NUMBER 41

I returned to see a set of windows I designed and made last year for a house in Stockwell, London, no 41. I wrote about all of these windows while I was making them in previous blogs, so this post is about how they work in the space. It’s an early Victorian four storey double fronted house that the architect owner has completely refurbished - I’ll have to go back again to take a shot of the front elevation when the light is right (I mean when I remember to turn it on behind the fanlight).

Front door and fanlight above: double glazed front door panels. The initials (& the shoes) belong to family members.

At the front there is a stained glass fanlight using colours that run through the house - ochre, gold, silver, red, pink and pale green, all of them in warm shades. Lined up with the yellow foliage blobs on the fanlight are two rows of trees on a pair of double glazed panels in the door below. I used both inside surfaces of the glass in the double glazed units to paint and sandblast on, creating the depth you can see in the detail below. The glass provides the right amount of privacy up close and also lets a lot of light in.

Front door and reflection: detail through the two layers of glass.

The back of the house: back door from the inside.

The back door faces south to a large unshaded garden. The techniques I used, again sandblasting and enamelling on the two inside surfaces of the double glazed units, show up really well from the outside and also very dramatically in sunshine. These are midsummer photos, in winter the colour travels further along the adjacent walls and the two different oranges in the glass are intensified on the yellow ochre background. I left a lot of clear glass for visibility in to the garden, you see this window down a short flight of stairs as soon as you come in the front door of the house.

Details of double glazed panels in the back door.

Second floor bathroom from the outside (lights on): from the inside.

The bathroom glass was the first I made for the house, the design was an enlargement of the colour samples I make with every colour agonised over until we got the right mix (and then they do unexpected things in the kiln). In the master bedroom it’s mainly yellow (above), upstairs serving the children’s bedrooms (below), there are more colours and a bigger difference when the lights are on and off. These colours are hand painted on etched glass so there is no chance of seeing through the glass in these lovely, functional sliding doors.

Top floor bathroom from the outside (lights off): from the inside.

Process

The concept was clear and simple, to make a panel 300mm square inspired by The Thames at Kelmscott via some old favourites - May Morris’ embroidery (top) and my drawings done along the same stretch of the river (above). I worked on it sporadically during a few disjointed weeks, making decisions along the way guided by the materials rather than making a detailed plan and then executing it.

During this process I continue to be amazed at my incompetence. I’m not able to see whether I like what I’m making until it’s leaded up, cemented and in the window. This small panel was leaded up four times, I reused the lead again and again resulting in a slightly chewed up appearance, a good description of how I feel after finishing the piece. In the final version (number 4) I have kept the best bits of painting with little lines that reference the embroidered stitches without copying anything in the picture.

Starting by finding the pieces of glass I wanted to use; on the lightbox you can see the textures of the central piece (Pilkington’s arctic) and the purple cast chunks; first attempt at painting.

Panel masked up for painting before the next firing: version 1 leaded up and in the window: the same panel with the tracing paper backing removed, electric colours and cauliflower textures. However, I should know by now that just copying a good drawing on to glass never works.

I pulled the panel apart and preferred it like this; version 2 repainted with the corner pieces I hated replaced by scraps of painted reeds - just looked like a mess; version 3 with a yellow border - composition is unbalanced and not what I wanted.

Pulled the panel apart again and chose some peaceful watery scraps of painted glass: version 4 in the window; version 4 with tracing paper behind.

South Devon Church Interiors

On holiday in the South Hams district of Devon we visited five churches, chosen just because they were on our route. All are large rural churches with rows of massive pillars down the nave and, a Devon speciality, a fine medieval rood screen separating the nave from the chancel. The photos I took in the five churches looking down the nave to the screen and the east window beyond show the similarities, but each screen is different and each church has its own particular atmosphere.

Church of St Sylvester, Chivelstone: exterior, nave, fragmented screen end.

