Harry Stammers in Wiltshire

St Mary’s Church, Whaddon, Witshire. Left: Entrance porch. Right: Inside, facing east.

Here we are in Whaddon Church on a stormy day beside the River Avon in Wiltshire (above). The church is down a windy dead end road - I’d seen the Harry Stammers window there only from the outside because it was, as churches so frequently are, locked. This time, I made an appointment and took along some friends to chat with the key holder and take photos of me taking photos of the window that we all admired so much (below).

Whaddon: Window by Harry Stammers 1950.

The subject matter is from Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 & 25: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came & sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away’. In the window the good sower and his enemy have the same posture and are placed on similar backgrounds but with dramatically different colour combinations that emphasise the contrast of day and night, light and dark. There are areas of loose brushwork that contrast with sharply painted plants and the familiar Stammers style cartouches for the lettering (below). The window is dedicated to the memory of George Merrett a local lay preacher who walked across the fields every Sunday, on the day we were there the fields were flooded and the windy road almost impassable.

Detail of the Whaddon window with Harry Stammer’s mark.

In Holt, only a mile across the river but quite a long way round by road, is another Harry Stammers window. Again I’d made an appointment and again the key holder was surprised that we were more interested in the Stammers window than the other ones - in both churches they are by Horwood from about 1880. This is an early Stammers work, with the figures and cartouches suspended on a standard background of white glass quarries and no maker’s mark to be seen. There are few indications here of how his later style would develop, and had already started developing by the time he was commissioned to make the Whaddon window four years later.

United Reformed Church, Holt, Wiltshire. Window by Harry Stammers in the south aisle 1946.

The Holt window is dedicated to St Cecilia, and in memory of another much loved local character, Daisy M. Tucker, who was choirmistress and also organiser of the local sewing bee - hence the bees (below left) or so the much repeated story goes.

Details from the Holt window.

St Mary, Wilton, Wiltshire. Harry Stammers window 1952 and detail with his mark.

The other Stammers window I know of in Wiltshire is in St Mary’s Church in Wilton (near Salisbury) and now in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust. In this window, although St Edith and St Monica are also floating on those clear background quarries, the composition fills more of the space and the style of the figures, particularly in the sections below them, is veering away from the naturalistic. Here is the same contrast between light and dark and the monochrome figures that you find in the Whaddon window and that he used so much in his later work.

Wilton. Left: St Monica. Right: scene below with monochrome figures.

St Peter’s Church, Over Wallop, Hampshire. Left: Detail of St Michael in left hand panel. Right: Window by Harry Stammers 1956, on the wall is the flag of The Glider Pilot Regiment.

Four years later Stammers made a window for St Peter’s Church in Over Wallop, just over the Wiltshire border into Hampshire. It tells the sad story of three members of the same family, Joan Mary Grece, Group Captain C.M.M. Grece and her uncle H.D. Harman who were killed flying together in 1954. The picture of their plane (below) gives this window a 1950s ‘Festival of Britain’ feel, and like much of his work from this period the window design is crisp and graphic.

I’ve always wondered if the practice of using white glass backgrounds that was so common in this period of stained glass and that lets in too much light was done for cost cutting reasons. I say this because that was why I started using so much clear glass myself, especially when I was a student. The Whaddon window, so small and so satisfying in its all over composition, rather reinforces my suspicions.

Detail of the Over Wallop window.

Vertical Landscapes

The rug page in my June 1983 sketchbook, and the centre of the rug itself.

The threadbare rug in my studio is an inherited one and has fascinated me for years, as documented by a drawing of it in my 1983 sketchbook (above). I loved the way that the landscape had been turned into a vertical pattern of loosely drawn scales, one of which is a lake rather than a mountain. I’ve been thinking about vertical landscapes recently because I’m designing a set of vinyls for very tall windows, 4.6 metres high. Although I could ignore the divisions between the windows and float the design across the window frames, I’m more inclined to emphasise the vertical and treat each as a separate window.

Left: Installing the fake windows in the new Lidl. Right: The drive-by commission I did for Lidl in 2017.

Left: St John Hospital Chapel, Lichfield 1984. Right: All Saints, Farnborough. Memorial window for John Betjeman 1986.

These two approaches are evident in rows of windows from many different periods of stained glass design. The first pair that I thought of are by John Piper (above). On the left hand window the shapes in the design link up, with the mullions cutting through the figures, whereas the window on the right consists of a separate picture in each opening, with the result that the fish confined to the right hand window seem to float up into the air.

