Detour to Droitwich

Droitwich Town mural by Philippa Threlfall and Kennedy Collings, made in 1976 and restored this year by the artist.

I’ve been to some really interesting places just because they are a stopping off point on the way to somewhere else - like Droitwich Spa, seven minutes drive from the M5 and therefore on our route up the motorway on Christmas Eve this year. In the centre is the town’s cherished mosaic mural, beautifully made by Philippa Threlfall in 1979; her work was widely commissioned for public art projects from the 1960s up to the present day. I knew there were six churches in the town and the picture of the Catholic Church with its tall exotic looking bell tower, at top right in the mural, sent us straight there.

Inside the Church of the Sacred Heart and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire.

The Roman Catholic Church of of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria was designed (in the early Christian style) by F Barry Peacock and commissioned by Walter Loveridge Hodgkinson, it opened in 1921. There are photographs showing white walls when the church opened, now they are covered in mosaic, mostly executed from 1922 - 1932 by the experienced mosaicists Maurice Josey and Fred Oates to a design by Gabriel Pippet. These are mosaics made with glass tesserae that sparkle when you turn the lights on, their design unmistakably influenced by Pippet’s time spent in Rome and Ravenna, down to the row of beasts (supposedly hart) that trot around the curve of the apse as the sheep do in St Apollinanare, Ravenna. The lower walls are lined with grey, green and blue marble that creates a beautiful surface.

In the photos of the small side chapels (below) you can see how the gold on the back of the tesserae glows behind the Nativity scene and the mosaic of the church itself. On the north side the middle row of mosaics shows the Life of the Virgin, those on the south side illustrate the life of St Richard of Chichester (also know as Richard de Wych) who was born near Droitwich.

Left: Nativity scene in the south aisle. Right: North aisle with nativity above and mosaic image of the church below.

The Chapel of Our Lady with St Francis mosaic and initials of the mosaics’ designer and maker.

Two squarish vaulted chapels with their own apses are smothered with the most lavish designs. On the north east corner the Chapel of Our Lady is mostly golden, with scenes from the life of St Francis of Assisi that is filled with plants and birds. Next to that I found the initials of designer and maker - OPUS G.P. & M.J. (above right). On the opposite south east corner of the church is the Chapel of St Catherine, in predominantly deep blue tesserae, with angels flying towards the wheel in the centre of the ceiling (below right).

The Chapel of St Catherine

Which brings me to the windows, that are not made of white glass as it appears in the photos where the numerous electric lights are shining on to the walls. They are in fact leaded lights in a lovely range of pale coloured hand blown glass. The ones on the lower level are leaded in a few different scale patterns (below right from St Catherine’s Chapel) while the higher level ones use linked circles. The most ambitious window is on the west wall (below left) surrounded by flying angels above a row of saints. These subtle and satisfying window designs are perfect partners for the mosaic patterns that surround them and extend right into the window reveals.

Left: West Wall with the Nine Choirs of Angels in flight. Right: Window detail from St Catherine’s Chapel.

Mouth Blown Glass Sheet

The traditional way to make coloured glass for stained glass artists to use is by blowing it, first into a bubble which is elongated by swinging it, then cutting the ends off to make a cylinder which is cut down the middle and then flattened into a sheet. These stages are shown in illustrations from different eras of glassmaking above and below.

When I started making stained glass windows you could buy sheets of glass known as ‘antique glass’ (because it was made by the antique mouth blowing method) made in Sunderland by Hartley Wood and Company. However Hartley Woods closed in 1997 and we started buying glass that was made in mainly Germany, France, America or Poland. When the company English Antique Glass stopped blowing sheet glass in 2022 ‘mouth blown sheet glass making’ was declared to be extinct in the UK by the Heritage Crafts Red List, where stained glass is listed as a still viable craft.

Eliot Walker and assistant Ryan working in the hot glass workshop at Blowfish Glass, Stourbridge.

