Stained glass and the Victorian Gothic revival 9781526125651

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MANCHESTER

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GOTHIC STAINED GLASS AND THE VICTORIAN GOTHIC REVIVAL

BY JIM CHESHIRE

Manchester University Press

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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Stained glass and the

Victorian Gothic Revival

also available in the series Utility reassessed The role of ethics in the practice of design JUDY ATTFIELD The culture of fashion A new history of fashionable dress CHRISTOPHER BREWARD

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The hidden consumer Masculinities, fashion and city life, 1860–1914 CHRISTOPHER BREWARD

general editor: CHRISTOPHER BREWARD founding editor: PAUL GREENHALGH

The British country house in the eighteenth century CHRISTOPHER CHRISTIE ‘The autobiography of a nation’ The 1951 Festival of Britain BECKY E. CONEKIN Defining dress Dress as object, meaning and identity AMY DE LA HAYE AND ELIZABETH WILSON The culture of craft Status and future EDITED BY PETER DORMER Eighteenth-century furniture CLIVE D. EDWARDS Architecture and design for the family in twentieth-century Britain, 1900–70 DAVID JEREMIAH Graphic design Reproduction and representation since 1800 PAUL JOBLING AND DAVID CROWLEY The Edwardian house The middle-class home in Britain 1880–1914 HELEN c. LONG The birth of modern London The development and design of the city ELIZABETH MCKELLAR Dress and globalisation Identity and the tactics of encounter MARGARET MAYNARD Eighteenth-century ceramics Products for a civilised society SARAH RICHARDS Establishing dress history LOU TAYLOR The study of dress history LOU TAYLOR Women and ceramics Gendered vessels MOIRA VINCENTELLI American design in the twentieth century GREGORY VOTOLATO

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Stained glass and the Victorian Gothic Revival Jim Cheshire

Manchester University Press Manchester

Copyright © Jim Cheshire 2004 The right of Jim Cheshire to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6346 9 hardback EAN 978 0 7190 6346 6 First published 2004 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

List of illustrations Preface and acknowledgements Glossary List of abbreviations

page

vi ix xiii xv

1

Stained glass and Victorian culture

2

Victorian glass-painters and their inheritance

33

3

Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

54

4

Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

78

5

Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

107

6

Glazing projects: St Michael and All Angels, Sowton and St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary

142

The revival of stained glass: how and why the market spread

155

Index

179

7

1

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List of illustrations

Figures 1

St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, interior looking east through chancel gates opposite page 1

2

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Jervais, detail from the west window of New College Oxford, 1777–85 (photograph Chris Brooks)

3

Holy Trinity, Tattershall, Lincolnshire, baptism scene from late fifteenth-century window 11

4

Thomas Willement, number of pieces of work, 1810–69

38

5

Thomas Willement, number of ecclesiastical and secular commissions, 1810–69

38

6

Thomas Willement, number of commissions for heraldic and figure glass, 1810–69

39

page 11

7

John Toms, St Mary Magdalene, Clatworthy, Somerset, commandment board, 1854

8

John Toms, St Peter, Knowstone, Devon, detail of nave south window, 1856

58

9

John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, detail of south aisle window, 1859

59

10

Illustration from Anna Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, first published 1848

60

11

John Toms, St Nicholas, Combe St Nicholas, Somerset, detail of tracery light, 1855

56

62 12

John Toms, St Mary Magdalene, Clatworthy, Somerset, east window, c. 1860

62

13

John Toms, St Nicholas, Combe St Nicholas, Somerset, detail of pattern window, 1855 63

14

Charles Winston, plate 39 from An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, first published 1847 63

15

John Toms, St Nicholas, Milverton, Somerset, detail of west window, 1850

16

John Toms, cartoon for canopy, c. 1860 (photograph Chris Brooks)

69

17

John Toms, geographical distribution of windows

71

18

Robert Beer, St Andrew’s Chapel, Exwick, Exeter, Devon, 1842

81

19

Robert Beer, Holy Cross, Cruwys Morchard, Devon, detail of east window, 1847

82

68

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Illustrations

vii

20

Robert Beer, Oldridge Chapel, Devon, detail of east window, c. 1843

82

21

Robert Beer, St Thomas of Canterbury, Thorverton, Devon, south aisle east window, 1849 83

22

J. L. Fulford tracing of medieval stained glass in Exeter Cathedral published in TEDAS in 1847 (with permission of trustees of Chris Brooks) 86

