As restrictions continue across the UK and much of Europe, online resources and events are more welcome than ever. An increasing number of organisations are working to make lectures and exhibitions available online. A few of our favourites are below, and we encourage readers to get in touch with online exhibitions, resources and events to watch out for later in the year.
British Society of Master Glass Painters
The BSMGP’s Spring Lecture will be held online on 12th March at 7pm. The BSMGP is delighted to welcome back Alf Fisher MBE FMGP, who will talk about his many years of stained glass and his memories of some of the characters from the British Society of Master Glass Painters history. Tickets are £5 and can be booked online [https://www.bsmgp.org.uk/news-events/events/lectures/]
Recordings of some of the BSMGP’s previous webinars, including Judith Schaechter’s recent talk ‘Keep Calm and Think About Glass’, are also available to view online (tickets for the recording are £5/£4.25 for members).
Churches Conservation Trust
The Churches Conservation Trust has been running a wonderful free series of lectures, livestreamed via Facebook every Thursday. You can see upcoming lectures here. They hope to include more lectures on stained glass in this year’s programme.
Past lectures are also available online and cover a wide range of topics, including stained glass.
The Churches Conservation Trust has also put together several excellent virtual tours, which are free to view online. Our favourite explores the wonderful fifteenth-century east window of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York.
Contemporary Glass Exhibition: Journeys – Teithiau
An exhibition of contemporary stained glass Journeys – Teithiau, which would have been held in the summer of 2020 has moved online. It features work by contemporary artists Jonathan Cooke, Catrin Davies, Nicola Kantorowicz FMGP, Elizabeth Lamont, Rachel Phillips, Christian Ryan AMGP and Caroline Swash FMGP. The exhibition can be viewed online here.
There are now plans for the exhibition to be held at the Stained Glass Museum in Ely Cathedral from 8th March – 25th June 2021. It will then travel north to the beautiful market town of Barnard Castle in mid-July 2021, as part of a mini-festival in St Mary’s church. For more details, please check the Journeys – Teithiau website.
Contemporary Glass Society
The Contemporary Glass Society is running a Lockdown Series of Online Glass Exhibitions. Each month, a new exhibition will launch online, with past exhibitions also available to view. The latest exhibition “A POSTCARD FROM…..”, inspired by Alan J Poole, features small pieces (under 15 x 15cm). These captivating works, which offer thought-provoking, evocative and downright whimsical interpretations of the theme, are all for sale (and at very reasonable prices!).
The exhibitions can be viewed here.
Leicestershire Historic Churches Trust
The Leicestershire Historic Churches Trust has two online lectures planned in March. Both lectures will be held via Zoom and tickets are £5 each to support the work of the Leicestershire Historic Churches Trust. For more information and to book tickets, please click here.
Wednesday 10 March 7.30pm
Dr Miriam Gill: Mistaken Medieval identities in Leicestershire Church Art
Wednesday 24 March 7.30pm
Roger Willson: 20th-century Stained Glass in Leicestershire – Trends and Highlights
Stained Glass Museum
The Stained Glass Museum has scheduled a series of online lectures this spring, covering a diverse range of fascinating topics.
All lectures are £5 general admission, £4 for Friends. For more information and to book tickets, please click here.
Wednesday 24 February 2021, 7pm (GMT)
The Stained Glass of Douglas Hamilton with Jeff Hopewell
This talk will give an insight into the life and work of Glasgow stained glass artist Douglas Hamilton (1895-1959), setting his importance in the wider context of 20th century Scottish stained glass. Hamilton trained with Alf Webster and the Stephen Adam Studio in Glasgow, and spent some time at the studio of Guthrie & Wells before setting up his own studio in the city from 1938 until his death in 1959. Whilst looking at his work in general, within the development of stained glass in Scotland we will pay particular attention to his war memorial windows and depictions of everyday life.
Wednesday 3 March 2021, 7pm (GMT)
Welsh Saints in Stained Glass with Martin Crampin
Welsh saints are embedded in the landscape of Wales in its place-names and the churches dedicated to them. From the 1880s, an increasing number of native saints were depicted in the stained glass of these churches as expressions of local, regional and national identity. This talk will outline the changing representations of Welsh saints in stained glass from the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first, with a particular focus on St David, whose feast day falls on 1 March. The study of the representation of a single saint provides an opportunity to compare the approaches and styles of a wide variety of artists and studios and has revealed some curious discoveries regarding consistencies in design and the reuse of cartoons.
Wednesday 10 March 2021, 7pm
How to identify the makers of 19th Century Stained Glass Windows with Chris Parkinson
A hinderance in studying 19th century-stained glass is that many panels are not signed by their makers. The preponderance of windows in the gothic revival style can make it difficult to discern one maker from another. In this talk Chris Parkinson will share tips on how to identify windows by some of the largest 19th-century stained glass manufacturers, such as the London-based firms Clayton & Bell, Lavers & Barraud and Heaton, Butler & Bayne.
Wednesday 14 April 2021, 7pm (GMT)
Mark Angus: A Dialogue between Poetry and Abstraction
In this illustrated talk Mark Angus will tell some stories from architectural commissions, mainly for churches, over forty years: Working as a stained glass artist has wonderful aspects, one of which involves meeting many wonderful people. Half way through however, this journey took an unexpected turn and he moved to Bavaria. Almost like starting a new career, but with the advantage of living close to the Lamberts Glass factory, and with access to a large acid etching bay which opened new artistic pathways for Mark. In the second part of the talk Mark will discuss his autonomous exhibition panels, and new themes such as the Ark, the “Puer Aeternus” figure, angels, and include a short deviation into “80 Capriccios and the Turbulences of the Self”.
Wednesday 21 April 2021, 7pm (GMT)
Medieval Treasures of Leicester: Wygston’s House Glass with Erica Statham
The stained glass Erica Statham will be talking about is known as Wygston’s House Glass, 13 panels of which are on display at the Newarke Houses museum in Leicester, normally open on a daily basis. The panels were originally made in the 15th century for a house built around 1490, which is now owned by Leicester City Council and leased to a bar and restaurant. There were 27 glass panels originally, depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, the medieval catholic liturgy and the 7 works of mercy (eg feeding the hungry etc). This is a unique opportunity to find out more about this charming glass and to see those panels that are not normally on display.
Where possible, previous lectures are available on The Stained Glass Museum’s YouTube channel.
You can find out about the latest events at the Stained Glass Museum here.
Worshipful Company of Glaziers
The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass are continuing to host events online. Many of these are open to non-members, and the full programme (updated February 2021) can be downloaded from their website.
On Tuesday 23rd February at 18:00 (GMT), the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass will be hosting a repeat of Anna Warrillow’s popular virtual tour ‘The History of the City of London as told through its Stained Glass Windows’. Enjoy a fascinating virtual journey through the streets of London to discover its hidden gems. There will be plenty of time for questions.
Booking details are here. Tickets are £10 per household + booking fee.
Full details and links to registration can be found here.
York Minster Navigator
Fig. 1. York Minster Stained Glass Navigator (Image by YGT and © of The Chapter of York. Reproduced by kind permission of YGT and The Chapter of York)
Serendipitously, York Glaziers Trust’s York Minster Stained Glass Navigator launched shortly after lockdown began (see Issue 131). Having launched with the Great East Window and St Cuthbert Window, work to add more of York Minster’s windows to the Navigator has continued apace, and three of the nave aisle windows can now be explored online in incredible detail.
The Navigator can be accessed directly using the link: https://stainedglass-navigator.yorkglazierstrust.org or can be entered from the home page of the YGT website: http://www.yorkglazierstrust.org