On a mission to change this situation, the glassblower Eliot Walker (with Blowfish Glass) has started blowing sheet for stained glass on the site of the Red House Glass Cone in Stourbridge’s historic glass quarter. He learnt the tricks of the trade at Fremont Glass in Seattle, using a method suitable for small scale production. I took these photos (above and below) on a recent visitors’ day demonstration, a mesmerising watch that I would recommend to anyone.

The stages of turning a glass bubble into a cylinder.

The most fascinating part is not the blowing but the turning of the cylinder into the sheet - a process I will never describe in that airy way again when people ask me how the coloured glass I use is made. The cylinder was cold when it was cut (above right), Eliot then had to carry it with his tongs to the hot kiln, where the glass leaped around in a strange spiral before settling down (below left) and then being smoothed (bashed down rather) with a damp stick. The glass sheets that are made by this process are smooth and even, around 3mm thick, but contain beautiful colours and markings (below).

Left: The cylinder is flattened in the kiln. Right: six blown glass sheets on the Blowfish Gallery wall.

A box of offcuts: Left, as blown. Right, after flattening in my kiln (& with other coloured glass scraps added).

I’ve been adding antique glass into my smaller scale work recently, and have been running out of the streakies in my glass scrap boxes. So I bought a box of offcuts at Blowfish Glass that were the pieces from the slot that was cut down the middle or from the neck or base of the cylinder. The glass is easy to cut and mostly flashed (meaning the colours are in layers that can be removed) so will be ideal for sandblasting and maybe painting.

Two new pieces: Piece One, Piece Two

Before putting them away I couldn’t resist trying out a few pieces in combination with other glasses. I made four small pieces with an offcut in each one as follows:

Piece One: When I put the orange/green streaky next to a plain pale purple the combination was electric. Grey round the edge for a calming border.

Piece Two: The most lovely piece of cylinder neck glass - how would the streaky colours look next to black or white glass in comparison to the grey that I often use?

Piece Three: A panel that needed a border, miraculous colours that enhance the original piece.

Piece Four: This one was made to look like a window. The chunky glass from the cylinder bottom becomes a piece of sky or landscape next to the detailed painting that I did for an example panel.

Two old pieces with new glass added: Piece Three, Piece Four

An Introduction to Hans Feibusch

Left: The Baptism of Christ Chichester Cathedral 1951. Right: The Ascension Bishop’s Palace, Chichester 1953.

I first saw the work of Hans Feibusch in Chichester Cathedral where his painting, The Baptism of Christ, is part of a significant collection of mid twentieth century artworks. The Baptism of Christ (above left) is called a mural although it doesn’t really look like one, it is framed in white and about the size of a small door - indeed it was initially commissioned to cover up the site of a door in the baptistry. Feibusch was championed by George Bell, the bishop of Chichester who was active as a member of the House of Lords during World War II and who had a particular interest in helping German refugees especially those, like Hans Feibusch, who were Jewish. As a result Feibusch’s work was commissioned for churches throughout the south of England, particularly in Sussex. The mural in the chapel of the Bishop’s Palace in Chichester (above right) is an example I particularly like, with its coloured window and group of people on the left of the fragmented composition.

Left: St Mary’s Church, Goring-by-Sea. Right: Detail of angel from mural on the chancel arch.

I wasn’t keen when I first saw his work, with figures in a style somewhere between neo classical and expressionist, but in light and bright colour combinations. As I’ve seen more examples recently I have found that they really do work as murals, enhancing but not dominating the architecture. At Goring-by-Sea (above and below) the figures seem to float on the chancel wall in a colour range that is more restrained than usual. The details of wings and drapery in the angels that surround Christ in Majesty are decorative and expressive, uplifting even.

Christ in Majesty St Mary’s, Goring-by-Sea 1954.

Left: St John’s Church, Waterloo. Right The Crucifixion 1951.