23

Alfred Beer, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Aylesbeare, Devon, south chancel window, 1850

93

24

Alfred Beer, St Michael and All Angels, Heavitree, Exeter, Devon, detail of window now the organ loft 94

25

Alfred Beer, St Mary Magdalene, South Molton, Devon, detail from south aisle east window, c. 1865 94

26

Alfred Beer, St Mary Magdalene, South Molton, Devon, south aisle east window, c. 1865

95

27

Alfred Beer, St Martin, Exminster, Devon, south aisle window, c. 1855

98

28

Alfred Beer, St Michael and All Angels, Poughill, Devon, north aisle east window, 1858 100

29

Joseph Bell, average price per commission, 1844–55

30

Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, south chapel east window, 1842 112

31

Detail of window painted by Mary Miles and fired by Joseph Bell, St Mary the Virgin, East Brent, Somerset, 1849 (photograph Peter Cheshire) 117

32

Joseph Bell, St Michael and All Angels, Buckland Dinham, Somerset, detail from east window, 1849 118

111

33

Joseph Bell, turnover, 1844–55

121

34

Joseph Bell, turnover, trade and non-trade clients, 1844–55

122

35

Joseph Bell, St John the Baptist, Frenchay, Bristol, west window, c. 1847 124

36

Joseph Bell, St Paul, Starcross, Devon, north aisle east window, 1859

125

37

Joseph Bell, design for the east window of All Saints, Wrington, Somerset, 1860

126

38

Joseph Bell, All Saints, Wrington, Somerset, detail of window, c. 1860

127 129

39

Joseph Bell, tracing of medieval glass at East Brent, Somerset, c. 1852

40

St Mary the Virgin, East Brent, Somerset, detail of window originally made 1450–75, restored by Joseph Bell, c. 1852 130

41

Michael O’Connor, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, south Lady Chapel window, c. 1850 148

42

William Warrrington, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, detail from north Lady Chapel window, c. 1850 149

43

John Hardman and Co., St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, detail from north transept east window, 1850 150

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viii

Illustrations

44

William Wailes, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset, nave window, 1849

160

45

Joseph Bell, St Michael and All Angels, Buckland Dinham, Somerset, east window, 1849 165

46

Michael and Arthur O’Connor, St Christopher, Lympsham, Somerset, east window, 1863 167

47

John Toms and the Beer family, geographical distribution of windows up to 1860 168

48

William Wailes, geographical distribution of windows

169

Colour plates between pages 80 and 81 1

St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, interior looking towards the baptistery

2

Michael O’Connor, St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, detail from east window, 1857

3

MClayton and Bell, St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, detail from west window, 1859

4

John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, south aisle west window, 1858

5

Thomas Willement, St Thomas the Martyr, Mamhead, Devon, detail from west window, 1831

6

Joseph Bell, Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, detail from south chapel east window, 1842

7

John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, detail from south aisle window, 1859

8

John Toms, St Giles, Bradford-on-Tone, Somerset, west window, c. 1860

9

Alfred Beer, St Paul, Filleigh, Devon, detail of north aisle east window, c. 1851

10

Alfred Beer, St Michael, Chagford, Devon, detail of east window, 1860

11

Robert Beer, St Mary, Dunsford, Devon, detail of east window, 1845

12

Robert Beer, St Martin and St Mary, Chudleigh, Devon, east window, 1847

13

Alfred Beer, All Saints, Dulverton, Somerset, detail of east window, 1864

14

Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, detail of south chapel south window, 1842

15

Joseph Bell, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset panel, 1850

16

Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Somerset, south chancel window, c. 1861

17

Sowton, St Michael and All Angels, Devon, interior looking towards the altar

18

William Warrington and Michael O’Connor, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, adjacent north Lady Chapel windows, c. 1850

19

The stained-glass gallery at the Great Exhibition colour lithograph first published 1852 (V&A Picture Library)

20

William Wailes, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset, south chancel window, 1842

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Preface and acknowledgements

