Georges and Dragons / May 5, 2024 by Sasha Ward

Left, late fifteenth century St George in St George’s Church, Kelmscott. Right, St George by Veronica Whall 1928 in Christ Church Eastbourne,

Over the years I’ve been collecting St George windows, a saint easy to identify from the red cross that is his emblem, his suit of armour and the dragon that always appears at his feet. In the more dynamic versions he is spearing the dragon from his horse, the similarities of the pose in versions made almost 500 years apart, shown above, are striking.

Left, St George by Jones & Willis 1905 in St George, Orcheston. Centre, St George by Morris and Co. 1860s in St Nicholas Beaudesert, Henley in Arden. Right, St George by Theodora Salusbury c. 1920 in All Saints, Newton Linford.

More often he is standing more or less on the dragon, holding a shield and a spear. What really interests me are the dragons which are always at the bottom of the windows and therefore easy to examine and photograph. In every example I have from the 1860s to the 1930s (above and below) the dragon is made of luscious streaky glass in a range of rich colours, purples, pinks, greens and blues. They are lovely but confusing pictorially as the deep colours jump forward, even when the dragon is in the background.

Left, dragon by C.E. Kempe in St David 1898, Moreton in Marsh. Right, dragon by Morris of Westminster 1930 in St Barnabas, Swindon.

Left, dragon by Aldam, Heaton & Co. in St Michael and All Angels, Brinkworth. Right, dragon in St Oswald, Lythe.

Some of the loveliest dragons are at the feet of the Archangel Michael instead. In the two examples above their long jaws and scales show up better on paler streaky glass, and in the two examples below (left and middle) you know it’s St Michael not from the inscription but from his wings. In one of my favourite sets of local windows there is a beautiful dragon made of red flashed glass at the feet of St Margaret (below right).

Left, St Michael in St John the Baptist, Kingston Lisle by Heaton, Butler and Bayne 1911. Centre, St Michael by Powell & Sons 1919 in St Michael, Highworth. Right, St Margaret by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in St Nicholas, Grafton 1888.

There is a really effective window of St Michael in one of the large, beautiful arched windows of Romsey Abbey (below). The lighting in the alcove made it difficult to get a good photograph of the glass, which is delicately coloured and dynamic with a swirl of feathers and banners as the blue and green streaky dragon gets speared.

St Michael by C.E. Kempe 1897 in Romsey Abbey.

Order And Chaos / April 23, 2024 by Sasha Ward

I made the big, square panel above recently. It combines one of my melted pieces of slab glass with a lovely piece of old window glass. The small bubbles and wobbles in the large clear section don’t show up in the photo, likewise many of the textures in the coloured glass surrounding it. Handling a big glass panel with the hole I had cut in it was tricky, so was inserting the central piece of glass (with a lead wrapped around it) into the hole. The front is very neat, so is the back but it is copper foiled.

Left, tracing paper removed giving a better idea of the textures in the glass. Right, detail of the top section.

Left, colour selection from my scrap box. Right, on the light box, cutting the scraps to a plan.

The design followed on from the shapes of the glass scraps I chose for the border, with colours getting darker towards the edges and harmonising rather than jarring with each other. At one stage, I was going to paint in a loose style over these border pieces, but then my desire for order got the upper hand and I made a plan (below) that returned the composition to a geometric framework, with straight lines and right angles.

As I planned the painting stage, I tested each type of glass I had used in the composition by firing it in the kiln with splashes of enamel, oxide and silver stain. The pieces looked great all together, so I spent a happy evening leading the sample pieces together (below) in a panel that returns the glass scraps to a jumble of chaos.

Snapshots from a walk around Shrewton / April 9, 2024 by Sasha Ward

We took a walk around the village of Shrewton as suggested by the Churches Conservation Trust because there are three churches under their care within a 5km stroll, plus two other churches on the same route and two chapel buildings. It’s hard to imagine seven active congregations in this small area. The villages feel isolated because of their position on Salisbury Plain which is no longer a rich, farming area but one dominated now by the presence of the army. Following a footpath along the River Till and with other parts of the route skirting flooded fields, it was interesting to see two sets of flood cottages with signs from 1842 (below left) reminding us of the date … for ever being the anniversary of that awful visitation - The Great Flood of 1841 …. when 3 people died and 72 houses were destroyed by a surge in the river - also hard to imagine.

We started at St Andrew’s in the parish of Rollestone, a tiny church on the edge of a field, everything tidy and well coordinated inside (above). The larger St Mary’s church in the centre of Shrewton has become the main place of worship for the surrounding parishes, inside is some interesting glass including a really effective, beautifully blue, ascension east window (below centre and right) and a screen in front of the tower patched with a catalogue of pressed, textured glasses (below left).

