My wallpapers / February 11, 2020 by Sasha Ward

My designs for wallpapers are one offs - digitally printed for a specific place. This aspect of my practice has developed alongside the glass panels I make, sometimes the wallpapers are seen through a glass wall panel, sometimes they are a solid wall to contrast with a coloured window.

In my commission for the paediatric mortuary at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, the wallpapers played an important part in linking together a series of rooms that we decorated with new colours and artworks in glass and vinyl. The project was completed last year when I described the vinyl door vision panels here and the main glass artwork here. After a recent visit to check out the new furniture that completed the scheme I saw how well the wallpapers worked in the tricky spaces.

Model of the tricky spaces - five rooms with no external windows

I designed the wallpapers to a brief that asked for abstract artworks, with little reference to the outside world. Because of the unique nature of the space and the sensitivities of the people who would use it, they needed to be nothing like you would have in your home, and nothing like you would ever see again. The designs followed a series of workshops with staff and bereaved families who gave their opinions forcefully. Back in my studio I made a series of watercolours and collages that drew on the workshops and formed the basis of my designs.

A favourite collage, I tried not to stray too far from this in the following designs for five wallpapers.

Design for Room 2. Waiting Corridor. 2.6 x 6.8 metres

Photos of the trickiest narrowest space, the waiting corridor.

Design for Room 3. Children's Viewing. 2.6 x 2.6 metres

Photos through the viewing window to the viewing room wallpaper.

Design for Room 4. Children's Bedroom. 900mm x 6.4 metres

Photos from the viewing room to the Children’s Bedroom wallpaper and glass panel.

Design for Room 5. Babies’ Viewing. 2.6 x 1.8 metres

Photos into babies’ viewing room and through the viewing window.

Design for Room 6. Babies’ Bedroom. 900mm x 6.4 metres

Photos through viewing window into the babies’ bedroom with wallpaper and glass panel.

Still no stained glass christmas cards / January 10, 2020 by Sasha Ward

Last year’s christmas cards have gone in the bin, and my analysis done for the fifth year running. My best statistic is on the shape of the card - see graph below which shows the rise and fall of the three main shapes: square (usually the most popular), portrait (downward trend) and landscape (tussling for position with portrait over the past three years).

Homemade cards have almost drawn level with shop bought ones (49% to 51%), but here a new complication has emerged. People buy “homemade” cards in shops these days, so the category should really be “cards made by the people who sent them”, which is sometimes just a guess. Similarly, my subject categories have become blurred, with “winter scenes” accounting for 37% of the cards, animals and birds 20% and bible scenes only 10.5%. Still no stained glass cards!

Some of the best: top section genuine homemade, middle section ever popular birds, bottom section, three of the best.

This year I chose as my favourite card the christmas tree man shown below left and also in the homemade section above. Every previous year this cardmaker has sent an A4 sheet covered with interesting bits of printing which is difficult to display, so it was great to get it folded into a card - maybe we should have been doing this all along. We received two of the same card, a gaudy robin from Oxfam - this year’s most popular charity, with charity cards at a steady 26%. For comparison, last year’s statistics can be found here and the year before here.

Favourite cards: the winner, category straddler donkeys in the snow, and homemade card sent by somebody else

Two Windows at Worcester Cathedral / January 2, 2020 by Sasha Ward

The great west window: from the quire, top of left hand lights, detail from first (left) light

The west window at Worcester Cathedral was designed by George Gilbert Scott in 1875 during his restoration of the cathedral and made by Hardmans. Its subject is The Creation, with the story of Adam and Eve in the central lights. It has been recently restored and and is looking wonderful and clean, with rich colour and detail flowing across the eight vertical window lights in a pattern of circles.

Zooming in on the window in the photos above and below below, I start by appreciating the overall composition, then find my particular favourite bits which all happen to be weather related. There are the two dramatic rainbow circles (above centre), the top one ringed by angels holding rainbow globes, the bottom one ringed by another circle of red and white glass pieces falling as ice, snow, rain and hail.

Bottom of left hand lights, detail from second light

Detail from seventh light, bottom of right hand lights

The right hand side of the window features the animal kingdom and, at the top, a beautiful circle with planets, stars and comets (below right). One of the six circles next to this scene (sixth light, below) shows how the signs of the zodiac form the next ring in the overall composition, while also combining with an angel to make a wonderful picture with painted borders and flowers around the rim, a device used around every circle to great effect.

Detail from sixth light, top of right hand lights

A pattern made of circles is always a favourite with me - as described in my last blog post. However, this window is full of wonder from the angels in the top tracery (below left) right down to the bottom, where you can find the famous pink giraffe (below right).

