A LECTURE
ON STAINED GLASS
BY
PROFESSOR
R. ANNING BELL
Published at The Royal College of
Art Students’ Common Room, South Kensington, S.W.7; and printed by George W.
Jones at The Sign of The Dolphin in Gough Square, Fleet Street, London.
Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
My subject of Stained Glass is a
very wide, vague, large sort of subject, and of course it is quite impossible
to talk about it in any thorough way in the course of an evening. You want to
write books about it. I thought it would be interesting to you, perhaps, to
talk about the more recent variations and changes, the evolution in the use of
glass. The fact that this modification in Stained Glass is very largely the
work of artists trained in this College should interest you particularly.
Stained Glass, commonly
so-called—it is a misnomer, for it is really coloured and painted glass—is one
of the three great Christian decorative arts: Mosaic, Stained Glass, Fresco.
They are in sequence, roughly speaking, but they overlap. First, Mosaic in the
earlier ten centuries. It began about the 4th century and went on to the
Renaissance, when its character changed. You then get Stained Glass,
overlapping it about the 12th century; and the third great Christian art is
Fresco Painting, which flourished from the 14th century onward, following a
long and slow development from a very early period.
These three seem to be the main
arts through which the expression of the Christian religious scheme, its story,
and its emotion have been conveyed—Sculpture has found expression in all
religions. They have a considerable sympathy in the fact that they all demand
plain surfaces, flat or curved, and are all closely associated with
architecture. Each of them also has been so important, so dominating, that it
has affected the architectural treatment of the buildings which it was designed
to adorn.
Coloured and painted glass is the
outstanding decorative treatment of the Gothic period—the age of the
cathedrals. The earliest stained glass which we know is, I believe, of the 10th
or 11th century, and there are but few examples existing now. The great period
runs from about 1200 to 1550 or so in its full vigour. That is the big cycle of
stained glass; it went on living after that, and is reviving, I am glad to say,
nowadays; but those centuries showed its highest and fullest development. It
was then that the conditions of life and architecture allowed its completest
opportunity of expression. After that it was adapted—with a much simpler
treatment, with far less colour, with more painting on clear glass—to domestic
decorative work, and you will see a good deal of Continental work of a very
pleasant and attractive type of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The practical function of stained
glass is comparable with that of mosaic. Mosaic is an enrichment of the shadow.
Buildings designed for mosaic usually have quite small windows, low down in the
big domes or sparsely set in the side walls, and it is the mosaic enrichment of
shadow, vaguely lit by reflected light from these windows, which gives it its
highest beauty. The peculiar charm of mosaic depends largely on the gold
treatment of the background, which is infinitely more attractive when seen on
curved surfaces and lit from below.
Stained glass is a method of
glorifying and modifying the light which enters a building; it has a wide
range, from a limpid clarity to rich and even sombre depths. Its power of
emotional suggestion is considerable and this, doubtless, commended it to the
mediaeval mystics.
The spiritual function of stained
glass is, like that of mosaic, by a noble beauty of treatment, to present
elevated ethical and religious ideas in a worthy way. It may do this by means
of symbolism, or by typifying virtues and moral qualities by individual figures
of great characters from mythology or from religious history. For symbolism and
these type-figures it is peculiarly suited. Further, its function is to enhance
and to deepen the mood of religious exaltation which the architecture of the
building has already suggested to the worshipper. Stained glass is essentially
a method of strengthening, carrying further and enriching the mood in which the
worshipper finds himself when he enters those noble buildings, so full of the
sense of aspiration and exaltation, and of the mystery which lies behind the
outward show of things. That is just by way of showing you the sort of attitude
which, I believe, we should adopt towards stained glass. You must realise that
your work is more than making pleasant and agreeable colour and striking a
casual note of beauty. You have more than that to carry out, and deeper
feelings to express.
