The Weekend Course

West Dean weekend student work: 1. simple leading 2. simple but lots of pieces 3. soldering a less simple design.

The adult beginner’s weekend stained glass course is a bit of a rushed affair. There are so many stages to learn, including the most important one of how to design a simple stained glass window, something I like each student to do for themselves. I felt a sense of triumph on last weekend’s course at West Dean College (which will be the last weekend course I teach) as a student actually made a window that was really simple and easy to make, yet original (1 above left). As you can see, the creeping inaccuracy of the cutting meant that the glass pieces didn’t fit the paper pattern once leaded, but easy to cut means easy to trim down if you have to.

West Dean student work in progress: 4. work bench 5. round panel pieces cut  6. panel cemented but not cleaned.

Mostly the students don’t follow my advice to keep it simple and come armed with examples of the sort of organic or representational thing they want to make. It’s only as you make the stained glass panel that you understand the pitfalls, why some shapes are easy to cut but hard to lead, like the orange star burst which is being soldered at 3 top right. This means that it’s not the number of pieces that makes a design doable or not in a weekend, for example 2 top centre & 4 above right (which has over 40 pieces of glass) were both simple to make because of the leading pattern. The round panel (5 above centre) was only just doable for a beginner, but there is always the possibility of skipping the last stage and taking the cement in a bag to do at home, or taking the panel home dirty, like 6 above right.

West Dean student work with sandblasting: 7. paper plan wave 8. around the edges 9. butterfly antennae.

We don’t have the use of a kiln on this short course, but we do have a sandblaster which gives you a different way of adding detail. In 7. (above left) a wave has been added to give the much desired organic feel, linking the pieces with three lines. Painting, or drawing and sandblasting, across the lead lines is something else I find it hard to persuade students to do, you can see another example of linking pieces with sandblasting in the wobbly circles at 12 below right. Sandblasting a section around the edges of adjacent pieces was also effective in 8 above centre, giving the finished panel a chunky appearance that went well with the blocks of glass.

West Dean finished panels: abstract designs with curves and sandbalsting. 10, 11 & 12.

It’s great when a design that is supposed to represent something actually works. The butterfly (above right) is an obvious example, but the three landscape panels below are very satisfying. The river estuary that is both curvy and geometric (13), the palm tree that floats above its trunk (14) and the lighthouse (15) that is immediately recognisable but so subtle all provide a perfect end to my teaching of the weekend course.

West Dean landscape panels: 13. river estuary 14. palm tree 15. lighthouse.

At the Bowls Club

The Bowls Club window, week one.

The Marlborough group of Arts Together, a charity that brings together professional artists and older people for weekly art workshops, meets in the Bowls Club. The windows there provided a good setting for the latest version of my glass painting project. At the end of week one we had a row of glass pieces on the window sill ready to fire, their black iron oxide paint having been textured and scratched off by the group members. Four weeks later, after sessions of enamel painting on the centre and border pieces, I returned with the panels that I’d leaded up in my studio, mostly to their specifications, and displayed them on the window sill again. The black and white pieces looked so good in the first photo, the question is have we improved them over the following weeks?

The Bowls Club window, week five.

Glass by Alan, week one and completed panel.

The example of Alan’s panel (above and below) shows the process from week one, with his enigmatic scraffito drawing on a layer of black paint that becomes the ground for further layers of painting in transparent enamel - harder to do and harder to predict the outcome. The borders are a mix of decorative and sample pieces that make it possible to link the pieces together into a solid stained glass panel, a thing that members might actually want to have.

Glass by Alan, week two before and after firing, week four choosing coloured glass to add in corners.

Glass by Gillian, week one, week two and completed panel.

The example of Gillian’s panel (above) shows an original drawing done with great confidence but not really improved by the enamelling, which she did in a ‘colouring in’ style. Her borders however, with speedy, drippy paintwork worked perfectly the first time, no coloured glass pieces were needed to help out the composition of the panel.

