Feature

Bernard Rackham CB FSA (1876-1964)

This is the eighth instalment in our occasional series of articles about pioneering scholars of stained glass in the United Kingdom. It summarizes the life and work of Bernard Rackham CB, FSA (1876–1964), an important museum curator and author in the first half of the twentieth century. After joining the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1898, BR developed a growing interest in stained glass which eventually saw him publish numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, an informative guide to the Museum’s holdings in 1936, and a substantial volume on the ancient glass at Canterbury Cathedral in 1949. More significantly, by a combination of gift and purchase, he transformed the Museum’s already strong collection of stained glass into the largest and most comprehensive in the world, doubling the size of the collection and adding many examples of great rarity and beauty. A Bibliography of his writings about stained glass will be published as a separate feature in the next issue of Vidimus. [Fig. 1]

Fig. 1. Silhouette of BR, drawn by Miss Diana Marsh on 12 June, 1959 ©BSMGP Journal.

Fig. 1. Silhouette of BR, drawn by Miss Diana Marsh on 12 June, 1959 ©BSMGP Journal.

Bernard Rackham [BR] was born in London on 26 July 1876 in Lambeth, South London. His parents were Alfred Thomas Rackham (1829 -1912), a legal clerk who eventually became Admiralty Marshal of the High Court of Justice, and his wife, Anne (1833 -1920), a pious Baptist whose parents were successful lace manufacturers and retailers in the East Midlands, He was one of twelve children, four of whom died in infancy and another, Percy (1865 -1878), in adolescence. Alfred and Annie did everything they could for their surviving children. Apart from Bernard, their son Arthur (1867-1939) enjoyed considerable (and lasting) fame as a book illustrator; another, Harris (1868 -1944), became a distinguished classicist at Christ’s College, Cambridge; meanwhile Stanley (1877-1937) was a prize-winning agriculturalist and pioneer farmer in North-West Canada while Maurice (1879-1927), followed his brother, Harris, to Christ’s, Cambridge and his father into the Admiralty Court, only to be killed by an avalanche whilst skiing at Zürs in the Tyrol in 1927. Of their daughters, Margaret, ‘Meggy’, (1866-1925) died in tragic circumstances in 1925, while the life of Winifred (1873-1964) was inseparably intertwined with Bernard’s after she married Herbert Adams, a master at Dulwich College, and BR subsequently married Herbert’s sister Ruth. [Fig. 2]

BR was educated at the City of London School, an exclusive private day school near St Paul’s Cathedral, before being awarded an exhibition scholarship in 1895 to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took a First in the Classical Tripos in 1898 ( M.A. 1907). According to his granddaughter, Sarah Rackham, Bernard had been a strong rower in his youth and remained slim and fit for most of his life. He was a keen walker and took a cold bath every morning. Even in his eighties he retained a youthful and strikingly erect appearance. Writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a colleague summed him up as ‘highly strung and eager, overflowing with enthusiasm, and endowed with a keen sense of humour’.

Fig. 2. Wedding of H. E. Adams and Winifred Rackham, Aug, 1905. Bernard Rackham is 2nd in from the right, front row, sitting cross-legged. Courtesy of Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

Fig. 2. Wedding of H. E. Adams and Winifred Rackham, Aug, 1905. Bernard Rackham is 2nd in from the right, front row, sitting cross-legged. Courtesy of Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

After graduating from Cambridge BR won a competition for a £95 per annum Junior Assistant Keepership at the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) under a government scheme intended to raise academic standards in the museum service. Critics had previously alleged that the ‘constables’ (security staff) knew more about the objects than the curators!

His main interest at this time was the sculpture and art of ancient Greece and Rome but, as he explained in an unpublished memoir written in 1962, his career took a very different direction after joining the Museum. Presenting himself for work on his first day, he was immediately allocated to the Department of Ceramics and Glass for which he had ‘absolutely no special qualifications whatsoever’ and told to catalogue the pottery and porcelain collection. Faced with identifying over 5,000 pieces of pottery from all countries and time periods, he became fascinated by the subject, devising new ways of categorising the objects and eventually becoming an international authority, writing numerous articles and books. In later years he brought the same enthusiasm and scholarly rigour to stained glass.