This study is an attempt to understand the phenomenal increase in the production and demand for stained glass between about 1835 and 1860, a book about both the history of stained glass and the workings of Victorian culture. The scale of the Victorian stained-glass industry was unprecedented and since its decline in the late nineteenth century has not been equalled. From my perspective this makes the Victorian period the most important episode in the history of British glass-painting. Many people would disagree with this judgement but I think even the most ardent medievalist would concede that the current academic engagement with Victorian stained glass is inadequate. Scholarship about Victorian stained glass was late appearing and the first forays took fairly predictable forms. A. C. Sewter’s monumental study The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle was published in 1974–75 and while providing information about Morris, failed to shed much light on the wider phenomenon. Martin Harrison’s pioneering study Victorian Stained Glass, published in 1980, did much to redress the balance and set up a solid framework for future study. Harrison concentrated mainly on ‘those artists who were concerned to examine new ways of approaching stained glass’ and so tended to select exceptional windows and artists for comment and analysis. While Harrison’s work constituted a great advance for the field, his approach has tended to support the formation of a canon of great Victorian glass-painters, leading to the neglect of others. My approach is very different. 1 am attempting to understand the wider phenomenon – to ask why people became interested in stained glass, to examine how glass-painters set up their studios and to understand how they interacted with each other and their patrons. An approach such as this gains just as much from the study of relatively humble operations as it does from examination of larger and better-known studios. A number of studies based on systematic stained-glass recording published since Harrison’s have been a great help to me. Birkin Haward’s comprehensive studies of Norfolk and Suffolk provide valuable ‘reference’ illustrations of the work of specific companies and further proof of the diversity of stained-glass production. Other surveys of this type have been published more recently, including Malcolm Seaborne’s study of Flintshire and Leslie Smith’s study of Carlisle. Stanley Shepherd’s thorough study based on the archives of John

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x

Preface and acknowledgements

Hardman and Co. has been another great step forward – particularly useful to this book because he concentrates on the early Victorian period. This book is based on my own doctoral research, though I have substantially modified and developed my ideas since my thesis was submitted in 1998. My doctoral thesis was based on systematic recording of stained glass in the archdeaconries of Taunton and Exeter and three case studies of specific glass-painters, whose careers were well documented through either archival material or an extensive corpus of extant windows. This approach has allowed me to speculate on how the market for stained glass developed in a specific area and to examine how the careers of specific glass-painters fitted into that market. To understand why so many windows were commissioned and made in the Victorian period we need to understand how buying a stained-glass window became a relatively ordinary thing to do. In order to examine this I have given considerable attention those who wrote or spoke about stained glass in the formative years of the revival – those responsible for raising the status of stained glass. It is a major assumption of this study that this was a crucial element in the revival of stained glass. It is important to look at the production of stained glass as a cultural exchange: a negotiation in both financial and cultural terms that was profitable for both glass-painter and patron. We need to examine what both parties wanted to achieve by buying or making stained-glass windows. This type of analysis is only possible by looking at commissions in minute detail, by building up a picture of political and social alignments on a parochial level, and by examining the manipulations of power evident in documents such as vestry minutes. In addition to my detailed case studies I have offered some analysis on some of the better-known studios. Much work remains to be done in this area and in a study of this size there was no point in attempting to comment on every studio – I hope the gaps will be followed up by further research. Another limitation of my research is the concentration on activity within and surrounding the Church of England at the expense of the Roman Catholic church and Nonconformist denominations. While I acknowledge this deficiency there is little doubt that the Church of England was the single most important institutional influence on the revival of stained glass. My theoretical approach has been influenced by several well-known cultural theorists, particularly Pierre Bourdieu, various Marxian accounts of cultural history and the work of several ‘New Historicist’ writers. I have chosen not to include their particular theoretical vocabulary in the main body of this study, because this would be more likely to obscure than enlighten the text for many readers. Those interested in the details of my theoretical approach can refer to my doctoral thesis. The history of Victorian stained glass allows an examination of many other areas of nineteenth-century cultural history. We can learn a lot about the aesthetics of the Gothic Revival, ecclesiology, the relationship between ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’ art, and the circulation of art history in the 1840s. In addition it

