My First Commission

Left: Interior with fanlight window, Wimbledon, summer 1979. Right: the same window on my lightbox 46 years later.

This is the first window that I made as a commission for a place, which was the house opposite us in Berkeley Place, Wimbledon. The window came back to me for restoration this summer because the original commissioners want to take it to their new house, and with it came vague memories and nice surprises. The surprises were how much I liked the window and how aspects of it, in its slightly wrecked state (above right), were well made with neat soldering and the thinner than average lead cames that I still tend to use.

Left: Numbered pieces. Right: cutline with broken pieces.

Left: Leading underway. Right: leading and soldering completed.

I ran through the stages of pulling it apart, recutting the broken pieces and leading it up again, using thicker lead in some places and keeping my soldering neat. I could remember clearly the design and its origins in calligraphy combined with vapour trails. It was one of a series of pieces in patchwork, collage and glass, all documented in my big sketchbook from the year 1979. I found the related dimensions, ‘architectural’ drawing and versions on tracing paper sellotaped in to the book, along with notes on how to measure up and when to go and buy my glass from Hetley’s in Stonebridge Park, Wembley. The glass I chose, carefully worked out on a page of the sketchbook, is beautiful and a big contributor to the success of the piece, however its uneven thickness made the leading quite difficult, as did the rather rough way that I’d cut it.

What I can’t remember is where I made it - was it the last thing I made at The Central School of Art (and then how did I transport it to Wimbledon?), surely I didn’t make it on my bedroom floor, surely my parents didn’t let me turn the sitting room in to a mess of broken glass pieces and pungent, messy cementing?

Above and below: pages from my 1979 sketchbook.

There will be an update when this large piece (84? x 768 mm. according to the sketchbook) is redisplayed in a different house in Wimbledon. In the meantime I’m enjoying a few days of its glowing presence in my studio window: without sun (above) and with autumn sun (below) where the purple glass is even more lovely than the orange.

Around Worthing

The beach at Worthing with the pier, the former lido and the multi storey car park in the background.

I’ve been to Worthing many times in the last sixteen years, first to work as lead artist for the new St Barnabas Hospice and more recently to see my grandchildren who live there and take them to the beach. Now my beach combing companions are both at school, leaving me free to wander around looking at the local architecture and the odd church.

The best thing on the streets of Worthing are the walls. I took the photo of the pebble stripe wall (above left) on my first visit in 2009, and the knapped flint wall (above right) last week. There are beautiful walls, mostly of the pebble variety, everywhere as you can see in my other street scene photographs. The 1970s tower block built on the end of Dolphin Lodge (below left) may be a bit large and looming, but it does have a lovely textured east facing wall with a harmonious pebble and shell mosaic, perfect for its seaside location. Then there is the Spiritualist Church (below right) opened by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926, with patterned stained glass, crazy paving and low pebble walls, the first of many local churches that I’ve not managed to get inside.

Left: Pebble mosaic on the end of Dolphin Lodge. Right: side windows and walls of Worthing Spiritualist Church.

Original stained glass in windows and porches of two Worthing houses

In the streets of West Worthing I try to get close to the windows of houses without alarming the residents. It’s great to see original stained glass even when the other windows in the house have been replaced. The purple glass in the tulips (above left) was particularly luscious, and the delicate ornamental glass in the other porch and staircase window (above right) was in very good condition, there were many others still there in that particular street.

A house with a modern makeover (below left) had a really bright but opaque window with a seaside theme. Another had kept its art deco style stained glass door and continued the theme upstairs with a new window. I liked this unusual reworking of the sunburst motif in a colour combination that matched the surroundings.

Modern stained glass in two houses in Worthing

Left: Holy Trinity Church, Right: Panacea Medical Centre, formerly United Reformed Church.

In Shelley Road there are two redundant churches. Holy Trinity (above left) is empty and up for sale, I often look up and imagine how much I would like the west window if I could see it illuminated. It’s listed as a 1979 abstract window by Diana Smart, there are also many Clayton and Bell windows in this church. Panacea Medical Centre (above right) occupies the former United Reformed Church building, it has been smartly converted and it is wonderful to see the stained glass window, by Maile, above the entrance doors lit from inside as the light fades from the beautiful blue sky.