A series of new panels describes the history of the large church in the tiny village of Chivelstone, formerly the main place of worship for agricultural workers from all the villages to the south, between Chivelstone and the sea. These are part of an on going programme of repair that includes the conservation of the medieval screen and pulpit and later wall paintings (C17th - 18th). The rood screen has fifteenth and sixteenth century sections, with some painted figures, some renaissance arabesque panels and some reassembled fragments (above right). This is a harmonious interior with little touches of colour, like the pink around the borders of windows and the welcome stained glass of the decorative Victorian variety in the chancel (below centre and right).

St Sylvester, Chivelstone: back of screen, pink bordered window, stained glass in chancel.

Church of St Winwaloe, East Portlemouth: nave, screen, detail of medieval painting on screen.

In the church at East Portlemouth, two and a half miles to the west, the only stained glass is in a drawing hanging on the wall (below left) by the architect Sir Charles Nicholson who carried out the 1934 restoration of the church. Here the panels on the rood screen are filled with 26 exceptional early sixteenth century paintings of saints, beautiful and delicate, like the carving that surrounds them (above right). But the large windows with criss crossed lead lines and lime green borders give this church a chilly atmosphere (below right).

St Winwaloe, East Portlemouth: drawing by Charles Nicholson, reredos as seen in drawing, window with teddy.

Church of St Nicholas and St Cyriac, South Pool: nave, screen, detail of painting on screen.

Next was South Pool, a couple of miles north east along the river estuary. The rood screen in this church is covered in the now familiar carvings of vines and scrolls and painted in mainly reds and greens. The lower panels are all painted in the rare renaissance arabesque style (above right), behind them you can see subtle stained glass in the east window. I was looking forward to finding some more modern stained glass in one of these interiors, here we get a cheesy scene of the village by Roy Coomber of Solaglas, Bristol 1988 (below left) and a number of saints from the Exeter firm of David Gubbin and Son. You can always find a nice bit of detail in this type of glass, like the birds flying in front of St Francis (below right), but do they add anything to the quality of the interior space? - particularly when the scenes and figures are laid on those clear backgrounds that do nothing to temper the light.

St Nicholas and St Cyriac, South Pool: stained glass from the 1980s and 1990s.

Church of St Andrew, Harberton: nave, screen, screen pillar.

Simon Jenkins, in England’s Thousand Best Churches, would say no, but then he doesn’t seem to be very keen on stained glass. To me it was wonderful to go into our next church at Harberton and find all the windows filled with colour - and also to find explanatory boards complete with names and dates (all the windows were made between 1854 and 1931) - but to Simon Jenkins the stained glass in this church is ‘ubiquitous and pernicious’. The whole interior shines, the heavily restored rood screen is detailed in gold with figures of saints that were painted on metal panels in 1871 to replace the original wooden ones, now displayed on the wall of the nave in this very informative and rich interior.

St Andrew, Harberton: screen sideview, The Trist window to the four virgin martyrs Saints Catherine, Agnes, Margaret & Barbara by Beer of Exeter, detail from 1931 window by Maile & Sons.

Church of St Mary, Berry Pomeroy: nave, screen sideview, screen detail.

Berry Pomeroy Church, in the north of the district, rounded off our trip with another magnificent rood screen going from wall to wall in the nave. This one has all its original parts and its painted figures, though they were defaced during the Civil War or the Restoration (above right). The side views of the screens in the last two churches show how far the cornice overhangs, and also the clutter of furniture in front of them (above middle) which I only then realised was to protect the paintings from being bashed. High up in the chancel are three windows by the great Christopher Whall, and there is another by his daughter Veronica in the north east chapel (below right). By this stage I had started to make comparisons and couldn’t help thinking that Christopher Whall’s chancel windows are in the wrong place. They are too elevated to have much chance of interacting with the shapes and colours in the screen, although they were the only windows we saw that could stand up to the comparison.

St Mary, Berry Pomeroy: stained glass in the chancel by Christopher Whall 1908 and by Veronica Whall 1926

Georges and Dragons

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

Towards Order 740 x 740 mm

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.

The painting and sandblasting plan.

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.

Towards Chaos 300 x 240 mm