Stained Glass Portraits

The interior of St. Peter’s Church, Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

After more than a year of locked churches, most of them are opening up. The best doors are those that are fixed open, allowing a glimpse inside. Passing by St Peter’s in Wallingford I recognised the east window and went in to have a look. It’s a Morris & Co window from 1918 and shows Jesus’ charge to Peter (below left) and although I’d never seen one exactly like this before it’s the stripy sky and the colour combination that identified the makers to me. As is usual for a church looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust there is nothing ugly in the interior, the other windows are filled with pale coloured glass in an interesting and symbolic pattern (below right) that is suitable for the beautiful Georgian interior.

St Peter, Wallingford. East window and one of the windows in the nave.

St Mary, Newnham Murren, Oxfordshire. East window and as viewed through horseshoe shaped squint.

I went to find the next church, across the River Thames and hidden away along a footpath through fields. This is a small flint building with Norman origins also looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust. It is lit only by the light through the windows and the patches of bright colour in the stained glass really stand out - the 1849 restoration of the church provided these and removed much else. The patterned windows especially (example below right) provide just the right balance of colour and interest, with some yellow flour de lys wandering into the grid of floral ornamentation from a different composition, one of the joys of the patchwork nature of stained glass.

St Mary, Newnham Murren. West window and back of squint.

St Nicholas, North Bradley, Wiltshire. South and North nave windows by James Powell and Sons, 1929 & 1892.

The next day and another open church, this time in the other direction from home at North Bradley in West Wiltshire. Here all the windows I like are by Powells with, in my opinion, a decline in quality of design from the earliest to the latest (above left) which is installed in the south aisle and was not easy to see in the blazing June sunshine.

There is a gorgeous pair of windows in the south wall of the sanctuary, made by Powells and designed by the painter T.R. Lamont. They show his two wives who died ten years apart, an unusual thing to see in a church and I’ve no idea why they are there. Mary is playing the organ and Bessie is holding a sketchbook in front of a background with a blue trellis, apples and daffodils. The borders, colour combinations and inscriptions are all lovely and Mary and Bessie look like two real (albeit rather similar and rather decorative) people. This chance discovery - just the sort of thing I was hoping for on my return to church visiting - has reminded me of what a great thing a stained glass portrait can be.

St Nicholas, North Bradley. Window designed by T.R. Lamont and made by Powells in 1881.

The two wives of T.R. Lamont, Mary and Bessie.

TV angel

Let The Light In. Painting in egg tempera on gesso by Ray Ward 435 x 300 mm.

This recent painting of Ray’s (above) intrigued me, I couldn’t quite work out what the woman shielding herself behind the TV was up to. It is based on a black and white drawing, as they often are, which I thought made the situation clearer. In that version (below) the discarded wall bracket is more obvious and the composition more open, she is offering up the TV with her arms outstretched. This drawing, in its turn, was based on an annunciation angel in a carved relief that Ray photographed in St Martin of Tours Church, Chelsfield (bottom).

You Light Up My life. Drawing in indian ink and white acrylic on black card by Ray Ward

The interesting history of Ray’s painting made me want to add to the chain by making a stained glass version. I based this on the black and white drawing, only changing it by using a pink and yellow colour combination which is a classic in stained glass angelology. The glass pieces (below) show that the only pieces of coloured glass I used were two types of streaky pink on the angel, the yellow being a thin wash of silver stain fired on the back of the glass. As in all the panels I’ve made in this series most of the details are done with sandblasting and/or painting with black, brown and grey iron oxides.

Glass pieces cut and laid over an enlarged photocopy of Ray’s drawing

Finished panel on the lightbox, 250 x 360mm.

The finished panel is shown above on the lightbox and below on my windowsill in the sunshine. Its title also has a history - Ray had called his painting ‘The Teacher, Look in Here and All Will be Revealed’ but then forgotten that fact. When I asked him for one he came up with two song titles, ‘You Light Up My Life’ which I used for the stained glass panel and alternatively ‘Let The Light In’ which he used as the new name for the painting. By then I’d been calling it TV Angel, so this little image actually has four names.

Finished panel in the sunshine

Douglas Strachan at Winchelsea

St Thomas the Martyr Church, Winchelsea, East Sussex. Left: west elevation. Right: east elevation.

The restored Thomas the Martyr church sits in its own ruins in the middle of Winchelsea, high up inland after the original Winchelsea was flooded in the thirteenth century. Almost every window in the church was designed by Douglas Strachan between 1929 and 1933 and it’s remarkable to see the effect that they have on its interior. Simon Jenkins isn’t so keen: “They wholly dominate the church, which means that if one dislikes them they spoil it. The work is dramatic and perhaps a future generation will show more enthusiasm for it than I can muster”. In his ‘England’s Thousand Best Churches’, he does give the church 3 stars on account of the medieval tombs that line the walls of both aisles. These are good, but I hardly had time to look at them as I was so enraptured by the amazing stained glass - the rare sight in an english church of twentieth century windows that were actually designed to go together.

Left: windows in south east corner. Right: (right hand) east window on the theme of death and resurrection..

On my visit, the sun was blazing through the six windows on the south and east walls and the colours in this set appeared quite pale. They make up the original 1929 commission from Robert Younger, Lord Blanesburgh in memory of his brothers and nephews. The first one to be completed, central on the south wall, commemorates the 1928 Mary Stanford lifeboat disaster.