Fig. 3. BR in 1903. Courtesy, Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

Fig. 3. BR in 1903. Courtesy, Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

Nor was this the only surprise on his first day. He had reported to work wearing, ‘a tail coat and top hat, the normal dress of civil servants in Whitehall and the Law Courts’, but soon discovered that some ‘latitude [for juniors] was tolerated’; dark lounge suits paired with a bowler hat were deemed acceptable. Other ‘dress rules’ included donning a hat whenever he [and other curators] ventured into the Museum galleries and, in later years when he was head of the department, keeping a pair of striped trousers and a short black jacket in an office cupboard in case he had to make a quick change of clothing if Queen Mary, the wife of George V, visited the Museum unexpectedly. [Fig. 3]

Little else is known about his first decade or so in the Museum. As mentioned earlier he concentrated on pottery and in 1910 his first book was published, A Book of Porcelain: Fine examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A year before he had married his sister-in-law Ruth Adams. It was to prove a long and happy partnership with Ruth often typing and copy-checking his articles and books, a skill she had honed while working for the Welsh Liberal MP, John Herbert Roberts, 1st Baron Clwyd (1863 -1955). In later life she supported the campaign for women’s votes alongside her far more politically active sister-in-law, Clara Dorothea Rackham (1875-1966), the wife of Harris. Like many other peoples’ lives BR’s was transformed by the First World War. Although he made enquiries about joining the army, his age (38) and limited qualifications counted against him. Instead he became the temporary, or acting, head of department when his superior, C. H. Wylde, who had been a cavalry officer in the South African (or Boer) war, was given a commission in a training regiment and took leave of absence from the Museum. In the years which followed, BR served in a local corps formed from members of the various museums in South Kensington and spent a few Sundays digging trenches in Warlingham on the Surrey North Downs for the possible defence of London. Other duties included keeping look-out for enemy Zeppelins from one of the towers of the Imperial Institute. Later he enrolled in Lord Kitchener’s ‘New Army’, but was not conscripted because his services were needed in the Museum, which, unlike some other institutions, had remained open for visitors throughout the war years.

Shortly after the Armistice was declared Rackham’s boss returned but almost instantly resigned on health grounds and BR was formally confirmed as head of the department. New dimensions and opportunities opened.

Fig. 4. Philip the Fair, Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges in Belgium, c. 1496 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 4. Philip the Fair, Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges in Belgium, c. 1496 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Stained glass had not always been shown well in the Museum. When BR joined in the 1890s most panels were displayed ‘in holes and corners in ground floor windows’ and although display frames were subsequently installed they were generally badly sited and awkwardly lit.

But once he had taken charge of the collection these and other problems were tackled with BR’s usual energy. Both his life, and the holdings of the Museum, were about to be transformed.

Almost immediately he was involved in the acquisition of one of the ‘star’ objects in the present collection, the figures of the Dukes of Burgundy and their consorts (wives), made originally for the chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges, c. 1496 (see: Fig. 4). Two c. 1470 French figures, including a Cardinal, from an unknown church in Normandy were also bought. Both sets were purchased from Grosvenor Thomas (1856-1923), a well-known dealer in antique stained glass who had also supplied pieces to the Museum in the pre-war years. A year later BR added a panel depicting the Last Supper, again from Grosvenor Thomas. Made c. 1505 by the stained glass workshop of Veit Hirschvogel the Elder, and adapted from a design by the artist Hans Baldung Grien (1484/5-1545), it had formerly been in the Augustinerkirche, St Veit, in Nuremburg. [Figs 4 & 5]

But none of these early purchases could compare with the first of three major acquisitions which enlarged the collection under BR’s watch; the unexpected gift in 1919 of seventy-two pieces belonging to the banker and philanthropist, John Pierpont Morgan Jnr., (1867-1943). They had been inherited by the American from his father and had been foraged from a variety of sources. Highlights included twelfth-century glass from Troyes Cathedral and exquisite Swiss panels c. 1500 made for Hugo von Hohenlandberg, the Bishop of Constance between 1496 and 1532. The collection had been on loan to the Museum since 1909 and had been expected to be exported to the United States after the war, but instead was given to ‘the people of Britain’ by JPM Jnr. ‘as a worthy memorial to [my] father, and by his sense of the close friendship of the English speaking nations which has been so greatly strengthened by the recent comradeship in arms’. [Fig. 6]

