A delight associated with living in our Mansion Blocks is the amount of stained glass visible internally and externally. Examples exist in our porches with perhaps the most notable being in Carlisle Place. Others have stained glass in the back windows on their staircases. There are also wide and varied styles within the flats themselves. Often located above the doorways they provide light to the hallway particularly from the high-ceilinged front rooms.
‘Stained-glass’ is glass coloured by adding metallic salts during its creation. ‘Stained glass windows’ are made of small pieces of glass arranged to form patterns or pictures, traditionally held together by strips of lead called ‘cames’ or ‘calms’. This whole piece is then held together in a rigid frame. ‘Stained-glass’ also includes windows in enamelled glass where the colours have been painted onto the glass which is then fused to the glass in a kiln. It can also include domestic lead light and ‘objets d’art’ created from foil glasswork as exemplified in the famous opalescent glass lamps of Tiffany, who also invented the copper foil method rather than the use of lead.
Coloured glass was being produced by both the Egyptians and the Romans for small coloured objects. The Phoenicians (1500-300BC Levant region of the Mediterranean primarily modern Lebanon) important cities such as Tyre, Sidon, and Antioch were major glass blowing centres. Glass was probably first used in windows by the Romans. In this country fragments of coloured window glass were found in Northumbria, at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, dating back to the 7th century. While Anglo-Saxons (410-1066AD -often known as the Dark Ages) used coloured glass and lead but really stained glass as we know it is associated with the medieval period and gothic architecture (mid-12th to end 16th century). One of the earliest and finest of the early period can be seen at Canterbury Cathedral dating back to 1184 (14 years after the assassination of St Thomas Beckett by Henry 11’s knights). Early examples tended to be ‘figure windows’, but the 13th century saw the emergence of the popular ‘medallion windows’. In the 17th and 18th centuries glaziers turned their attention to the art of heraldry, though religious paintings and portrayals were also prevalent, especially in the reign of King Charles 1 (1625-1649) led by Archbishop Laud (1573-1645). Several of these examples can be seen at Oxford Colleges undertaken by Abraham & Bernard van Ligne, members of the glass and painting family from Emden in Germany.
In the 18th century windows were once again widely produced and these were often based on easel paintings and cartoons, often using enamel pigments. Such an example, in the Royal Collection, is a painting, by James Pearson, on clear glass of King George 111 (1760-1820), which is a copy of an oil painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792 founder and 1st President of The Royal Academy). Their limitation was that they
were in effect transparent and being done in paints lacked the brightness, depth and architectural relevance of medieval windows.
With the ‘Gothic revival’ in the 2nd half of the 18th century that endured until the end of the 19th century the old skills were revived coinciding with a period of church restoration, fuelled by a resurgence in the Catholic faith in England. As John Ruskin (1819-1900), the polymath writer described this as “the true Catholic style” of architecture led by Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852 famously associated with the Palace of Westminster). Glaziers were much in demand but this often led to poor quality, design and execution. Best manufacturers were Clayton & Bell, Heaton, Butler & Bayne and Lavers & Barraud. Ely Cathedral has some fine examples that date from this period.
The short-lived Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-1854) that heavily influenced the Arts & Crafts Movement, brought a higher standard of glass design colour and technique. This moved away from and ascended the rather pious sentimentality of much Victorian work and lead lines once again became an essential part of the design. They championed the skill and craft against increasingly industrialised production. Artists associated with this period and evolving movement were John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and the later influencer William Morris (1834-1898), who founded Morris &Co (1861) that produced exceptional stained glass as evidenced by Burne- Jones’s work, based on the Arthurian legends in Malmsbury Abbey and in Winchester Cathedral – the longest Gothic Cathedral in Europe at 170 metres – with his Annunciation, Four Angels, The Angel Gabriel, Madonna, Nativity and King Alfred.
The Arts & Crafts (circa 1850-1920) and indeed the Art Nouveau (1890-1910) movements very much included and featured stained glass in their furnishings and interior design. The best known exponent of the latter was Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) who during the early years of the 20th century designed everything in the Glasgow Art School (sadly badly damaged by two recent fires in 2014 and 2018 which in the former destroyed the Library with its comprehensive collection of art of the period and the latter which did extensive damage to the whole building) and the renowned Willow Tea Room, which has impressive glass windows and doors. A fine example of the Art Nouveau period is The Kneeling Angel (1893) by Harrington Mann (1864-1937) that is in the Museum of Stained Glass in Ely.
Most of the stained-glass work in the Mansion Blocks dates from the Arts & Crafts movement that was prevalent at the time these buildings were constructed, in the latter part of the 19th century. There are, however, a few examples of the Art Nouveau period – a name that was coined by the Belgian periodical L’Art Moderne’ and who also number in their cause, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898 illustrator including the pictures in Sir Thomas Mallory’s (1414-1471) book ‘The death of Arthur’); Paul Hankar
(1859-1901) who with Henry van de Velde (1843-1957) and Victor Horta (1861-1947) transformed Belgian architecture and interiors and Antoni Gaudi in Spain whose architecture is world famous with his Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona; while in glassware and jewellery there is Rene Lalique (1860-1945) in France and the aforementioned Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). The distinctive features of Art Nouveau tend to be their undulating asymmetrical line that often appears in the form of stalks, buds and flowers or insect wings or other winding, curving, twisting natural objects. In architecture it is the fusion between structure and ornament – a real difference from the established traditions of reason and clarity of structure. This movement dies just before World War 1 as it was felt to be limited, old fashioned and just decorative. However, in the 1960s this style became fashionable once more.
Credit:Claude Keith
