Glass provenances

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The finished stained glass window (420 x 910 mm), photographed outside today. I've made it for an auction at The Society of Antiquaries in aid of Kelmscott Manor. The version of the window below shows the provenances of samples and offcuts that I used to make the window, all from my glass scrap box. Like a quilt made of patches from old clothes, this window is full of memories for me. I hope that knowing the origins of these pieces will make it more interesting and therefore more desirable for other people too. Click on the images if you want to see them close up.

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St. John, Tuebrook, Liverpool

I have a plan to visit as many William Morris stained glass windows as I can this summer. So while in Liverpool this week doing research for a separate project, I tracked down an exceptional example from 1868 in the suburb of Tuebrook. In this highly painted and decorated Victorian church designed by Bodley, W.M's window stands out more than I could have imagined.

'Of the six figures in this very beautiful window, only one occurs in an earlier window... the others appear to have been designed specially for Tuebrook. Though all were repeated many times elsewhere, they nowhere make such a splendid effect as here'.  A. Charles Sewter, from 'The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle'.

In The Brewhouse

Samples of enamelled glass on the mantlepiece and in pieces on the tables on top of my plan for a stained glass window.

'Always think your design out in your head before you begin to get it on the paper. Don’t begin by slobbering and messing about in the hope that something may come out of it. You must see it before you can draw it, whether the design be of your own invention or nature’s.’ 
William Morris  ‘Art and the Beauty of the Earth’  (lecture 1881)

Kelmscott Manor

From the 'Society of Antiquaries of London' online newsletter 'Salon'