Now to come down to the material,
to what is called stained glass. The fact is it is merely coloured glass. It is
glass melted and mixed up in the pot with various coloured oxides, green, blue
or red, whatever you want. Then the blow-pipe is put in, and with a quantity of
the sticky mixture attached to it is then blown out into a large bulb, just as
ordinary window glass is, and cut off and flattened out on big tables to cool.
The beauty of the quality of stained glass is very largely owing to the
irregularity of the thickness of it, and you often get subtle variations in the
colour, streaks, blotches of colour and so on; the thickness of the glass makes
quite an appreciable difference in the depth of the colour, as you can easily
imagine. One selects from the large sheet of glass the particular piece which
contains a tone of colour one wishes to use.
Another treatment of glass is
very largely used. This is called “flash” glass. It was found that if the glass
were coloured right through with vigorous blues, ruby reds, and greens, it
became so deep that you did not get enough light through it. So quite early
they found out a method by which a film of colour could be applied to a sheet
of clear glass, usually of a greenish tinge. You have the same thickness of
glass as in the other method, but the colour is in a thin stratum on the
surface of it. This “flash” glass has another advantage which we occasionally
make use of; you can work away the thin veneer of colour, leaving only the dear
glass, an obvious method for making patterns. It used to be done by means of a
wheel with which you ground away the surface rather laboriously, now you stop
out with Brunswick Black the parts you do not want to eliminate and apply
acid—it is the same method as in etching—and when you get down to the clear
glass you get rid of the acid. Then you can paint in your brown paint or yellow
stain, and you get quite an attractive effect. You will often see it done in
rich robes and in crowns and things like that; it is quite useful and
workmanlike, but if it is used too much it becomes tricky and pretty.
Now for the practice of the
craft. I am afraid this will be very commonplace talk to those students who are
working at stained glass, but possibly some others will be interested. I
particularly hope the more advanced painter students may be interested, for it
is to them one rather looks to take to stained glass in the last years of their
education when they have become fairly competent in drawing and design, that is
the time when stained glass should become to them a very attractive and
fruitful means of expression. The modern practice is extremely like the old
practice. The craft has the great attraction to my mind of being one of those
crafts which have changed very little all through the ages, and the workshop
method of executing stained glass now is very much what it was in the earliest
days.
The tools are very much the same,
too, except that for cutting the glass nowadays we use the more convenient
modern diamond. The old method was simple but rather laborious. When you wanted
to cut out a piece of glass you got a rather stoutish iron wire which you made
red hot, and you drew the iron wire over the lines you wanted to break, and
then with another tool you just nipped it off all round. They did the most
extraordinarily elaborate things in those days with these. I think they got
towards the later period to be far too fond of showing off their skill. They
cut most preposterous, irregular and odd shapes to show they could do them; it
was a case of the skilful craftsman getting a bit beyond himself.
After the glass cutting comes the
painting. This is done in the same way as it always was, and the leading too.
There are several sizes of leads, 1/2 in., 3/8 in., and 1/4 in., etc. It is
just a piece of narrow lead flanged in the middle to separate the adjacent
pieces of glass, and when the lead is fixed all round the pieces, cement is put
in to hold it together. You want to be a good plumber to do it very well, as I
think our students have found out. I think all who practise the art should go
through the workshop and learn to cut the glass and to lead it up; it is not a
very serious part of their training; it is not necessary that they should
become expert plumbers, but they should learn how and why it is done. I should
very much like to have an expert plumber and an expert glazier to do that part
of the work for the more advanced students, so that they could get on more
quickly with advanced work. But I am afraid we shall not have that just yet,
owing to the need for economy all round.
Now getting further on, I take it
the earlier people designed their windows in a much more simple way than we do.
