Books
Just published
The Buildings of England: Shropshire, by John Newman and Nicolas Pevsner
A revised and much-expanded version of Pevsner’s Shropshire has been published by Yale University Press as part of the Buildings of England series. The new version supersedes the original 1958 edition and includes good accounts of the medieval glass at St Mary’s Shrewsbury and St Laurence’s, Ludlow. Details of early glass at lesser known churches such as Atcham, Battlefield and Donington are also described. The book is priced £29.95. It is hard-back and has 768 pages and 120 colour illustrations.
The CVMA Picture Archive includes images of the glass at several Shropshire churches, including St Mary’s, Shrewsbury; St Mary Magdalene, Battlefield; and St Chad, Prees.
The British Society of Master Glass Painters’ Journal for 2006 has been published. Largely devoted to Scottish glass, the issue includes essays on a whole range of topics, including the glazing history of Rosslyn Chapel; and a study of two early seventeenth-century enamel portrait panels depicting James VI of Scotland (James I of England) and his English favourite, George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham), now in the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
For further details and to order a copy, visit the British Society of Master Glass Painters’ website.
To coincide with the exhibition at the Getty Museum covered in this issue’s News section, the Getty Museum has published a well-illustrated guide to its collection of French manuscripts. Thomas Kren’s French Illuminated Manuscripts in the J. Paul Getty Museum is a 144-page soft-back book with 113 colour plates, priced $19.95.
Copies are available from the Getty Museum’s on-line bookstore.
Websites
The Dean’s Eye rose window in the north transept of Lincoln Cathedral is one of the most important examples of medieval stained glass in Europe. It was begun in 1220 and completed in 1235. Fascinating information about this window and details about its recent restoration can now be found at the official Lincoln Cathedral website, www.lincolncathedral.com. One of the window’s tracery panels is shown above.
For further reading about this window, see N. J. Morgan, The Medieval Painted Glass of Lincoln Cathedral, Corpus Vitrearum GB, Occasional Paper III (Oxford, 1983).
The British Society of Master Glass Painters has unveiled the improved version of its website, www.bsmgp.org.uk.
For art historians specialzing in glass, perhaps the most exciting innovation of the new design is the introduction of a fully searchable index of the Society’s Journal. Since its inception in 1924, the Journal has published many important articles about medieval glass. Back issues and photocopies of articles can be obtained from the Society on request, and further details about this service can be found online.
Other features of the new design include details of how to join the Society on-line and a members’ messageboard and forum facility.