Rackham’s first foray into print about stained glass concerned a panel from this gift. ‘A stained glass panel from Landshut at the Victoria and Albert Museum’ appeared in The Burlington Magazine on March 1920, and discussed a c. 1309-14 window from the Cistercian Convent of Seligenthal, near Landshut, north of Munich in south-east Germany, depicting Agnes (d. 1361), the Duchess of Lower Bavaria. [Fig. 7]

Fig. 5. The Last Supper, from the Augustinerkirche, St Veit, in Nuremburg. c. 1505 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 5. The Last Supper, from the Augustinerkirche, St Veit, in Nuremburg. c. 1505 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 6. The First Temptation of Christ, Troyes Cathedral, c. 1170-80 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 6. The First Temptation of Christ, Troyes Cathedral, c. 1170-80 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 7. Agnes, the Duchess of Lower Bavaria, c. 1309-14 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 7. Agnes, the Duchess of Lower Bavaria, c. 1309-14 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

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Nor was Rackham’s growing interest in stained glass confined solely to the Museum. He was also aware of his responsibilities towards the wider community of collectors and artists. Thus just as he had become one of the twelve founder members of the Oriental Ceramics Circle in 1921, so too he supported the formation of the British Society of Master Glass Painters in the same year. He was elected one of its first Honorary Fellows at a Council meeting on 30 July 1921. In 1924 and 1925 he exhibited photographs of stained glass in the Museum at the Society’s AGM. In the same years he gave public lectures on the V&A collection and ‘Some Debatable Questions on the History of English Glass Painting’ at well-attended events designed to raise the Society’s profile and membership. Such gestures were acknowledged when he was elected one of the Society’s Vice-Presidents on 21st May 1931, a post he held until his death thirty-three years later.

In 1928 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Among his proposers were the stained glass historians John Alder Knowles (1881-1961) and Gordon McNeil Rushforth (1862-1938).

He also travelled widely, visiting most of the famous stained glass sites and museums in continental Europe and forging friendships and contacts wherever he went.

Meanwhile back at the Museum… in 1922 he bought a Swiss panel from the sale of the Engel Gros collection in Paris depicting a wild man and woman supporting the arms of Kyburg, a county north east of Zurich. It was painted c. 1490 and is attributed to Lukas Zeiner, an artist specialising in heraldic painting who is known to have worked in Zurich between 1479 and 1512 (see: forthcoming Bibliography 1929). In 1923 Rackham acquired, via the National Art Collections Fund, six c. 1450 roundels depicting the Labours of the Month from the sale of the contents of Cassiobury Park (near Watford, Hertfordshire) following the death of the 7th Earl of Essex. Such purchases revealed not just BR’s preferences and ambitions for the collection, but also the availability of glass and the funds to purchase it plus the strength of his contacts and reputation. Money was always scarce, particularly during economic depressions, as at the time the Museum was under the control of a government department, the Ministry of Education and not, as today, an independent institution with its own trustees and funds. Moreover it often faced stiff competition from American museums and hugely rich collectors such as the newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) and the Scottish collector, Sir William Burrell (1861-1958). [Figs 8, 9]

Fig. 8. Wild Man and Woman supporting Arms of Kyburg, c. 1490 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 8. Wild Man and Woman supporting Arms of Kyburg, c. 1490 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 9. Labour of the Month [August]; harvesting of spring wheat, c. 1450 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 9. Labour of the Month [August]; harvesting of spring wheat, c. 1450 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 10. Scenes from the Life of St Stephen, c. 1220 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 10. Scenes from the Life of St Stephen, c. 1220 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

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In 1924, again thanks to the Art Fund and the generosity of Sir Otto Beit, KCMG (1865-1930), a wealthy German-born British financier and philanthropist, the Museum added two scenes joined together in a composite panel from an otherwise lost cycle of paintings depicting incidents in the Life of St Stephen. They have been dated c. 1220 and are thought to have originated from the Ile de France or Champagne regions of France. Rackham particularly admired their ‘strength of drawing’. [Fig. 10]