The second set of examples (below) are windows in Wiltshire from the nineteenth century. In the crucifixion scene on the left, it’s not the figures that cross over the mullions but the landscape and sky behind them which become a row of coloured bands. The Warrington window on the right uses all sorts of decorative devices - borders, columns, canopies - to split up the shapes while still keeping enough room in the middle for some spectacular rocks, clouds and trees.

Left: St Mary, Nettleton, Wiltshire, Crucifixion window by E.R. Suffling 1892. Right: Christ Church, Bradford on Avon, window by William Warrington 1857.

Easy to keep photos vertical with the camera phone.

The subject matter for this commission is based on the local South Gloucestershire landscape. On my walks and drawing trips around the area I’ve been looking for features that split up the landscape, obviously trees which are also useful as borders, but also fences, buildings and paths. I’m aiming to make a composition that is richer than a stripy landscape and is something that you can’t mistake for an advertising banner.

Not to so easy to keep my drawings of hillsides, parks and paths vertical.

The Weekend Course

West Dean weekend student work: 1. simple leading 2. simple but lots of pieces 3. soldering a less simple design.

The adult beginner’s weekend stained glass course is a bit of a rushed affair. There are so many stages to learn, including the most important one of how to design a simple stained glass window, something I like each student to do for themselves. I felt a sense of triumph on last weekend’s course at West Dean College (which will be the last weekend course I teach) as a student actually made a window that was really simple and easy to make, yet original (1 above left). As you can see, the creeping inaccuracy of the cutting meant that the glass pieces didn’t fit the paper pattern once leaded, but easy to cut means easy to trim down if you have to.

West Dean student work in progress: 4. work bench 5. round panel pieces cut  6. panel cemented but not cleaned.

Mostly the students don’t follow my advice to keep it simple and come armed with examples of the sort of organic or representational thing they want to make. It’s only as you make the stained glass panel that you understand the pitfalls, why some shapes are easy to cut but hard to lead, like the orange star burst which is being soldered at 3 top right. This means that it’s not the number of pieces that makes a design doable or not in a weekend, for example 2 top centre & 4 above right (which has over 40 pieces of glass) were both simple to make because of the leading pattern. The round panel (5 above centre) was only just doable for a beginner, but there is always the possibility of skipping the last stage and taking the cement in a bag to do at home, or taking the panel home dirty, like 6 above right.

West Dean student work with sandblasting: 7. paper plan wave 8. around the edges 9. butterfly antennae.

We don’t have the use of a kiln on this short course, but we do have a sandblaster which gives you a different way of adding detail. In 7. (above left) a wave has been added to give the much desired organic feel, linking the pieces with three lines. Painting, or drawing and sandblasting, across the lead lines is something else I find it hard to persuade students to do, you can see another example of linking pieces with sandblasting in the wobbly circles at 12 below right. Sandblasting a section around the edges of adjacent pieces was also effective in 8 above centre, giving the finished panel a chunky appearance that went well with the blocks of glass.

West Dean finished panels: abstract designs with curves and sandbalsting. 10, 11 & 12.

It’s great when a design that is supposed to represent something actually works. The butterfly (above right) is an obvious example, but the three landscape panels below are very satisfying. The river estuary that is both curvy and geometric (13), the palm tree that floats above its trunk (14) and the lighthouse (15) that is immediately recognisable but so subtle all provide a perfect end to my teaching of the weekend course.

West Dean landscape panels: 13. river estuary 14. palm tree 15. lighthouse.

glass patchwork

I’m making a series of windows of which large sections are made out of glass pieces from my scrapbox, patchwork style. I’ve done this lots of times before, but that doesn’t stop the scrap box growing in size, with pieces dating back to the 1980s when I first started painting and firing glass. In my endeavours I’m inspired both by fabric patchwork, which I used to spend a lot of time doing, and by the fragment windows that you see in churches.

Studio lightbox with glass pieces spread over paper window cartoons.

Sorting the pieces, mainly by colour.

Sorting my glass pieces comes easily as I know them so well. I’m ordering them by colour because the pieces are nearly all by me and the subject matter and style is pretty consistent over the forty year period that they cover. Many of them are samples from commissions that I did or didn’t get or from pieces that went wrong. I can often remember what I was listening to on the radio at the time I was making the sample - like a proper patchwork quilt all of my life is in these pieces.