Among the numerous Feibusch works in London churches, are two in St John’s Church, Waterloo (above and below), installed after the war on the east wall as an alternative to the window that had been blown out during the war. St John’s, built in the Greek Revival style with a facade like a temple, was built in 1822-24 and was restored again in 2022 resulting in a white interior with some imaginative interior walls between which the Feibusch murals take centre stage. The Crucifixion (above right) is a wonderful piece of expressionist painting, in this work you can see his early German influences, in particular Max Beckmann. Underneath is a smaller mural, Adoration of the Shepherds (below right) with figures on the same scale but seemingly cropped and crowded into the gilded frame. It is hard to get the feeling of intimacy from this work when you are looking at it from a distance and as a slightly incongruous part of an interior scheme.

Left: Inside St John’s, Waterloo. Right: Adoration of the Shepherds 1951.

St Alban the Martyr, Holborn. Left: Exterior (west elevation) Right: Interior, lower west wall.

Feibusch’s largest single work is in the church where he worshipped, St Alban the Martyr in Holborn. This is a magnificent, soaring church designed by Butterfield on a cramped site and built in 1861-3. After World War Two bombing it was partially rebuilt and restored by Adrian Gilbert Scott, with the mural and the stations of the cross added by Feibusch in 1966. It remains an Anglo-Catholic church (as described on the church entrance wall, above centre), inside it is quite simple with elegant decoration on the floor, ceilings, walls and in the fittings, rather than being an attempt to recreate the superb detail that was in the original Butterfield interior.

St Alban, Holborn. Looking east with The Trinity in Glory 1966

The Trinity in Glory mural on the east wall (where there was never a window) is over 15 metres tall, a pointed arch filled with figures that circle around the risen Christ, some recognizable people from the church at the time but also in Feibusch’s words “a continuous upward-flowing stream of anonymous worshippers.” The way these figures, in the familiar Feibusch pastel colours, are ordered in overlapping groups rather than with the depth of perspective reminds me of other decorative art forms, like tapestry or even stained glass. When I was there the low sun through a row of clerestory windows threw shapes of light on the mural’s surface that looked just like flying doves, particularly the one over the head of St Alban in the photo below right. A fellow artist, Phyllis Bray, worked with him on many of these murals, I wonder how much of the feel and touch of the painting was hers.

St Alban, Holborn. Left: Details showing the sanctuary and chapel beyond. Right: figure of St Alban in the mural.

There is also a sequence of Stations of the Cross around the nave of the church, beautifully set into the stone walls at regular intervals. Here Feibusch’s more expressionist side returns, with dramatic faces and moody landscape backgrounds. Behind the crucified Christ at number XII (below right) you see a gorgeous sky above a teeming crowd of people in a desolate looking landscape.

In old age, after seeing a film about the Holocaust, Feibusch produced a series of paintings which sought to recapture that nightmare – “the hunting, the running away, the fall into terror”. He formally left the Church of England in 1992, unable to accept the doctrine of the Trinity and shortly before his death, just four weeks before his 100th birthday in 1998, said: ‘I am just a very tired old Jew.’ He was buried with full Jewish rites at Golders Green Cemetery.

Extract from Hans Feibusch: A focus on the website of St John’s Church, Waterloo, where you will find a good biography of the artist.

St Alban, Holborn. Left: North aisle showing 4 of 14 Stations of the Cross. Right: Station XII in the south aisle 1966.

Clouds and Planes

Left: My first commission 1979, 790 × 860 mm. Right: from 1978, 650 mm sq.

Following on from the last post about my first commission (shown above left) I have been searching through my old work. I made the three pieces above & below at The Central School of Art to the dimensions of windows in my parents’ house in Wimbledon in front of which these all used to hang. Initially I thought I could reuse the glass for the restoration of my first ever commission, but there were no exact colour matches. Then I started to quite like the pieces and decided to save them as they are, unpainted and with great colour combinations in beautiful glass made by Hartley Woods.