A finished stained glass panel represents several hours of work, with different techniques tried out, skills learned and choices made. In terms of the aims of the group, the activity is more important than the art, which should be enjoyable and sociable. You might think that the purity and simplicity of the black and white drawings are sacrificed during the process, but in this type of teaching it’s more about what you learn than what you make.

Gillian (on left) and friends: Alan and Bill painting.

Inspirational students

Favourites from previous courses: left 2018 shown against the flint walls of the house, right 2019 (scale shown is on the lightbox).

The course I teach at West Dean College starts with an illustrated talk, of which the most popular section is the gallery of past students’ work. Although I aim to show a range of techniques and approaches to the craft, inevitably the panels I choose to show are the ones I like best. My two previous favourites are shown above, they are similar in their modular style which means the panels are fun to make as you can change your mind about which piece of glass goes where. On this year’s course, just completed, there were three students working in three different ways whose work I loved.

Six pieces of enamelled glass by Ursula Yeates.

I’ve just inherited some glass enamels for students’ use - just as well as Ursula really lays it on thick! This time she painted at least thirty smallish glass pieces with opaque and transparent enamels, experimenting with spectacular results. She leaded some of these pieces together, but they are also good enough on their own - the top middle (above) at only fifteen cms tall, is amazing. All this painting inspired the group of students to use more paint in their stained glass panels than they usually do. Despite my talk with historical examples, I find it hard to convince people that the best stained glass windows are actually also painted.

Angela covered her pieces of glass with black iron oxide and drew into it with a stick in the traditional way. At the bottom and top of her tree you find a fox and a bird’s nest which are both drawn so confidently, while for the leaves she drew on a large sheet of green glass and then cut it up. The whole panel is lovely, the details (below) show the freedom in her drawing.

Painted details from stained glass panel by Angela Ibbs.

The last set of panels, just some of the work that Katie did in five days, combine drawing in black iron oxide, enamel painting and pattern making. The sea urchin panel (below left) at about twenty cms. tall, was her sample piece and so good that I can imagine an enormous window like this, with shapes and patterns repeating. On her house plant panel (below left) she used some of this scratching off technique, but also sandblasting and painting with enamels on pieces of glass cut to a very satisfying plan. These last two students were absolute stained glass beginners. All of them have inspired me, now back in my own studio, with the joy of making.

Two panels by Katie Bebbington, left sea urchins, right house plants.

Sea, Stone and Glass

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Detail of 1919 window designed by Edward Prynne, made by J.Jennings.

Usually, you can find a great bit of detail in any old stained glass window. I saw this wonderful cupid at the bottom of one of a series of six in St Thomas a Becket, Pagham, West Sussex, helpfully signed with the inscription of the designer and the maker, "Edwd. A.F.Prynne, J. Jennings, AD 1919". The backgrounds to the figures are smothered with clumps of plants between streams of water on pieces of glass whose shape reminded me of the flints that some buildings in this area are made of.

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Wall of St Thomas a Becket, Pagham.          Background detail from one of the six Edward Prynne windows

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Details from the east window, with signatures at bottom right.

The whole of the east window is a lovely composition of old glass. The details I have picked out include figures in bright coloured glass with rich silverstain. In the bottom right of each photo is another useful inscription - on the left "Re-glazed & re-arranged 1939 HMOT" (Howard Martin Otto Travers), on the right "RE-LEADED AD 1919 J.Jennings". 

It was good to have this reminder of the process as I was on my way to teach a stained glass course at West Dean College. At the end of the week I could see lots of links between the windows in Pagham Church and the students' panels, see below. These include representations of the sea in cut shapes and glass paint, clump shaped pieces of glass with landscape painting, and the inspiring backdrop of a wall in the world's largest flint building (according to one of my students, an ex- architect).

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Student windows from West Dean College: sea, rainy landscape, composition in front of flint wall at West Dean.

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Pagham: seaside coffee break, seaside architecture, seaside window.

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