The pink section cut and numbered, the yellow section cut and numbered.

I reached number 121, then made a list to see if I really knew where all the pieces came from. Lots of them are useful colour strips which I can’t date, for example numbers 21, 23, 24, 27, 29, 60 and 61 below. Above you can see sample pieces for the last public commission I installed in Liverpool Hospital almost two years ago (numbers 31 & 33 on the right) next to a piece from a dismantled 1987 panel (no. 34) and some Bournemouth pine cones from a residency I did there in 1995 (36 and 38).

The four corners all together (but not as they will be in the windows).

I’ve planned the next stage of the windows around all of these fragments. There will be black and white painted/sandblasted sections that pick up on the marks, patterns and shapes contained in them. I’ve drawn everything up full size (see window A below) as I can’t afford to have second thoughts once I start on the glass - but with apologies to my clients for the extra time that all of this takes.

Drawing for window A, showing lead lines and paintwork to come. 680 x 690 mm.

Trying to fit all the pieces of the four windows on my lightbox.

More Mark Angus

Small window in St Andrew, Steyning, West Sussex. Mark Angus 2000

Since I appreciated (and described in a blog post last March) a whole church full of Mark Angus windows I have been looking for more. The one in St Andrew’s church, Steyning, didn’t disappoint, high up in the north east corner and casting an inky light on the stuff accumulated below (above right). The coloured glass is beautiful, the detail not painted but using what I think of as his signature - the abundant use of those liberated lead lines, veering off the dividing lines between glass pieces like the strokes of a thick pen.

The church website says that, wanting to commission a millenium window, a decision was made to seek a good example of contemporary art. A number of artists was approached but most of the proposals were judged to be unimaginative, so Mark Angus was commissioned because of his “Daily Bread” window in Durham Cathedral. The Steyning window, seventeen years later, does resemble that one, but the subject matter is (supposedly) inspired by Ezekiel 47:12: “On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food.”

In Mark Angus’ 1984 book Modern Stained Glass in British Churches, he wrote “The Artist must always bear in mind that his work is experienced daily by ordinary people. His work’s must be accessible, explain mystery, and yet maintain mystery, give insight and meaning alongside awe.”

West window in Christ Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Mark Angus 1993

Before he moved to Germany, Mark Angus lived near Bath and there are several of his windows in that region, including two in Bradford-on-Avon. I think I love his west window in Christ Church, although I could hardly see it. There is no colour but there are different types of white glass and more of those wonderful lead lines making a picture that describes a rainbow with cloud, rain and sunshine in the most original way. You get no direct view of this window inside the church (did you ever? I wonder) as there is an inaccessible gallery above the west door, beyond which an accumulation of gloomy stuff again (above right).

East window in St Mary Tory, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Mark Angus 1999

Also in Bradford-on-Avon and with a Mark Angus east window, the chapel of St Mary Tory is a rare treat. This is a tiny building, rebuilt in the late nineteenth century on the site of a former chapel and hermitage dating from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. When I took the photo above right I was standing with my back against the west wall and facing through the windows a fantastic view of the town.

The window was commissioned by retired vicar Canon Bill Matthews on behalf of the donor Enid German who wrote “An inner image prompted me to finance a coloured window to replace the existing plain glass one. After deep concentration in prayer, the design for the central panel came. Those of the two side panels I left to the artist, Mark Angus, then unknown to me. I passed my ideas to Bill who acted as go-between.” It is fascinating to get such an insight into the commissioning process, especially, as in the same bit of text on display in the church Mark remembers it differently. He describes in detail how he arrived intuitively at the design for each lancet, aiming for a mood of “active quietness”. After describing each panel he wrote “So now we have the whole image. Of a garden, of nature, of light, of the mystic, of refreshing tears and raindrops, of sky, of heaven. It is an escape from the hard realities of life, a retreat and a resting place.”

The view from the chapel of St Mary Tory.

Of course the central lancet is quite obviously a flower, in Mark’s words “a mystical rose, which is both contained and is free”. I had to get up close to check on the yellow splodge of stamen in the middle (below left), it’s so unusual to see him using glass enamel and it looks more superficial than those wandering signature lead lines. There are views of houses and trees through the coloured glass, who on earth would prefer nothing but plain glass windows?

St Mary Tory, detail and view from a south facing window.