Sliding squares

The Motorway from a field in Wanborough, 146 x 217mm    View of Motorway and Swindon, 146 x 217 mm

I found some of my old glass squares and decided they needed rearranging, much like the sliding squares game in feel (especially as I tried to use the thinnest possible lead and the slightly smaller blue piece kept dropping out of place). The glass came from a project I worked on for The Community Forest in Wanborough in 1993, where I did pages of sketches looking at the view towards Swindon.

Drawings from a field in Wanborough 1993, the two views were used in the glass panels above.

I still find that area fascinating, just a couple of fields separating some classic Wiltshire villages from the motorway cutting and the dual carriageway that marks the start of Swindon. I particularly love the view of the Honda factory on the east edge of town, in the sunshine it looks like a shiny ocean liner.

'Honda Factory and Charlbury Hill', drawings numbered 7 & 8 from my 1993 series.

I was so happy with the results, it seemed such an easy way of getting somewhere that I thought I'd do some more - pulling apart old stained glass panels, sandblasting, painting and refiring sections. However, it is hard to make something that looks effortless. My next composition needed a lot of shifting around, eliminating unnecessary pieces, trying to keep hold of my original intentions and retain an element of playfulness.

Work still in progress 'Sliding Squares: Honda Factory' 1993 -2016

Windows at night

The Mount House Gallery at night

As you drive from the west into Marlborough along the A4 the road kinks through the buildings of Marlborough College. On the bend the windows of The Mount House Gallery are visible from a distance and are lit up at night, until the end of this week, with the faces of forty of the 749 Old Marlburians whose deaths were caused by the First World War. One of those incredible WW1 statistics that we hoped to bring to life with this window display which is part of the exhibition "Have You Forgotten Yet?" The title is from the poem "Aftermath" by Siegfried Sassoon, an OM who survived the war although his brother Hamo, (2nd across, 2nd up in the left hand window below) did not.

Evening view of the windows

The window vinyls look great from outside when the building is illuminated, and from inside the gallery in the daytime. I devised a patterned scheme for background colours and for the heads that were chosen from the photos the men had taken before they left for the front. We chose the heads on looks - direction of gaze, variety of age, no hats, no obvious uniforms - laying them out on the screen and getting to know their faces, before we read their individual stories in the citations that accompany the photographs in the Rolls of Honour housed in Marlborough College. Discovering the fate of each individual in this way was incredibly poignant. 

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Daytime view from the inside

The individual stories are varied. You can be moved by a phrase ("shot through the heart") a death on Armistice Day, or his youth when he died. Here are four examples with portraits alongside.

HENRY FRANCIS SEVERNE, eldest son of A. de M. Severne, Esq. of Wirksworth, Derbyshire, was born February 16th 1892. He was at MC from 1906 to 1909. At Marlborough he was noted for his fine swimming. After leaving he became a mining engineer. On the outbreak of war he joined the 6th Sherwood Foresters and got his commission in September 1914. When his regiment was sent to the front he was mentioned in despatches of May 1915, and was awarded the Military Cross for saving the life of an Officer. On May 16th 1915 he was shot through the heart by a sniper at Kemmel, Belgium and was buried there.

GILBERT THOMAS GORE McMICKING, the son of Major G. McMicking D.S.O., M.P., of Miltonise, Wigtownshire, was born 1st August 1894 and was at MC from 1905 to 1912. In 1913 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and took a commission in the Cambridgeshire Regiment. When war broke out he was studying at Weimar and was at once interned. He spent three and a half years in captivity at Celle, suffering many privations, especially during an attempt to escape in February 1917. In January 1918 he was moved to internment in Holland, where he died, after a short illness, at Bois-le-Duc on Armistice Day, 11th November 1918.

JOHN STUART WAGNER, the son of J.H. Wagner, Esq. of Ditton Hill, Surrey, was at MC from 1914 to 1917. On leaving Marlborough he joined the ranks of the Middlesex Regiment and served with them until October 26th 1918 when he died of pneumonia in a military hospital.

ARTHUR BRYAN PHELPS McCLENAGHAN, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Wiltshire Regiment, was at MC from 1909 to 1914. He was the eldest son of the Reverend G.R. McClenaghan of Bildeston Rectory, Suffolk. He came to A House in September 1909 with a foundation scholarship and by 1914 was a school prefect and Captain of Mitre at cricket. In September 1914 he joined the 1st. Wiltshire Regiment and was killed during a charge at Hooge, on 16th June 1915, aged 20.

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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