May 17, 2017 by Sasha Ward

In Poland I discovered the work of two artists; Karol Frycz (1877-1963) painter, stage designer, theatre director and Stanisław Wyspianski (1869-1907) playwright, painter, poet. They both also worked extensively in stained glass and church decoration. This work was new to me as there were no illustrations of their windows in the stained glass books I pored over when I was studying (pre internet era), although this is true of many figurative stained glass artists from that period. I have now seen several examples of their work in different settings, but here I have chosen one church decorated by each artist to show how good new glass can look in an old church.

St. Jacobus, Sandomierz, chancel windows by Frycz, made in Krakow by the firm of Gabriel Zelenski in 1914. — St. Jacobus, Sandomierz, chancel windows by Frycz, made in Krakow by the firm of Gabriel Zelenski in 1914.

In Sandomierz, we found the Dominican Church of St. Jacobus by chance. It's one of the oldest brick churches in Poland, completed around 1211, and its beautifully shaped windows are filled with the magical stained glass of Karol Frycz.

The side chapel in the church was closed, but offered tantalising glimpse of Frycz's wall paintings through the grille.

Views towards the west wall inside St. Jacobus with four figure windows and gorgeous white canopy shapes above.

How well this type of stained glass - small pieces of every colour - goes with the brick work. I particularly admired the four women, Adelaide, Kinga, Salomea, Jolanta, high up on the west wall. The figures themselves, including their clothes and objects, are what make up the decorative pattern and rhythm of the compositions, so much more powerful than those windows where the most interesting parts are the decorative backgrounds and borders to a wishy washy figure.

The Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Krakow, looking west and up.

The Basilica of St. Francis in Krakow is totally filled with pattern and colour, the walls and almost every window were designed by the great Stanisław Wyspianski. It is an amazing example of clashing patterns and subject matter, with decoration and architecture from different periods coming together to create a thrilling, strange interior. The west window, seen in context above, is completely filled with the figure of God bringing the world out of chaos. No borders, hardly any glass painting, instead ribbons of colour. The hand detail may help you imagine the monumentality of scale, even the pieces of brown glass that make up the veins in God's right hand are quite big (below right).

West window, 1901 (astonishingly) and detail of God's right hand. — West window, 1901 (astonishingly) and detail of God's right hand.

Windows to the left of the high altar, showing poppies, lilies and St. Clare.

The clerestory windows contain a series of quite realistic but equally huge wildflowers, a theme that is continued in the six windows around the apse and high altar. Sometimes, depending on the time of day, you can see how beautifully these windows mingle with the rich wall paintings beside them. I loved the poppy window and the one with the subtle figure of St. Clare (both shown above). Again they are made of huge pieces of sinuous pale coloured glass with very little painting. In the wall decoration (just visible in the photo above left, detail below right) realistic flowers flow across a geometric background, a classic combination of wall decoration where the rectilinear background shapes anchor the flowing plants as the glazing bars do on the massive panes of stained glass.

Windows to the right of the high altar, and section of wall decoration from the same area.

I had been searching for good examples of modern stained glass in medieval buildings since reading Jonathan Jones' excellent piece in The Guardian last November. Read it in its full glory here. Below are two quotes to whet your appetite:

"I’ve got a dread of modern stained glass. It is often painful to look at the windows of old cathedrals and churches. Above your head soars a vaulted roof, supported by massive columns and gothic arches. Tombs and epitaphs tell of bearded Tudor merchants, Jane Austen-era gentlefolk, Victorian bishops. The past has been bottled. Then you catch sight of a bright, abstract 1970s window, and it is blindingly out of place. The past is shattered like a glass hurled at a pub wall."

"When I complain about “modern” stained glass, what dates are we talking? It’s possible that I mean any coloured window made later than 1642. Almost all Victorian stained glass is terrible: dull in colour, mawkish in mood, grey and melancholy in effect. It is easy to see why, confronted with so many Victorian windows filling parish churches with mediocrity, modern artists decided they could do better."

From "Be careful, Hockney - modern stained glass can shatter medieval beauty" by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, 22 November 2016

Painted or plain / April 26, 2017 by Sasha Ward

Painting on external wall of shed and museum

The village of Zalipie, Małopolska, Poland, is famous for its painted houses. These have been decorated by the women of the village since the late 19th century, with an annual competition and the cottage of the best known painter, Felicja Curyłowa, maintained as a museum. Flowers dominate the traditional, (dare I say it) formulaic designs; although it's fun to see painting on the electric trunking and the rabbit cages, we did start to wonder whether there was just too much decoration, and for my taste (trunking excepted) not enough geometry.

Sitting room of Felicja Curyłowa and the equivalent room in an unpainted interior next door.

One of the reasons given for the outburst of internal nineteenth century decoration is that the introduction of external cottage chimneys meant the rooms were no longer blackened by soot. The sitting room of Felicja Curyłowa's beautifully maintained cottage (above left) is dominated by the stove. You wonder at its marvellous, warm shape disguised by flowers whose charm, by now, has started to fade. When you visit the cottage next door help is at hand - in its whitewashed interior you can appreciate the sculptural blocks that make up the stove and see the wood that the cottage is made of.

The cottage next door, front windows inside and outside

On the way we had looked at an abandoned cottage with fine detailing in its decorative porch and windows, beautiful corner joints visible, unpainted. Similarly, the sheds in Zalipie using light pigment on dark wood, traditionally clay with wood ash on soot covered backgrounds, looked great - more simple (below). Simple in form, and therefore to my eyes preferable to the bouquets, are the blue flowers in stripes on the exterior of Felicja's cottage (above right) on a strong ochre background.