The same year BR took the opportunity to purchase a roundel c. 1420-40 depicting St Edmund the Martyr which had belonged to the owner of Hardwick House (now demolished), near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk (see: Bibliography 1925). In 1924 he strengthened the collection again by buying a German roundel of c. 1480-5 showing St Peter standing on a rocky landscape. It came via the dealer, Wilfred Drake (1879-1948). Although its original location is unknown, the design itself is derived from the work of Martin Schongauer (1448 -1491), a painter and designer regarded as the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer. [Figs 11 and 12]

Fig. 11. St Edmund the Martyr, c. 1420-40 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 11. St Edmund the Martyr, c. 1420-40 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 12. St Peter after Martin Schongauer, c. 1480-85 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 12. St Peter after Martin Schongauer, c. 1480-85 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

An article by Rackham in The Burlington Magazine in 1925 sums up his growing scholarship in stained glass. It concerned a panel c. 1375 depicting Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem that had been bought by one of his predecessors in 1912 and catalogued as English. But having researched the glass, BR revealed that it had been made originally as part of a Passion series in the choir windows of Erfurt Cathedral in Thuringia, central Germany (see: ‘Franconian panel’, Bibliography 1925).

In 1928 Rackham oversaw the second transformational addition to the Museum’s collection of glass; a major gift of over a hundred panels of exceptionally fine German Renaissance glass painting from the chapel at Ashridge Park (Hertfordshire). The panels had been bought by the 1st Earl Brownlow (1779-1853) from the Norwich-based art dealer John Christopher Hampp (1750-1825) and installed in the chapel between 1811 and 1831. When the glass was put up for auction at Sotheby’s after the death of the 3rd Earl it fetched £27,000. The purchaser/donor was Ernest Edward Cook (1865 –1955), the wealthy grandson of Thomas Cook, the travel entrepreneur. All bar three of the 119 panels were given immediately to the Museum with the remainder following in 1945. The collection included examples from the cloisters of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Steinfeld (c. 1522-40), the Cistercian Abbey of Mariawald (1522-40), both in the Eifel district between Cologne and Trier, and the Charterhouse of St Barbara in Cologne. One of the Steinfeld panels showing Christ and his Disciples crossing the Brook of Cedron includes the monogram of the painter, Gerhard Remisch. [Figs 13, 14, 15]

Fig. 13. Christ and his Disciples crossing the Brook of Cedron, from the cloister of the Abbey of Steinfeld, c. 1534 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 13. Christ and his Disciples crossing the Brook of Cedron, from the cloister of the Abbey of Steinfeld, c. 1534 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 14. Detail showing the monogram of Gerhard Remisch © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 14. Detail showing the monogram of Gerhard Remisch © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 15. St Cornelius from the cloister of the Abbey of Mariawald, 1522-26 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 15. St Cornelius from the cloister of the Abbey of Mariawald, 1522-26 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

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Cook was a shy and retiring man, who insisted that his gift to the V & A remain anonymous, and it was only after his death that his name was released. Although described as ‘rich and eccentric’ by James Lees Milne (1908-1997) in his memoir, Ancestral Voices, Cook was a generous and discerning benefactor to British art. He also gave Boarstall Tower, Montacute House and the Bath Assembly Rooms to the National Trust and at his death in 1955 he left the largest ever bequest of pictures, furniture and decorative objects to the National Art Collection Fund. The Ashridge collection prompted Rackham to write the first of several articles about the glass, beginning with a reprint of the accounts book of Hampp, the dealer who had sold the glass to Brownlow. The book had been found in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, by its curator, Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962), who shared the discovery with BR. Later articles dealt with the imagery and history of the glass (see: Bibliography 1944). He also identified two further panels from Steinfeld Abbey in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel in Bristol (see: Bibliography 1935). A steady stream of new acquisitions followed in the 1930s including two c. 1520 Netherlandish roundels depicting the cautionary story of Sorgheloos, a reckless man who fell into destitution after a carefree and irresponsible life (bought 1929 from Wilfred Drake); a grisaille panel with a female head, now thought to be from the Abbey Church of St Denis, Paris, c. 1320-4 (bought 1930); two c. 1350-55 panels from the Pilgrimage Church at Strassengel, near Graz, Austria, depicting the Annunciation to St Anne and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (bought 1930); two panels of English glass from the chapel at Hampton Court in Herefordshire c. 1420-35 perhaps made originally for Hereford Cathedral (bought 1931), and three late fifteenth-century English roundels depicting Labours of the Month, probably from the church of St Michael-at-Coslany, Norwich (bought 1931). They depicted the Labours for August, September, and October. A fourth roundel from the same series is now in the Burrell Museum in Scotland. [Figs 16, 17]

