than the identity of the figures. 

Baptistry Window - Powells 1896. Memorial to the wool Merchant Alexander Mackay showing historical characters linked to Trowbridge.

Wyke Chapel Window - Joseph Bell 1847. Memorial to the wool manufacturer John Clark. "Atonement for the sins of mankind by Christ's death and resurrection". 

The comparison between those three subtly coloured post Arts & Crafts windows and these two earlier ones by Joseph Bell is startling. They are full of the sorts of detail that I was told (when a student) you are not supposed to do in stained glass - 3d effects, illusionistic space, backgrounds that pop forwards - and they use the most modern vivid colour schemes. The row of angels in the window above is wonderful, the composition ordered but very uplifting. The west window (below) is absolutely amazing, I kept turning to look at it. From the other end of the church the clear, bright colours hold as if there were a light box behind, even on a dull day.

West Window - Joseph Bell 1847. "Thanksgiving for a good harvest". Solomon praying for a good harvest; gathering manna in the wilderness; Moses striking the rock with water gushing out; the ravens bringing food to Elijah.

A Sense Of Place

Guess which town is the subject of this post. There may be clues on the sign (above) which greets you as you descend from the Old Town to the spreading acres of the new. Confused? Maybe the graphics don't help, I think there are some arrows missing as there is an outer and an inner ring linking the five mini roundabouts that make up Swindon's Magic Roundabout. 

In my depictions of places it is my long term practice to combine drawings and photos from viewpoints with maps and diagrams, it helps me find my "sense of place". Although I am often asked to research a particular place for a public commission, in this case I am investigating the magic roundabout, twelve miles from where I live, just for fun. 

Nine drawings on thin paper (above) helped me work out what I needed to leave in and take out to make a satisfactory image that also explains the workings of a roundabout that is both logical and mysterious.

The first four glass roundabouts, sandblasting, enamels, oxides & silverstain on clear glass

 Magic Roundabout number five, image size 100mm square.

Going smaller for Magic Roundabout number six, image size 75mm square.

P.S. I hope I haven't overthought this one - I've never worried about navigating it before, let's see what happens when we get there for an evening out in Swindon tonight.

Postcards From The Past

I'm really not a chucker, but this huge box of inherited postcards has to go. I've had a last look through them, found a surprising number of swaps, endless comments about the weather, some illegible handwriting and kept a few, shown here, as examples of my favourite types of postcard. Obviously stained glass ones are the best, but they are in a separate collection (described in an earlier blog post here).

The first row, landscapes and some classic captions.  A photo from China that looks like a painting, a seaside panorama - always fascinating to see how a place has changed - and another seaside view with congratulations to everyone on the birth of my sister from Nice (signature illegible).

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"Isn't this a ridiculous picture!"        Excellent message in the form of a list          "felicitations sincères pour le bébé"                   

The second row, paintings. In these tiny versions it's the sentiment, the nostalgia that grabbed me. Visual subject matter is beginning to recur too.

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Storm in Nice - Matisse   At the Window - Matisse   Girl reading in the reeds - Vuillard   At Breakfast - Laurits A Ring     

The third row, vertical landscapes. Full of pleasing compositions and the odd figure.

Sent from:   L'Esterel,  Lake Como,  Vladimir,  Beijing,  Rotterdam

The fourth row, animals and people. I remember when I was young these were the only types of postcard I wanted. The mysterious Mary Fedden painting works so well on this scale. However my winner is the painting of a Crow Chief, sent from the Buffalo Bill Historical Centre in Wyoming, with a message that makes me want to go there: "This area is pervaded by ancient Indian culture. Buffalo Bill Cody must have been an extraordinary man. The museum is beautifully done. We went on to explore Yellowstone Nat Park but saw no bears! Herds of buffalo, 2 coyotes, 2 elks, no moose! Fantastic geological formations, geysers, hot springs everywhere, quite fabulous."

Crow Chief - George Catlin                                                    Zebra - Mary Fedden

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Victorian Medieval

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Rosalind Grimshaw window in Urchfont church, 2000.

I visited St. Michael and All Angels church in Urchfont because my excellent guidebook from Wiltshire Historic Churches Trust mentioned a millennium window there by Rosalind Grimshaw. It's a small window but really expressive with good colour and glass. The whole church is lovely and its stained glass rich and varied. The patterned windows on the south side look great from both inside and out - with columns of big satisfying circles - until you think what wonderful medieval glass might have been there originally.

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Victorian patterned windows on the south side

This set us thinking about how to answer the question (of the frequently asked variety), why is medieval stained glass the best? It's too dangerous to mention the quality of the glass itself, because that leads people to believe the myth that you can't get good glass anymore, although when you look at the angel detail from the large south window you can see how harsh and brittle looking the coloured glass is in these particular Victorian windows. 

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Angel details from south window

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Victorian angels in the chancel

Moving down into the chancel, the angels at the tops of the windows become more interesting, and older. The pair on either side of the altar (below), six winged seraphim holding crowns, are beautiful - with a captivating expression that is so obviously medieval. 

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Seraphim in the chancel

The information in the church describes, as usual, the stained glass as either "medieval", "victorian" or "modern", with the sub group of "imitation medieval" for the beautifully coloured patterned windows underneath the seraphim (below right). This convention of copying the medieval window style is the reason why they could never be as good as the originals. Those seraphim were made by people who believed in the work they were doing. The sincerity comes across in the expression of the figures, while the style and workmanship of the windows perfectly compliments the medieval building for which they were made.

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Face of the seraph: window on north side of chancel - chancel built around 1340

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Improving The Local Landscape

Sketch from the end of the drive today

It's Saturday so the noise from the building sites in this small English country town has stopped. The crane at the end of the drive is parked with a lovely row of blocks dangling in mid air. What is being built may not improve the local landscape, but while the cranes are here I find this landscape more interesting, more drawable. I found the same type of crane in my photos of Swindon this week  - can you find a view without a crane in it these days?

View from the top storey of a Swindon car park

The question sent me to my sketch books, I wondered where I'd drawn cranes from previously. 

Answers: from a Malmö balcony in 2013 (above), from floor 7, RCA London (one example from 1984 below), and from a school rooftop in Slough - my favourite type of drawing spot.