They had no cartoons, I think. I believe that they set the work out on the long
wooden bench on which the glass is laid to be leaded up and cut, and marked it
out with charcoal. Very often they had to use up bits of glass they had got,
and make the designs fit into these, as glass was very expensive. Again, the
early work is generally based on geometrical forms. A tall window would be cut
up into seven or eight diamonds, circles, quatrefoils, or such like; with
ornamental detail in between. That gives an opportunity of using up very small
pieces of glass. In those days labour was not very valuable and glass was, and
so they did not like to waste any bits. Nowadays you cut a large sheet of
glass, you get a few bits out of it, and often that is about all you can use of
it. They had very few colours, and as you could not go very far wrong with a
limited palette, I really think very much of the beauty of the earliest glass
is because they could not help themselves. The earlier glass was glaziers’
work, it was the men thinking of leading it up rather than of the painter’s
work, who made the design.
Then about 1300 somebody
discovered that extraordinarily effective and useful material, the yellow
stain. It was found that a solution of silver painted on the glass would give,
according to its strength and according to the firing, all sorts of shades of
yellow. This led them to escape from the coarse note in stained glass. Blues,
reds and greens are very good as a rule, but the neutral colours are rather
poor, the purples are not very good, and yellow is inclined to be coarse. The
yellow stain was of great assistance, and they could get nearly all the yellows
they wanted; it was very much more manageable because they could shade it off.
The next thing is the paint,
which is just a sort of brown monochrome. It is a colour which has an affinity
with glass, which, when fired, fuses into the glass and becomes part of it.
There are what are called enamel colours, that is to say they are enamels
painted on and fired over the glass in the same way that the brown paint is
fired on, and they give, of course, variations of colour necessary in heraldry,
etc. This method is rather to be distrusted, because it can only be used safely
in small quantities; it is inclined to fly and disappear in large spaces.
We have now dealt with the main
materials: the glass, the leads, the stain and the paint, and I think I have
said all that is necessary about the materials themselves. Once you know your
materials, the production of a stained glass window is essentially and properly
a piece of communal work. I do not a bit sympathise with those people who say
they do the whole thing themselves. Why should a man who is capable of
designing a thing well be a plumber and glazier; he ought not to. It is like
the people who insist on building their own houses, the sort of people who wear
sandals and live on nuts. Besides it is so unsocial; it is so much better that
it should be a communal art. I like to think that the man who cuts the glass
and the rest have some kind of interest in doing the work; they are not merely
your slaves to do a cut-and-dried job, merely arbitrarily. I like to talk it
over with the men, from whom, too, you often get quite useful suggestions. My
own training has been entirely that way. I learned stained glass backwards,
really. I began by designing windows, and then learned how to work
them—designing them all wrong, and talking to the fellows in the shop and
learning about it that way. I had the ordinary training of a painter, I thought
a stained glass window was the kind of thing you just did with charcoals and
“genius.” I see now quite constantly in a workshop in Scotland my first stained
glass efforts; they are a very valuable lesson in modesty—they are quite
absurd. They turned out well enough because the fellows in the workshop knew
their job; they did it, and talked to me, and I had the sense to see they knew
the work better than I did, and we got the work out pretty well in the end. You
people here with a useful craft shop, with all the materials to hand, have a
tremendous advantage over us older people who just had to find out the best way
we could. It was years and years before I really got to do it in a workmanlike
way, and I am still finding out all sorts of faults.
First of all, of course, you get
a commission; that is quite a difficult thing to do. The subject is next
settled; that also is often a very difficult thing, particularly if you have a
Committee. Then you make a design and, having got the design approved, you get
the templates, and set the thing out on the cartoon. When you have to ask for
templates, see that you get them made of cardboard or of paper, otherwise the
local builder will send you an enormous construction of wood, which is very
unmanageable, costs a lot in travel, and is very awkward for setting out. A
piece of old wallpaper or brown paper will do well for templates, carefully
marked as to their relative places in the window and particularly with the
“inside” well marked as well as cut out to the shapes. Often all you need is
the head of the window above the “springing” and figures showing what length it
is below. You cannot trust the masonry if it is not modern, and not always
then; old work is almost always irregular. There is a decorative window over
there (pointing), those lights are extremely irregular, and we had to have a
template of every bit of it; one light is about 1-1/2 in. wider at the bottom
than the top. They sent the templates carefully measured up, and I set up the
cartoons. It seemed all right, the window was made and sent down and put up.