Christ Church is close to the town centre and often open, as you can see below it’s a nice place to have coffee. There is stained glass from the late nineteenth century and also a whole series of decorative windows in two different colour combinations of textured glass. The south aisle is known as the fishermen’s gallery, there you can find a great collection of ships in bottles (below centre).

Inside Christ Church

Offington Park Methodist Church. Windows by Rosemary Rutherford in the North Nave, 1959.

But it has taken me all of these Worthing visiting years to find some stained glass that I find really thrilling. These are three panels, quite big, in Offington Park Methodist Church just north of the town centre. We were invited in to the church for refreshments and to see the new soft play centre installed (in front of a massive stained glass window) in the church hall. Behind a cluttered stage area I saw these Rosemary Rutherford windows, with blinds hanging over some parts and lights shining at them. There is a layer of clear acrylic across the front surface, which protects them but also gives them a flattened appearance as if they are made of tissue paper. They also have a dalle de verre like quality, a medium that Rutherford did use, but here the chunky appearance is the result of thick black painted lines. The windows are powerful but also subtle, with a beautiful colour palette and interpretation of the subject matter - what a great tree and what a great way of fitting a city wall into a tall, thin opening with suitably elongated lettering below.

Around Winchester

Highlights from a church crawling trip that began on our side of Winchester (the north west) dipped into the south of the city, then continued along the River Itchen travelling north east.

St Peter & St Paul, King’s Somborne from the west end. St Michael window, John Hayward 1996.

The village of King’s Somborne has a late John Hayward window in the belfry at the west end of the church (above). In an interesting note framed and hung on the wall of the belfry Hayward writes

‘The subject matter is suggested by the life and career of Sir Thomas Sopwith, his great interest in flight and the crucial role played by his brain-child, the Hawker Hurricane in the 1939-45 war. The window is dominated by the white flying figure of Archangel Michael who overcomes the darker figure of Satan - an “upside down man” - who in the course of the struggle loses his crown…….The subject is set low in the window to take account of the height above ground level and its position above the porch. it is kept deliberately light in this dark church and much of the colour is derived from the use of silver stain to give a variety of yellows and golds against which the subject is set.’

You can see how well this positioning of the subject, set against a subtle leaded grid, works when you notice the height of the window in the church. The colour and the painted detail are, as always in his work, wonderful.

All Saints, Little Somborne

Next was Little Somborne with the graves of Thomas and his wife Phyllis Sopwith at the front of the church (above). The building has Saxon origins and a Norman chancel, where pillars seem to record what used to be there. It makes a pair with the church of St Mary at Ashley just two miles away (below) built to serve a Norman castle that no longer exists. There is just a fragment of a 13th century wall painting beside a window on the south wall. Both churches are looked after by The Churches Conservation Trust and are therefore plain inside and out and very tasteful.

St Mary, Ashley

St Cross, Winchester

Next into the southern suburbs of Winchester to the hospital and the church of St Cross, although it’s of a cathedral like scale, founded in the 1100s at the same time as the almshouses across the quadrangle. The architecture is Norman, with huge pillars and rounded arches surrounded by zigzagging. High up in the chancel are stained glass figures using old glass fragments (above centre and right), with another particularly good example in the east wall of the north transept (below left). The church was carefully and colourfully restored by Butterfield from 1859, with windows in the nave by Wailes, at a later date more stained glass windows were commissioned including a pair in the north chapel that I particularly like of Saints Michael and George (below right and lower panel).

St Cross, Winchester. Centre, north transept wall with zigzagging. Right, St Michael, James Powell & Sons 1917. Below, detail of St George window, James Powell & Sons 1917.