Fig. 16. Sorgheloos, c. 1520 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 16. Sorgheloos, c. 1520 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

In 1935 BR was appointed a part-time lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and in 1936 the Museum published his Guide to the Collections of Stained Glass, one of the best short summaries of the whole subject in any language. It remained an indispensable guide for many years. As he was sixty years of age and due to retire, this event should have been his swan-song; instead he was asked to remain as Keeper of the Department for another two years, during which time he supervised the third transformative addition to the Museum, the purchase of twenty-one panels from the sale of the F[rederick] E. Sidney collection of stained glass in December 1937. BR was already familiar with this glass as he had written a two-part article about its continental panels in 1929 when they were still displayed in Sidney’s mock Jacobean home, Moreton, in Hampstead, north London. The purchase included examples of 15th century English glass and a Quatrefoil (four-lobed panel) made c. 1505-10 by the famous Veit Hirschvogel the Elder workshop in Nuremberg.

In 1937 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB), an order of chivalry traditionally reserved for senior civil servants or military officers.

In 1938 he bought his final panel from Wilfred Drake, a superb German roundel of c. 1480 showing two knights flanking a yellow shield with the imperial eagle in black, probably from the house of the Teutonic knights at Gelnhausen. It had previously belonged to the Hearst collection. [Fig.18]

Fig. 17. Annunciation to St Anne, Strassengel, near Graz, c. 1350-55 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 17. Annunciation to St Anne, Strassengel, near Graz, c. 1350-55 © Victoria & Albert Museum London.

It was a fitting farewell to what had been a remarkably successful career at the Museum. Apart from acquiring glass and publishing prodigiously about ceramics (even learning Danish in order to translate Emil Hannover’s encyclopaedic Keramisk Haandbog, subsequently published in three volumes in 1925 as Pottery and Porcelain), Rackham had been widely admired as a skilful manager of his department, particularly adept at the political manoeuvrings and turf wars over funding, staff and space that dominated the internal dynamics of the Museum. According to the ODNB entry cited earlier, he was also extremely conscientious and demanded similarly high standards from his subordinates.

One of his protégés was [Sir] Herbert Read (1893-1968, knighted 1953), who later found fame as an art historian, war poet, and political philosopher. Read joined the department in 1922 and soon developed a strong interest in ceramics and stained glass. Apart from contributing articles about new acquisitions to the V&A collection for The Burlington Magazine, he also wrote an interesting book about English Stained Glass, published in 1926, which he dedicated to Rackham.

After BR’s retirement in 1938, he continued to write about stained glass (and ceramics) for many years. And in what proved to become the beginning of almost a second career he accepted an invitation to become a member of the Council of the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, an independent voluntary organisation of between 4000 – 6000 members. It was a position he held until he resigned in 1957 citing ‘indifferent health’; the Friends showed their appreciation of his services by making him an honorary council member until his death. It was a relationship that would bring him both satisfaction and disappointments, although fortunately not in equal measures.

Fig. 18. Shield of Arms with Knight Supporters, c. 1480© Victoria & Albert Museum London.

Fig. 18. Shield of Arms with Knight Supporters, c. 1480© Victoria & Albert Museum London.

As early as 1928 he had written about the Canterbury glass, and there is little doubt that he hoped to study it further after his retirement, but once again his life was interrupted by war.

During WWII BR’s emotions were tested when his son Harold, who had also been to Cambridge and similarly joined the civil service after graduating, refused to fight, declaring himself a pacifist and conscientious objector, as did his prospective son-in-law, Kenneth Bundy, who was engaged to his daughter, Bertha. The Conscientious Objectors’ Tribunal upheld Harold’s claim but rejected Kenneth’s, and sentenced him to imprisonment. The family were distressed by what they perceived as double standards. After Kenneth’s release and marriage to Bertha, Bernard and Ruth encouraged him to widen his horizons and he eventually became an architect working on, among other projects, the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Surrey.