When I got to see it in the church, I found the windows were not horizontal at
the bottom, the middle one was 1 in. lower than this one, and the other one 1
in. lower than that again. The result was these saddle bars, which are quite
straight on the cartoons, made three steps in the window. It is really rather
disconcerting to see the saddle bars running across slightly out of the true,
it catches the eye of a person used to making stained glass. I was very angry
with myself when I saw it on the opening day. You must be quite sure that the
shapes of the window are accurately produced, and you must not trust your
template of the top of one light to do for the others; you want one for each.
Even in recent work, however good the mason is, there is quite often some
slight variation.
Having got your templates, you
now get them traced out on the cartoon, which has to be done very carefully.
Having set out the shape of the window, you place the saddle bars across. The
function of these saddle bars is to hold the window up; without them the weight
of glass in a long window would bulge it out or drag it down. These bars are
usually about 1 in. wide, and the window is tied to them by means of copper
wires. An advantage of that is that if the window has to be taken out, you only
have to take out a piece at a time, just untwist the wires and take each piece
between the bars away separately. If you forget to mark in the saddle bars on
the cartoon, you may find when you come later to settle their positions that
they cross a face or other important part of your design.
After you have got your cartoon
set out, you start making your drawing, and there are a number of cartoons here
which show the varying treatments different people use. The usual method is to
draw them in charcoal, and leave the colour to be taken from the small sketch.
You will see some very admirable sketches here by Martin Travers, one of our
old students. One can fairly trust to these to do the main colour of the
window. They are so close to the design in detail, that the sketch is quite
enough to make the glass from without colouring the cartoon. I find myself
rather less decided than that, and I am so inclined to vary the design on the
cartoons, that I have to colour them just to make sure I am not losing the
proportion or the distribution of colour. If you are able to stick close to
your sketch, you do not need to colour the cartoon; if you are a person who
varies, it is best to colour the cartoon. There is also this to be said. One is
very much inclined, in doing elaborate charcoal drawings, to put in a great
deal too much detail and not to trust the glass enough; glass itself is such a
charming material that often the less detail on it in paint, the better the
effect.
When you have done your cartoon,
it goes into the workshop, and is laid down on a large bench, a stretch of
tracing linen is placed over it, and the middle line of each of the leads is
traced. That line is drawn so as to be as thick as the central flange in the
lead. It is to separate the two pieces of glass. You have now a map of the
window. Then all these shapes are numbered, and they are either cut out or
another tracing is made and is cut out and numbered again; the coloured glass,
which has already been chosen, is then laid over the paper shapes of the
separate pieces, and is cut out and also numbered, all your pieces of glass are
numbered and correspond to the numbers on the tracing, so that their places may
be readily found.
Before this you must have chosen
the glass. If you are not the head of a workshop, the most practical method is
to go through and choose with the foreman, who is often a very intelligent man.
You choose the main colours, you choose your two or three principal reds and
two or three principal blues and greens, and as they naturally carry through
the window, they keep the key right. Then you have to leave it to him to choose
the minor tints, the various variations in these shades of “white.” There are a
great many variations; you want an expert man to choose those, you cannot do it
yourself unless you own the workshop and spend your life in it, because you do
not know the stock. If you do own the shop and spend your life at it, you find
in a short time you have got the business to get, you have got to keep your men
employed, pay your rent and wages; you spend most of your time in getting the
work, and the rest of your time doing the cartoons; and you have not got time
to look into the details of choosing the glass. It is not a practical thing.
Nobody who is essentially a stained glass man can do the whole work himself, he
has got to trust to other men; it is necessarily a piece of communal work. The
men work better if they have an interest in it. Of course, though, you
supervise the whole and alter any piece you don’t like.