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Preface and acknowledgements

offers more tantalising glimpses into areas which need further attention. Does the ardent activity of the amateur glass-painter suggest unrecognised forms of religious practice? Did stained glass fundamentally expand the repertoire of the ecclesiastical architect? What was the relationship between photography and stained glass? A key objective of this book is to provide both history and context for thousands of Victorian stained-glass windows that exist in churches across the country. While many interesting glass-painters have necessarily been omitted I hope my case studies will provide a point of reference for the research of future scholars. There is little doubt about the level of interest in Victorian stained glass. I have spoken to hundreds of people who are eager to know more about the glass in their local church and this enthusiasm needs to be channelled into active conservation. Thousands of Victorian windows will need re-leading or conserving in the next fifty years. This is a labour-intensive and costly process and if sufficient funds are to be found people need to know about and understand what they are being asked to preserve. A book that has its roots in a doctoral thesis has a long gestation and I have benefited from the help of many people during this process. In my field work I have been helped by many churchwardens, vicars, vergers, sacristans and other members of the laity and clergy in hundreds of churches across the country. Fellow stained-glass enthusiasts have been generous with their research, in particular Joy Daniels with her information on the Beer family and Pauline English with her research on John Toms. I have also exchanged valuable information with Malcolm Seaborne, Alan Brooks and Robert Sherlock. Morris Venables has been very generous in aiding my efforts to reproduce illustrations from Victorian books. Geoffrey Robinson gave me unlimited access to the Joseph Bell archive, which has been of enormous value. I also benefitted from a grant from the Marc Fitch Fund. My family have been a constant source of encouragement. Annalisa, Aislinn and even Albert have been supportive and patient. My godfather, Roger Morris, has encouraged me as a fellow admirer of Victorian Gothic and at various times lent me essential books. My parents have supported me both materially and emotionally and helped me in more direct ways by reading drafts and improving illustrations. When I started my doctoral research I was conscious of the privilege of having Chris Brooks as my supervisor. His enthusiasm, knowledge and erudition were unique and a source of inspiration to myself and his other doctoral students. His recent death has been a source of great sorrow to all who knew him well but his distinctive influence is perpetuated in this book as it will be in many more to come. This book is dedicated to his memory.

xi

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Glossary

Abrade

To scratch away the coloured layer of a piece of flashed glass to reveal the clear pot metal beneath. In this way a change of colour can be achieved without the need for a lead line or the application of any enamel.

Antique glass

A special type of pot metal developed specifically for glass-painters, which became widely available in the late 1850s. Antique glass is thicker and has more texture than ordinary glass; thus the glass itself creates much of the visual interest.

Brown enamel

The standard enamel paint used by glass-painters to paint faces, drapery etc. In practice this ‘brown’ enamel is so dark that it appears black when used in thick lines.

Canopy

Glass painted to resemble an architectural canopy. Typical of Victorian work attempting to reproduce a medieval style.

Cartoon

A full-scale design for a window.

Diaper

A repeated pattern normally used as a background.

Enamel paint

A substance painted onto glass composed of a colouring agent (a metallic oxide), ground glass (a flux) and a medium (gum Arabic or lavender stick oil). When fired the ground glass fuses with the surface of the pot metal to form a permanent mark.

Enamel wash

A thin layer of enamel applied evenly across a piece of glass using a soft brush. Layers of wash were sometimes applied on top of each other.

Flashed glass

Pot metal composed of two layers of glass: a thin coloured layer and a thicker clear layer. Flashed glass is often red or ‘ruby’. Flashed glass can be abraded to reveal the clear layer beneath.

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xiv

Glossary

Flux

A powdered compound composed mainly of glass that helps the enamel to fuse with the surface of the pot metal when fired.

Grisaille

Monochrome pattern glass.

Hard face painting

A face painting style that works predominantly by linear design, uses little perspective and requires little shading.

Highlight

A small area of glass free from enamel, normally where the enamel has been scratched out with a pointed stick or a needle.

Main light

A major opening in a window divided by tracery.

Mosaic window

A stained-glass window composed of a large number of small pieces of pot metal. A mosaic window typically relies on the linear design of the lead lines and a ‘hard’ painting style. In stylistic terms the opposite of a painterly window.

Painterly window

A stained-glass window that attempts to reproduce the effects of oil painting. Typically composed of a small number of relatively large pieces of glass. In stylistic terms the opposite of a mosaic window.

Pot metal

Glass that has been coloured while still molten, normally through the addition of a metallic oxide.

Quarry

A small pane of glass, often diamond shaped, painted with a simple motif.

Silver stain

A silver compound painted onto pot metal and then fired to produce a transparent yellow stain. The tone achieved can vary from pale yellow to deep orange, depending on the length and heat of the firing.

Smear shading

Shading achieved by the application of enamel paint onto the glass.

Soft face painting

Painting of glass that relies on perspective and subtle shading, in some cases imitating oil painting.

Stick work

Scratching out enamel with a pointed stick or a needle to produce areas free from enamel paint or highlights.