On the road home, in a village near the Vistula, I was thrilled to see another painted cottage that I actually liked. More strong colours and a pattern that relates to the shape of the building, with ochre spilling out of the roadside window and three huge triangles marching along its side.

Drawing from the roof, Stopnica / April 14, 2017 by Sasha Ward

Glass panel beautifully installed in internal window & view from sitting room showing all 3 panels

In a departure from my usual working methods, I made some windows in 2015 without knowing exactly where they would go - I described the commission in a previous post here www.sashaward.co.uk/blog/2015/7/8/transformation Last year, I made a third window for the house in Stopnica, Poland and this year we visited. It was a massive relief to see the windows fitting in so well with their surroundings and in particular with the colours used in the local vernacular architecture - of the old variety.

Fanlight windows, Transformation I & II installed in the house in Stopnica

Drawing station on the roof: looking towards mansion no 1 — Drawing station on the roof: looking towards mansion no 1

The architecture of the new variety is equally fascinating, with mansions springing up on plots all around my friends' modest ochre house. I took a chair on to the roof, my favourite type of drawing station, and drew in each direction. All my drawings are dominated by the distinctive bulbous roofs and dormer windows of the new houses that are bordered by undulating concrete panels - the shape uncannily echoed in the lines on my glass.

View towards town & mansion no 2: a favourite local colour combination, ochre & plum

The best view looks west into the setting sun, where the road goes past a nice pair of decorative gates and into town. This area (south central Poland, just north of the river Vistula) is full of wooden architecture - more about the painted houses later.

View of the house: view from the roof showing mansion no 3 & site of future mansion no 4 behind workshop

Envelope Collection / March 7, 2017 by Sasha Ward

My envelope collection has been put to use again. The opportunity came in the form of an exhibition, The Female Aesthetic - Women in the Public Domain, opening this week to coincide with International Women's Day. The exhibition explores the Thamesdown Public Art Archive, choosing work by women from the heyday of public art commissioning in Swindon, or that's how it seemed when we moved to the region in the 1980s. My exhibits are two designs printed on vinyl, one in the windows of the library entrance drum (above) and the other in the Window Gallery nearby (below).

Window vinyls in No 9 Gallery, Artsite, Swindon

I've been collecting patterns from envelope innards ever since I've had a studio. I used them, enlarging and pulling apart the lines that make up the intricate designs, in my commission for Swindon's new hospital in 2002. From talking to people about this piece - a back lit, full height glass wall (below) - I have come to realise that the envelope pattern story really interests them, maybe because it helps to answer the familiar question "Where do you get your ideas from?"

The Chaplaincy, Great Western Hospital Swindon, 2002    Envelope patterns used in the hospital commission — The Chaplaincy, Great Western Hospital Swindon, 2002 Envelope patterns used in the hospital commission

Detail of Envelope Frieze in Swindon Library

It seemed a good idea to make a link back to that commission in my new work and to make the envelopes more obvious, celebrating their shapes as they fly along the window strip or around a central point in the Gallery Rose Envelope Window.

My collection isn't growing very fast anymore as letters hardly ever arrive and the envelopes are mostly swaps. In desperation I've started to include company logos and even just repeated words, reinforcing the fact that there are only a certain number of patterns, and their variations, in the world.

Harry Stammers, Lady Chapel / February 20, 2017 by Sasha Ward

On entering St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol                                              Bursting into prayer inside The Lady Chapel — On entering St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol Bursting into prayer inside The Lady Chapel

If you need your faith in twentieth century stained glass restored, go and see Harry Stammers' windows for The Lady Chapel in St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. Even on entering the church the colour is overpowering, the windows are amazing from a distance and so amazing when you are in the chapel that people were bursting into prayer in front of them. I have included a photo of every window here, but still they do not convey how well the stained glass, rich and beautiful both in overall design and in the detailed painting, works in its setting. There is a complete set of five large windows made from 1960-65, the colours becoming stronger from the front to the back (east) wall, where the central nativity window is filled with colour and detail arranged in a satisfying pattern of blocks and columns.

Angels at the top of the nativity window

After much reflection, I chose the red and yellow angels (above) as my favourite part of the scheme: it's the part that sings out from a distance and is full of the silverstain/red flashed glass pattern-making that is a distinguishing characteristic of the work of Harry Stammers (see Jane Brocket's blog on the subject here).

Other sections that fascinated me were Mary lying on straw (below) painted in exactly the way that I show grass and straw in my coloured glass, and the three blue columns that turn into figures when you look at them closely (below right).

Details from the centre and the bottom right of the nativity window

Windows 2 & 4 (either side of the nativity window)

The other four windows contain large amounts of clear glass, something that I hold against a lot of mid twentieth century stained glass, especially in churches where these types of windows are contrasted with older, less transparent ones. However, here the white and tinted glass sections are not cut into diamond-shaped quarries only, there are some beautifully designed passages where the diamonds change into irregular shapes as they border the blocks of colour.

North facing window from inside and outside

The high ratio of transparent glass, coupled with the crisp linear painting style, also allows some of the images to be read from the outside, at least on the north side where the light shines right through the chapel.

The whole series of windows shows the life of Mary alongside other female saints, figures from familiar bible stories and groups of people dressed in the clothes of the 1950s and 60s. But I find, as usual, that I am more interested in the abstract/pattern-making qualities that you can find in every panel - like the towers of diamonds pointing to the fabulous jade green triangle (below left). Right at the bottom is a section full of shapes covered in a network of lines and brush marks, so that each piece of blue glass is like a beautiful miniature painting.