Inside St Mary’s in the neighbouring village of Orcheston I took a snapshot that combines the two categories of churchesinchurches and kitchensinchurches in an understated way (above left). You can tell this is an active, rather than CCT, church also by the window displays, intended to be engaging rather than tasteful. The memorial window is in the porch, not to a cat but to the lucky octogenarian Sophie Hamilton-Moore.

In case you’re wondering what the outside of the churches really look like, this is St. George’s (above left) also in Orcheston, a village with a feeling of being tucked away both in space and time. Inside the small church everything is calm, while outside horses feed in the flooded fields and even the motorbikes are quiet (below left). The last church on our walk was in another of Shrewton’s old parishes, Maddington, with an equally beautiful and subtly decorated interior. In every church you can find a satisfying bit of stained glass detail, this one comes from the bottom of the east window (by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake 1872).

At the Bowls Club / March 29, 2024 by Sasha Ward

The Marlborough group of Arts Together, a charity that brings together professional artists and older people for weekly art workshops, meets in the Bowls Club. The windows there provided a good setting for the latest version of my glass painting project. At the end of week one we had a row of glass pieces on the window sill ready to fire, their black iron oxide paint having been textured and scratched off by the group members. Four weeks later, after sessions of enamel painting on the centre and border pieces, I returned with the panels that I’d leaded up in my studio, mostly to their specifications, and displayed them on the window sill again. The black and white pieces looked so good in the first photo, the question is have we improved them over the following weeks?

Glass by Alan, week one and completed panel.

The example of Alan’s panel (above and below) shows the process from week one, with his enigmatic scraffito drawing on a layer of black paint that becomes the ground for further layers of painting in transparent enamel - harder to do and harder to predict the outcome. The borders are a mix of decorative and sample pieces that make it possible to link the pieces together into a solid stained glass panel, a thing that members might actually want to have.

Glass by Alan, week two before and after firing, week four choosing coloured glass to add in corners.

Glass by Gillian, week one, week two and completed panel.

The example of Gillian’s panel (above) shows an original drawing done with great confidence but not really improved by the enamelling, which she did in a ‘colouring in’ style. Her borders however, with speedy, drippy paintwork worked perfectly the first time, no coloured glass pieces were needed to help out the composition of the panel.

A finished stained glass panel represents several hours of work, with different techniques tried out, skills learned and choices made. In terms of the aims of the group, the activity is more important than the art, which should be enjoyable and sociable. You might think that the purity and simplicity of the black and white drawings are sacrificed during the process, but in this type of teaching it’s more about what you learn than what you make.

Gillian (on left) and friends: Alan and Bill painting.

St Laurence Church, Upton, Slough / March 15, 2024 by Sasha Ward

The chancel, St Laurence Upton cum Chalvey.

The church leaflet says that St Laurence Church in Upton cum Chalvey (a parish of Slough) ‘may justly claim to be the oldest building in Slough’. The oldest part is the chancel, rebuilt in the twelfth century on top of Saxon stonework and redecorated during the nineteenth century restoration of the church. Under your feet but hidden by the carpet under the bell tower (in the foreground above) is the grave of the musician and astronomer William Herschel (1738 - 1822), who lived in Slough for the last part of his life when he was King’s Astronomer to George III.

Left, the south aisle, with Andrew Taylor’s window to William Herschel, 2000. Right, the figure of William Herschel from the bottom of the right hand lancet.

The Victorian restoration also added a south aisle to the church where in 2000 a window was commissioned from the artist and stained glass maker Andrew Taylor to celebrate Herschel and his discovery of Uranus. This planet glows beautifully from the top window, surrounded by fragments of blue and pink with stars and streaks. The two lancets continue in the same vein, where you find the other planets, Herschel’s telescope and the biblical verses that were stipulated in the brief and that have been worked into the design in a subtle way that is also legible. The appearance of the figure of Herschel was reportedly at the suggestion of local school children - the artist managed to include him in a way that doesn’t weaken the design and that gives a sense of scale to his Great Forty Foot Telescope. It’s great to see the model of this and also the design for the window in this part of the church that acts as history and social centre, cafe and shop.

Left, Andrew Taylor’s window design. Right, lower left panel with text from Psalm 8: Verses 4 & 5.

The windows in the chancel, all by James Powell and Sons from the 1890s to the 1920s, are wonderful too, delicate enough for this low, quiet space. Here are pale, almost monochrome angels behind the richer figures of saints on jazzy painted backgrounds, full of stars.