Detail from the top tracery, bottom of central lights

In the Cathedral cloister is a window by the artist Mark Cazalet that is etched, engraved and sandblasted on three sides of the clear glass panels that are made up as double glazed units. It’s hard to see the overall picture from the inside against the backdrop of the cathedral, and typically for a millennium window, the subject matter is varied. It includes depictions of people with some connection to the cathedral who led an inspired Christian life. The drawing and the details are amazing, there are so many different textures, marks and tones in the glass which you can see well when you look up through the panel tops to the sky. You can’t help thinking that the window needs a clearer backdrop (or a clearer design) to get a full appreciation of the beautiful drawings that are so skilfully applied to the glass.

Millennium window in the south cloister, detail from right hand panel

Detail from left hand panel, top windows right hand side

All Saints, Lamport, Northants / December 17, 2019 by Sasha Ward

Detail of window with the roundels spaced in squares, south and east aisle windows.

I saw this church from the car, on a side road, and decided to explore. The door was boarded up and there were KEEP OUT security signs on the churchyard gates, obviously I couldn’t get inside. But I could see fantastic patterned windows even from the outside, unlike anything I have ever seen before. All the windows, except the stained glass east window, are filled with leaded lights using pressed glass roundels and other linking shapes.

Pressed glass roundel in leaded framework.

Moving around the church, I was even more excited to see that the roundels shifted in the next few windows to form quatrefoils, then trefoils, then quatrefoils arranged differently, on stalks and looking like flowers.

Detail of window with the roundels forming quatrefoils, south aisle window.

Detail of window with the roundels forming trefoils, west aisle window.

Detail of window with quatrefoils on stalks, north aisle window.

I haven’t discovered when these windows were made or by which firm, nor have I found anything similar in my books or internet searches. I know that patterned windows are usually ignored in the guidebooks (for this church the windows are described as eighteenth century but I think that refers to the stonework) but they are something that really interest me. The world of pattern takes you away from a particular time and place to an enjoyment of the play of universal shapes with the circle holding a particular fascination.

Here are some of my design from the 1990s when I started many large scale designs with circles combined in different ways. The pencil sketch is for a stretch of wall 26 metres long (drawn at 1:50) around a circular entrance space, it’s still there although the accompanying hanging glass piece isn’t. The coloured sketch below (drawn at 1:300!) is the only reminder I can find of a scheme for some huge windows in a shopping centre - this design rejected for being over complicated but, in my memory, one of my best ever.

Design for sandblasted wall in entrance to Leeds General Infirmary 1997 - click to enlarge.

Rejected design for shopping centre glazing 1997 - click to enlarge

Screen printing / November 15, 2019 by Sasha Ward

Left, glass panel in the factory before lamination. Right, glass samples in hands, installed glass behind me.

I get large or external commissions screenprinted by protoglassstudios.com . Although they have been making my work since 1992 and have always done a good job, there are so many things to worry about when you hand over the manufacture to somebody else. For this one, commissioned for Alexandra Lodge which is a new development by Churchill Retirement Living in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire, it was the colours. I had the design worked out (described in my blog “Cobbles” in July) and a combination of four opaque colours agreed - you can see the factory sample showing the glass version of these colours in my left hand (above right). In my other hand is a painted sample with an earlier colour palette which ended up being rather similar to the final version.

The colours I use are usually paler, and I would say subtler, than the average. In this case, I was persuaded that the design wouldn’t show up outside and from a distance unless we boosted the colours. Imagine my surprise on visiting the factory after printing but before lamination, to see how dark the colours looked (this stage shown above left) - I was convinced I hadn’t chosen that blue but it was too late to do anything about it other than start again with all three panels. But the same finished panels, as you can see installed on the face of the building below, are somewhere in the middle in terms of the colour range and look just right with the building and the planting scheme.

Left, installation of glass at Alexandra Lodge, Thornbury. Right, official photo showing glass above lounge doors.

I visited the glass factory on one day during manufacture to photograph the process as far as I could. An all out yellow layer had been printed first, this background brightened the whole piece and gave the exposed laminated edges a lovely yellow and purple two tone appearance. On the day, the green cobbles had already been printed and they were doing the blues which went around the edges of some cobbles and cut across the design in flowering branches. The purple layer would be the last to be printed, you can see this stencil on the screen below right and also as the black on the films that we laid on top of the other printed colours in the bottom picture.

Left, panel 2 in front of screen for blue. Right, screen for panel 3 purple.

Left, preparing to print blue on panel 3. Right, panel 3 going through the dryer.

Left, films for screens in the factory. Right, panel 1 with film for purple overlaid.