Left: from 1978, 520 × 750 mm. Right: from 1979, 520 × 350 mm.

Looking also at my sketchbooks from the time, I found a thread which started with drawings of the sky, with aeroplanes and clouds. My first attempt at this subject matter (above right) fits into the worst category of cloud - solid and static with a badly painted aeroplane. I remembered another panel and although I could only find the drawings that related to it (below left), this one was definitely better, with pink and yellow glass and drippy bits of painting on the clouds which are starting to move in a diagonal direction.

Sketchbook pages, Left: 1979, Right: 1983

Clouds and aeroplanes are scattered across the things I’ve made ever since; clouds recently and aeroplanes more when I had the ambition to reflect the modern world in my work, an ambition that has gradually been bashed out of me during the process of getting commissioned. For example, this is from a recent brief for a public commission:

Due to the context of the area, some elements should be avoided, including: Bright, harsh, or jarring colours. Strong cultural or religious symbols. People, animals, or potentially triggering flowers. Confronting, busy, or clinical/medical imagery. Bodies of water including lakes, rivers and seas. Vehicles/machinery. Text, inspirational quotes.

Parts of pages from 1984 sketchbook

I found two aeroplane panels among my stack of old stained glass. I had a feeling there were once three, but I could just be remembering the drawings, as the one with the tick next to it only had two planes (above left). I’d later made them into patchworked panels having chopped off the corners where fixing holes had been drilled. This time I kept all the original pieces I could find and leaded them up as a way of keeping the pieces together. I particularly liked the backgrounds to these designs, on the diagonal to give a feeling of the expanse of the sky scape, with plain diamond clouds behind the planes and then the pattern changing as it spreads above and below them. I had never chucked my geometric backgrounds out with the vehicles and machinery, and had a go this week (shown at the bottom) at using the pattern again in black and white with a cloudy tree top standing in for the original flying machines .

Panels made in 1984, then cut up, now leaded together again.

My First Commission

Left: Interior with fanlight window, Wimbledon, summer 1979. Right: the same window on my lightbox 46 years later.

This is the first window that I made as a commission for a place, which was the house opposite us in Berkeley Place, Wimbledon. The window came back to me for restoration this summer because the original commissioners want to take it to their new house, and with it came vague memories and nice surprises. The surprises were how much I liked the window and how aspects of it, in its slightly wrecked state (above right), were well made with neat soldering and the thinner than average lead cames that I still tend to use.

Left: Numbered pieces. Right: cutline with broken pieces.

Left: Leading underway. Right: leading and soldering completed.

I ran through the stages of pulling it apart, recutting the broken pieces and leading it up again, using thicker lead in some places and keeping my soldering neat. I could remember clearly the design and its origins in calligraphy combined with vapour trails. It was one of a series of pieces in patchwork, collage and glass, all documented in my big sketchbook from the year 1979. I found the related dimensions, ‘architectural’ drawing and versions on tracing paper sellotaped in to the book, along with notes on how to measure up and when to go and buy my glass from Hetley’s in Stonebridge Park, Wembley. The glass I chose, carefully worked out on a page of the sketchbook, is beautiful and a big contributor to the success of the piece, however its uneven thickness made the leading quite difficult, as did the rather rough way that I’d cut it.

What I can’t remember is where I made it - was it the last thing I made at The Central School of Art (and then how did I transport it to Wimbledon?), surely I didn’t make it on my bedroom floor, surely my parents didn’t let me turn the sitting room in to a mess of broken glass pieces and pungent, messy cementing?

Above and below: pages from my 1979 sketchbook.

There will be an update when this large piece (84? x 768 mm. according to the sketchbook) is redisplayed in a different house in Wimbledon. In the meantime I’m enjoying a few days of its glowing presence in my studio window: without sun (above) and with autumn sun (below) where the purple glass is even more lovely than the orange.