You have the glass chosen, the
main tints, and they are then cut out, and the shapes all being settled by
means of the bits of paper I spoke of, then they are fixed as you see here on a
large sheet of plain glass, fixed in the positions they are in on the cartoon;
all the separate pieces of glass for as large a portion as it is convenient to
paint at one time. Then you put it up against the light, and you paint them
from your cartoon, or they are painted by a competent man. That is the
beginning of the final stage. After they are painted once, they are fired, and
generally painted a second time, and sometimes they are done a third time, with
a sort of turpentine paint—they call it “tar.” Each time it is fired the paint
fades a little: the second painting is largely needed to strengthen what is
fired away in the first. One is supposed to know what is to happen in the
firing, but sometimes unfortunate accidents happen.
After it is all painted the leads
are put round these pieces, they are cemented together, and that is the window
finished for fixing.
Now a word about the modern
tendencies in stained glass, and I am very glad to say this is illustrated very
largely by old students of this school. I speak of modern tendencies as
compared with those of thirty or forty years ago, modern works since the Gothic
revival—such as the work done by artists of standing and distinction, the works
of Rossetti, Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, William Morris, and others—I think the
principal alteration has been very much in the use of leading. That sounds,
perhaps, unimportant and vague to those who have not been working in stained
glass, but it is really of the first importance. The leading, theoretically, and
almost always in mediaeval people, was simply done to separate one figure or
one colour from another, to separate the head from the clothing, and the armour
from the surcoat, and such things as that. You had the lead lines drawn as far
as possible simply round the form, you would have lead lines round every
separate colour, but, if you could help it, you tried not to have any lead
lines across. You tried to arrange it so that you could have a plain piece of
colour with lead lines round it, and no interfering bars across. Modern work
has broken away from that very much, I think myself to the advantage of the art
of stained glass. The use of lead lines not only to emphasise form but for
structural reasons and to emphasise important parts of the design, to give
quality to the colour, and also to give opportunities of variation of the
colour, is one modern tendency.
It was largely suggested to
modern men by the fact that old glass as you see it now is so much broken up by
cross lines, because it broke accidentally and has been mended. They were so
clever that they often cut round dangerous shapes which did not last, and had
to be leaded across to hold the window together. These proved to be so
attractive in enriching the window that the suggestion was taken up, and it has
now become a vicious mannerism, in fact I have heard of a man who had a stained
glass window deliberately broken up, and just leaded up the cracks. But you may
do it when you feel that it helps your design, if it emphasises interesting
points, or enriches the colour.
Another tendency of modern glass
is the tendency to the use of silhouette against plain silvery glass. It is
going back to the later middle ages, when they were fond of this treatment. The
silhouette treatment has various qualities, various advantages; it emphasises
and, I think, makes necessary a rather symbolic treatment of stained glass, and
as I think the symbolic is the more distinguished, the more noble use of the
material, this treatment has a strong appeal.
Another tendency in the work of
contemporary designers which I regret is the absence of bordering. They are so
inclined to treat figures and quarries right up to the mullion or wall without
any border. It is severe and simple, but you lose the advantage in colour very
often. This is a point for those of you who are attempting to treat modern
subjects in stained glass, because modern subjects are very difficult. We have
not the advantage our luckier ancestors had of seeing people all round us
wearing rich and strong colours, colours akin to those of glass, and also fine
textures; black broadcloth is not like the black velvet worn by gentlemen in
the old days. You must find your colours somewhere else if you want to use
modern figures, and you must manage somehow by means of borders or the
decorative crosspieces which divide the window. So I would suggest that you
should pay as much attention to the use of borders as you possibly can. You can
have a very good, rather silvery picture without much colouring, such as modern
subjects would probably demand, and yet get your colour by having a rather rich
and wide border. Modern figures look best in quite small areas usually.