Despite such personal traumas, BR remained active in glass and ceramic circles. He edited the Journal of the Surrey Archaeological Society (1943-47), and wrote articles about stained glass in Surrey and elsewhere. He also contributed articles about the Canterbury glass, including the Great West window, to the Annual Reports of the Friends and the Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle, and at some stage he was also approached to write a major catalogue of the early glass. [Fig. 19]

The circumstances were favourable for such a study. In 1939 all the medieval windows had been removed for safekeeping. Before their reinstatement Rackham spent hours discussing various panels with Samuel Caldwell Junior (1862-1963), who had been head of the Cathedral’s glazing team since 1906. During his long career SC Jnr had handled every panel at least once, possibly twice. Rackham had no doubt about the debt he owed Caldwell, writing later, ‘no one living can rival him in his knowledge of the windows, derived from a long life devoted chiefly to their care and maintenance’.

Fig. 19. Adam Delving, c. 1175-80, Great West Window of Canterbury Cathedral.

Fig. 19. Adam Delving, c. 1175-80, Great West Window of Canterbury Cathedral.

The Ancient Glass of Canterbury Cathedral (1949) was a sumptuous book, limited to 960 copies, handsomely bound in blue cloth, printed on thick paper and benefiting from 20 hand coloured tipped in plates which one reviewer described as rendering ‘ the translucent quality of the glass with a faithfulness which has seldom been attained hitherto’. The author was called ‘the greatest living authority on stained glass in this country’. The text was generally praised for its scholarly and informative descriptions of the glass.

But there were also some prescient misgivings. An expert on medieval glass in Kent complained that some panels described by BR as possibly coming from Archbishop Lanfranc’s nave had actually been removed from Petham parish church. Walter Oakeshott, a distinguished medievalist wondered if all the panels Rackham described were actually original. Without realising it at the time both men had stumbled upon one of the Cathedral’s darkest secrets. For never once during BR’s discussions with Caldwell had the veteran glazier admitted that some of the windows he said or implied were genuine were either almost total reconstructions or bogus ‘thirteenth-century’ panels that he had skilfully ‘made-up’ in his workshop from old glass. One result was that Rackham unwittingly included some of these ‘forgeries’ and ‘misdirections’ in his catalogue of the glass.

In later correspondence with his publisher, BR said that he had been unable to personally check the authenticity of every panel because he had pressurised to produce the book as quickly as possible. But after Oakeshott’s review was published in The Antiquaries Journal (April 1951) he insisted on several sessions with Caldwell during which he asked him to describe all the repairs/alterations that he had made to the windows. It has been suggested that these disclosures led to Caldwell’s overdue retirement in 1952. It also meant that many of the worst excesses were corrected by Rackham when his later, and very successful, guide to The Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury Cathedral was published in 1957 by the Society for Promoting of Christian Knowledge (SPCK).

Fortunately BR’s other contributions to the Cathedral had a happier outcome. In 1944 he was invited to join a small committee to discuss the replacement of glass that had been lost during the war. In 1953 he was asked to recommend the names of glass painters who might be considered for a shortlist to make some of these new windows. Among those he suggested were Carl Edwards, Moira Forsyth, Francis Spear, Laurence Lee, Geoffrey Harper, G. Cooper Abbs, Joseph Nuttgens, Rachel de Montmorency (a pupil of Christopher Whall), and his clear favourite Ervin Bossanyi, an émigré Hungarian who had fled to England in the 1930s.

Notwithstanding his interest in medieval glass, Rackham always admired contemporary artists in both glass and ceramics. He had championed Wilhelmina Geddes (1887-1955) in the 1930s, praising her as ‘fearless’ and ‘daring’ and hailing her 1922 Crucifixion window at Wallsend, North Tyneside, as ‘one of the noblest works of religious and decorative art of our time’. In a letter to the Dean of Canterbury in 1944 he regretted that painters like Paul Nash (1889-1946) and Duncan Grant (1885-1978) had never taken up glass painting. He was also a fan of the pottery of Bernard Leach (1887-1979).