The subjects of the three windows on the east wall are birth, praise (below) and death (above). These are all remarkable for their intense colour, not dimmed by the skilled glass painting. The praise window is entirely luminous, the colour combinations are riotous, but altogether the huge window gives a delicate, pastel glow. From the outside, the intricate web of expressive lead lines is so distinctive and so admirably rooted in its own period.

East window and details from the bottom of the window.

The third set of windows on the north wall (below) are, quite obviously, on the theme of earth, air and water in the context of a war memorial to the men whose operations were carried out on the land, sea and in the air. These last two and the birth window in the corner are the brightest blue, they drew me to that side of the church and complemented the beautiful tombs below.

Windows in the north east corner of the church.

Lower section (& detail) of the left hand north window, on the them of the sea.

The one I really admire is the very 1930s sea window, with helmeted angels and sea monster. I particularly love the way that the little scenes in this series, here showing ships in Winchelsea harbour, are integrated into the picture, rather than placed in the usual boxy predella panels. Simon Jenkins’ future generations are finding this one totally to their taste.

The monster at the bottom of the sea window.

Adding without ruining

Windows made from scrap pieces of glass are a stained glass staple. In churches old pieces are leaded together in a different formation to make new windows, and in my own work I have always used offcuts, samples and broken pieces to make patterned windows, patchwork style. However, most of the samples I make for larger commissions are on thicker glass with large scale designs, not great for chopping up but ideal as the first layer in a new piece of work.

Experiment 1 with drawing and collage on top, 500 x 260 mm

Experiment 1 (above and below) started with a leftover computer cut stencil from a large scale project which I stuck on an old piece of float glass to try out a coarse sandblasting grit. The first bit of enamelling, the red and purple on the left, was another leftover, this time from a bit of very runny spray painting. After firing the effect was so nice that I added another layer, or maybe two, of hand painted enamel enjoying the way that the grainy texture on the glass affected the colours. I spent a long time after these unphotographed stages drawing, collaging and photoshopping to find shapes that would add to the composition, hiding the muddled sections, keeping the best parts and not ruining what I already had.

I like the finished piece so much that it’s still in my studio window months later. The four narrow windows that I added to the design were sandblasted out, then each filled with a different enamel colour with a lot of flux in the mix to make them very pale. What was underneath slightly comes through and the new enamel colours perfectly compliment the ones that were already there.

Experiment 1 completed and detail.

Experiment 2 in the window and on the light box, 470 x 450 mm

Experiment 2 (above and below) presented a different set of challenges. I had a large piece of glass where I’d tried out old glass enamels in rough ovals, there were some lovely qualities in the different enamel mixes but no overall shape to the composition. I decided to use it as the first layer of a new piece, 300 mm square, for the online exhibition of work by members (I’m a new one) of the British Society of Master Glass Painters as these marks and colours seemed to celebrate the joy of glass painting. I spent an even longer time on the next stage of this one, planning patterns around the shapes and additions to them inspired by the effect of the overlapping offcuts in my window (below left).

I know by now not to rush into things, I was very conscious that I mustn’t ruin the piece by interrupting the stillness at its centre. Instead I thought about the concept of tessellation and added more ovals where they were needed to make the tile roughly tessellate while creating just a few areas of overlapping colour. It looks much better on its own than when I did tesselate it as you can see below.

Experiment 2: Left, overlapping pieces. Right and below, turned into a tessellating tile.

Here is a link to lots of great contemporary stained glass squares in the exhibition on the BSMGP website.

Passersby Passing By

Drawing 1 by Ray Ward, ink and acrylic on card. 236 x 320 mm

It was time to choose which of Ray’s drawings I wanted to turn into stained glass. Nothing he had on the walls in his studio jumped out at me, so I looked through some of his boxes of old drawings - sorted by size and paper type - to find some that did. The last panel I made (that’s not really a question…) had featured a waterfall, so I thought the river scene (above) would make a good companion. However, I mostly make my choice by finding a figure I want to do in glass and the man looking at the river was a bit small and sketchy. The figure in another box of slightly coloured drawings (below) looked perfect for glass painting, once I’d got Ray to add a pattern to her coat, and I thought the two drawings would combine together perfectly setting up an interesting story between the two figures.

Drawing 2 by Ray Ward, ink and acrylic on card. 210 x 297 mm.

Painted and sandblasted glass pieces on the lightbox

The resulting glass panel was quick to make. I saw her as a redhead and had the perfect piece of glass for that. The other colours, in the restricted palette that works best in these small pieces, followed from there. The completed panel (below) is practically opaque because of the heavy sandblasting combined with the types of glass I used and looks great photographed in my studio window, where normally too much green grass shows through.

‘Passersby Passing By’ Stained glass panel in daylight. 280 x 400 mm.

Detail of the redheaded figure showing different types of glass, some heavily sandblasted.

In a continuation of this collaborative process Ray then did a new painting, with a new title, of the same scene (below). I had imagined the setting as the mouth of a river with a boat going out to the sea which their eyes are gazing at. But the new barges and the more elaborate balustrading place the figures on the embankment somewhere along the Thames, and she’s got a quite different look in her eye.

Painting by Ray Ward

‘The universe shall pass away as a scroll’ Egg tempera and Indian ink on gesso ground. 310 x 435 mm.