Another tendency, not very
important, but very helpful to colour, is that in the last thirty years the
light glass has been used much whiter and clearer. When I began to do stained
glass the correct thing was a kind of dull green, rather a sage green, a
“greenery, yallery” kind of thing. I think it was because the dullish green
stuff was thought to give a less new or modern effect. As you probably know,
very little glass is white, it nearly all has some tint, but contrasting strong
colour knocks it out, and makes you think it is clear. There are a few sorts of
glass of a really clear, limpid quality, but you cannot use them too much; they
are far too dazzling.
Another tendency is, I think, to
use more primary colours; strong colours are used more and not so many
secondary shades: that is because the strong colours, the real colours, red and
blue and green, the sober and the sombre, the deep and rich colours, are the
most effective contrast with this very silvery white. When you get into half
tones of browns and greys, you get rather a dull effect. The work done by good
men thirty or forty years ago is often of that character. If you go to
Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford, there are several windows by Burne-Jones and
Morris, quite good ones, but they look rather washed out, except the earliest
one which, on the contrary, is very vivid. It is partly because the glass
itself is not as deep and strong as it might be, and partly because there is
not enough lead, the pieces are rather too big, and partly, perhaps, because
there is some very good old glass to be seen near by.
Another tendency which is a good
one is the increased reliance upon painting in line, the increasing avoidance
of that flat, mat affair, which has been the workshop tradition up till
recently. Like many modern workshop traditions it is simply one of incompetence
and mental idleness, it means they did not know how to do it better, and you
could also employ cheaper labour, because you do not want the same type of
educated man to do it.
There is now a school of young
artists who are doing very good work, and I hope we shall soon have more—both
men and women. Like pottery painting, it must not be timid, you have got to do
it with a decided, firm, steady stroke, it does not do to be feeble, any more
than it does on pottery; it is the vigorous, quick line you want: vigour is
even more important than academic accuracy. But of course a good man can do it
correctly.
There is also considerably more
restraint in the amount of pattern on costume, borders, etc., and therefore
more reliance on the quality of the glass itself. Those elaborate and ingenious
patterns so general in, at any rate, the greater number of late
nineteenth-century windows are found to be tedious and worrying; their object
was, as a rule, to enrich a rather poor quality of glass. Nevertheless
well-designed pattern work is very useful when judiciously used.
Now a few words to students who
propose to take up the study of stained glass. First of all get thoroughly used
to the material and practise painting it, leaving the design of less important
detail until the glass is being handled. The constant danger to the designer is
the cartoon. I find that new students are far too apt to make elaborate
cartoons before they are sufficiently familiar with the glass itself, and to
cover them with details of ornament of a character which will not really help
the result.
Stained glass is severe and at
the same time rich. As with every technique the subject must be inseparable
from the treatment. The artist’s subject that is. This is not the same as that
which the spectator regards as the “subject,” and it is not the “art for art’s
sake” subject. It is not beauty divorced from meaning, except in the simpler
forms of lead lighting or patterns in colour. These are often useful, often
wanted, but they do not demand the highest imaginative qualities which our art
can express. I have little sympathy with the desire to reduce our arts to the
abstract. It is too austere and too puritanical an ideal. They are the better,
I think, where the work is conceived in a moment of fervent exaltation. It may
be religious, it may come from poetry, from music, from the external beauty of
Nature; it may come as the wind comes, one knows not whence, but it sets a
flame, as it were, to the imaginative mind, and in that flame the artistic
subject is born.
Now without a real grasp of the
craft this moment is wasted. Nothing is welded. The beautiful possibility
cannot come to the birth, it is without form, it has no bodily shape, and is
but one of those pitiful unrealised and unrealisable glimpses through the veil
which form the tragedy of the incomplete artist.
Only when you are so familiar and
so easy with your means of expression that their limitations, their so-called
restraints, are to you a help and a happy freedom and as natural to you as the
organs of your body, can you hope to realise the gift which is offered to you
and transform it into your own artistic expression.