St Mary, Avington. East window detail, James Powell & Sons 1914

We followed the route of the River Itchen from the east of Winchester to a string of villages with interesting churches. The 18th century brick church at Avington (above) is lovely from the outside and the inside, with a blue ceiling, tall rounded mahogany box pews and a dove above the pulpit. The stained glass crucifixion detail in the east window (above right), again a window by Powells, has a view of a town in the background, solid and effective against the clear background.

St Mary, Itchen Stoke, chancel and south wall.

You may have noticed that although it is August and a heatwave is on, there is no sunshine. This may mean that I’ll have to go back to my favourite church of the day, St Mary’s at Itchen Stoke. It’s a tiny version inspired by Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which I remember as a contrast in lighting (and therefore a demonstration of how stained glass works) as the wall of windows on the south side were illuminated by the sun, while the wall of windows on the north side looked black because more light was reflected off the surface than was coming through them. Here at Itchen Stoke there was a dull pink light as all the windows glowed with stained glass patterns where red and blue glass predominate. The lower walls are decorated with subtle 3d tile panels, and the patterns continue on to the cast iron pew ends and the tiled floors. Best of all is the rose window above the entrance doors (below) that contains sections of 13th century glass around its edges. Built in 1866, It is one of only two churches designed by the engineer and architect Henry Conybeare and the only one still standing.

Rose window at west end of St Mary, Itchen Stoke.

Example Panels

Here are nine of the panels I’ve made over the years to demonstrate the craft of stained glass when I’m teaching. I say craft because the art bit is something and somewhere else - sometimes I make an example panel that doesn’t look nice at all. I’ve found that the best ones are more or less square and about the same size, these nine range from 125mm to 190mm square.

Above left: To show glass paints on different types of glass in a copper section framework.

Above centre: Using colour sample offcuts on clear & etched glass, to show curves & straight lines.

Above right: From straight lines to gentle curves, with colours linking across lead lines.

Above left: Opaque, coloured & enamelled glass with some simple sand blasting.

Above centre: Graduating colour & pattern along the J, sandblasted border on enamelled yellow.

Above right: Off cuts of coloured streaky glass in an effective colour combination.

Above left: Using cast glass chunks and the thinnest possible lead.

Above centre: Patchwork style pieces with a vibrant copper foiled centre.

Above right: To show two styles of scraffito painting with layers of enamel colours in the centre.

Volcano Club Headquarters, Levenshulme

Installation day at Volcano Club HQ, glass always looks brighter reflected in the mirror.

A new front door and surround made the installation of this fanlight an easy job, with pop in plastic beading and two extra pairs of hands to help. The hallway is narrow and we didn’t want to lose much light, so the fanlight is mostly done with transparent enamels and the colours on the vinyl door panels fade off towards the top where they line up with the clear bottom of the fanlight. Of course it doesn’t look clear in the photos as you can always see what’s through the glass and the colours change accordingly. Much of the day was spent waiting for the black and blue cars parked right outside the house to move so I could get a good photo.

Afternoon light and black car through the fanlight and door panels

The design links the windows together with two straight pine trees that peep into the bottom of the fanlight like eyes with sandblasted, therefore very white, brows above them. The colours are the house colours of pink, orange and green with blue for the lake above and to give the illusion of a blue sky when really you are looking at the white inside of the porch.

Details of the vinyl door panels

The textures are just as important as the colours. The rippled side of the glass is on the outside of the door panels, leaving a flat surface to stick the vinyls on to and no need to make any of the colours opaque. The textures on my fanlight glass were so good that I decided to put the decorated side of the glass on surface 4 of the double glazed unit - that is facing in to the interior rather than protected inside the unit (on surface 2) which is the usual practice.

Details from the fanlight: textures made with sandblasting, brushes, rollers and the qualities of the different enamels I used.

In case you’re in doubt, it’s Mount Fuji. There is a selection of Fuji merchadise in the Volcano Club collection, including the crumpled t-shirt, face mask, sweet packet and enamel brooch shown below, next to the hair clip which makes the best use of the distinctive triangle with the white top, which on my glass is clear.

Mount Fuji merchandise