And when the Cathedral chose Bossanyi to glaze four windows in the South Eastern Transept and the Steward of the Friends wrote to him to say that she thought the results were ‘really terrible’ he refused to concede a single point, telling her that they were ‘splendid’. [Fig. 20]

Fig. 20. Detail of window by Erwin Bossanyi, Canterbury Cathedral.

Fig. 20. Detail of window by Erwin Bossanyi, Canterbury Cathedral.

Fig. 21. Bernard Rackham as ‘Rembrancer’ of Guildford, c. 1950.

Fig. 21. Bernard Rackham as ‘Rembrancer’ of Guildford, c. 1950.

Fig. 22. Bernard and Ruth in the garden at Fort Road, Guildford. Courtesy, Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

Fig. 22. Bernard and Ruth in the garden at Fort Road, Guildford. Courtesy, Anne S. Wright, Rackham family archive.

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Apart from the importance of Canterbury in his post-retirement years, BR was also active in a number of other organisations. He had a powerful work ethic. His granddaughter remembers him always surrounded by books and letters. He remained prominent (and active) in ceramic circles for twenty years after his retirement from the Museum and continued to write reviews of books about stained glass for The Burlington Magazine until the late 1950s.

He was also a keen local historian. As mentioned earlier he edited the Surrey Archaeological Society’s journal, Surrey Archaeological Collections 1943 – 47. In addition, he contributed articles to the SAC about the seventeenth-century glass at Compton (1942); the heraldic glass in Guildford Guildhall (1950), and various fragments, figural and heraldic, at the church of St John the Evangelist, Stoke, Guildford (1958). He also lectured about stained glass to local historical societies, as at Leatherhead in 1953, where he spoke about ‘Stained Glass in Surrey’. For many years he represented the Surrey Archaeological Society on the Library, Museum and Arts Committee of Guildford Borough Council. Between 1943 -1950, he was the honorary ‘Remembrancer’ of Guildford (an appointment created in May 1933 for recording the town’s history and still maintained today). He was also President of the Guildford Arts Society 1947-52. Perhaps inevitably he took an interest in the glazing plans for the new Guildford Cathedral, built ‎1936-1961. [Fig.21]

But problems of age and health finally proved too much. As they he grew older BR and Ruth left their home at 9, Poyle Road, Guildford, and moved to 26, Fort Road in the same town, a newly built house which they shared with Bertha and Kenneth Bundy. Ruth died in 1963. After several strokes Bernard entered the Hillbrow Nursing Home, Liss, Hampshire, and died on the 13 February 1964, aged 87. He was cremated. His estate was valued at £9,990. [Fig. 22]

Roger Rosewell FSA

Thanks to:

Caroline Benyon for information about the early history of the BSMGP

The Archivist & Staff, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Box reference: U197, papers deposited by Harold Rackham (son of BR) in 1993, and for help with the Bibliography

Professor Madeline Caviness for information about Samuel Caldwell Junior

Allison Graham, Guildford Arts Society, for the photograph of BR as ‘Remembrancer’ of Guilford and other information

The Archivist, Medway Archives, for help with the Bibliography

Librarian and Staff, The National Art Library, for help with the Bibliography

Leslie Smith, Honorary Librarian of the BSMGP, for help with the Bibliography

Sarah Rackham, granddaughter of BR (daughter of Harold Rackham), for family information

Librarian and Staff, the Society of Antiquaries of London, for help with the Bibliography

Paul Williamson, OBE, Keeper of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass 2001-2016, Victoria & Albert Museum , London

Anne S. Wright (great niece of BR) for permission to quote from Bernard Rackham, Some Notes on a career in the South Kensington Victoria and Albert Museum, 1898 -1938, signed and dated Guildford 18th May 1962, and for family photographs

Further Reading: Anthony Burton, “Cultivating the First Generation of Scholars at the Victoria and Albert Museum,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 14, no. 2 (Summer 2015), http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/summer15/burton-on-first-generation-of-scholars-at-victoria-and-albert-museum (accessed ‎February‎ ‎23‎, ‎2019)

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