This does not imply that “to
carry out the carrying out” will necessarily be easy, any more than it is
always easy to make your body obey your wishes; but it will be natural, and the
transformation will be unconscious, just as a school-boy is transformed into a
cricketer quite unconsciously, but yet cricket is not easy.
To get down to facts, what all
this means is that you must work at your technique until you never dream of
wanting stained glass to do the things which stained glass won’t do.
Now stained glass is at its best,
as I have said, a severe and yet rich form of decoration. It can, in its
lighter uses, express a sort of quaintness or whimsicality, it can tell the
gothic fairy tale—goblins, elves, gnomes, it can express a somewhat grimmish
form of fantasy. I remember seeing a capital piece of work—quite small—giving
the characters of that strange old Cornish song “Widdicombe Fair,” a rather
macabre story—with the Ghost of the Old Grey Mare, Peter Hawke and the rest of
the rout. But it cannot easily be gay and it can never be frivolous. How
depressing is restaurant stained glass! I am speaking of stained glass, i.e.,
coloured glass. White glass, painted, can convey a certain sedate cheerfulness,
as one may see in 16th and 17th century domestic work; and when enamelled, as
in the Swiss work, it even has a sort of sprightliness, of a Teutonic rather
than of a Latin type. Excursions along these paths might give very interesting
results to those whose temperaments lead them to such adventures. They have
been by no means explored—and some of our students are gifted that way.
We modern people stand at a
disadvantage compared to our ancestors in that the surroundings of our lives
are not so immediately suggestive of treatment in glass as those which they
enjoyed. Think of the luck of that man in Richard II’s time who had to put “le
Dispencers” round the choir at Tewkesbury. Not, of course, a great imaginative
subject, but a very pleasant, interesting, and easy job—gorgeous knights in
surcoats with their arms emblazoned. And then think of being asked to do a
modern Cabinet Council! Nevertheless there are suggestions to be got from modern
life, and I am glad to see that our students are aware of it—children,
women—men are more difficult. Texture as well as colour is a difficulty, it
cannot quite be ignored.
But the great, the profound
difficulty is the absence of symbolic figures, of characters which have been
“canonised” in our times by popular acclaim, and symbolism must be widely and
readily recognised to be of value. Think of all the great moral qualities—and
these are naturally the motives of much stained glass. Is it leadership in war?
It is not General Haig, nor even Foch, your mind flies to—but Joshua or David,
or Godfrey de Bouillon. Is it statesmanship? It is not Lloyd George or
Gladstone, or even William Pitt—but rather Moses or Gregory, Hildebrand or
Anselm. Is it patriotism and self sacrifice? Well, there are many graves “which
are for ever England,” and yet—it is Joan of Arc we think of. Probably,
Florence Nightingale and General Gordon are the only characters which have been
“canonised” in recent times. And even in the case of Gordon does the present
generation feel about him as we older ones did, who watched his tragedy and
cherish his memory? If it comes to other than moral virtues, to figures
typifying factors in the structure of Society—Law, Kingship, Commerce, Labour?
Law would scarcely be a Lord Chancellor (or Justinian), but again Moses, with
the Tablets given him from The Mount. Kingship would hardly be a modern
sovereign—but Barbarossa as in the Spanish Chapel, or Charlemagne, or our own
King Arthur.
Commerce is, I confess, a
difficulty. I think possibly the gracious figure of Venice would be best.
Certainly not the Port of London Authority or Sir Alfred Mond or Lord
Leverhulme! For Labour, not that gorilla-like figure, with a huge jaw and no
back to its head, brandishing a pick or a hammer, so favoured by the advanced
politicians, and some sculptors, of to-day. But rather—the shepherds following
the angel to the lowly manger.
It follows then, that those who
wish to excel in stained glass designing should have a wide culture and real
imagination, a sound knowledge of the necessary technique, and a thorough
delight in the craft. I feel sure, too, that they would be all the better for
study and design in other methods of artistic expression in order to avoid that
staleness and repetition which too often comes to those who practice one form
of art alone.
ROBERT
ANNING BELL.