Stipple shading

Shading with a dotted appearance executed by dabbing a brush against enamel before it has dried.

Tracery light

A minor opening in a window divided by tracery, above the main lights.

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List of abbreviations

BWEAS

Bristol and West of England Architectural Society

CCS

Cambridge Camden Society, later the Ecclesiological Society

EDAS

Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society

SANHS

Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society

TDEAS

Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society

1

St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, interior looking east through chancel gates

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1 ✧ Stained glass and Victorian culture

I

N THE HANDS of a clergyman like John Edwin Lance, stained glass was more than just decoration. In his newly rebuilt church at Buckland St Mary in Somerset, he used stained glass to vary the quality of the light entering the building, and so change our experience of the interior. Richly painted windows surrounding the chancel and baptistry announce that here are the key liturgical areas, while the iconography of the windows saturates these places with dense theological meanings (Figure 1, Plate 1). When Lance was appointed rector of Buckland St Mary in 1830, he arrived in a small rural parish with no dominant land-owning family.1 Lance’s impact on the parish was such that a local historian describes the year of his arrival as ‘the year which was to change Buckland for ever’.2 Lance built himself a large house, and set about becoming a paternalistic, conscientious and dominant clergyman. By 1863 the medieval parish church had been dismantled and rebuilt. It was still medieval in style but looked nothing like the original church. The rector was reported as having supplied £16,000 of the total cost, which amounted to £20,000.3 A significant proportion of this budget had been lavished on the interior, in particular the stained glass. The east window was made and designed by Michael O’Connor, probably helped by his son Arthur (Figure 1, Plate 2). O’Connor was a native of Dublin and started his career as a heraldic artist but, in common with other heraldic specialists in the early nineteenth century, altered the focus of his professional life and became a glass-painter.4 By the 1850s O’Connor had a high reputation, and the glass at Buckland St Mary was just one of several large commissions he executed in the area.5 In 1857, for a discerning patron of stained glass (which Lance certainly was) O’Connor was a fairly safe bet. Thirty years earlier Lance would not have been able to glaze his church in this way. The ‘antique’ glass that the windows were made from was not in production, and the price of several large pictorial windows in the 1820s would have been prohibitive, even to Lance and his friends. Even if the budget had allowed, the windows would have taken a very long time to produce, as glass-painting ateliers were small-scale affairs in the early

2

Stained glass and the Victorian Gothic Revival

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nineteenth century. On top of all these problems, it is doubtful whether Regency glass-painters could have satisfied the sophisticated aesthetic and iconographical criteria that patrons like Lance demanded. Between 1830 and 1860 the demand for stained glass, and the glass-painting profession’s capacity to produce stained glass, soared at an unprecedented rate. This book is about how and why this phenomenon occurred.

Victorian religion and the Church of England John Edwin Lance is an illustrious example of a new kind of Anglican parish priest. In one sense his activities can be understood as a response to external threats to the Church of England, and in another way they suggest a reaction to developments of a more secular nature. The Church of England experienced mixed fortunes in the Victorian period. In one sense it was a great success: the number of worshippers, clergy and churches all increased above the rapid rate of population growth.6 Added to this, the Anglican church’s success contrasted with the fortunes of the great Dissenting movements of the previous century: after 1840 the growth of Dissent decreased and by the last decades of the century the numbers actually declined in relation to population growth. In spite of these encouraging trends the Church of England went through a profound shift of identity: it was forced to relinquish its claim to being the religion for British subjects and became merely one of the denominations that competed for the souls of the population.7 This change in status was the result of several power struggles between the state and the church – battles about the extent of the state’s intervention in church matters. Ultimately the church suffered several major setbacks and by the end of the century found itself deprived of many of its traditional roles. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Anglican church had the authority to legitimise key rites of passage such as baptism for both Anglicans and Nonconformists. The Civil Registration Act of 1837 meant that births could be legally registered with the state; this signalled an end to the Church of England’s monopoly.8 Another waning site of church power was the parish vestry. The vestry was once a surprisingly diverse and accessible site of political action but gradually became narrower in both its membership and the scope of the duties it performed.9 Legislation in the early nineteenth century had lifted the legal restrictions on Dissenters and Roman Catholics: the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed in 1828 and the Roman Catholic Relief Act was passed in 1829. These acts removed the restrictions placed upon the activities of Dissenters and Roman Catholics in public life. As a result the Church of England had to compete on more even terms with its rivals.

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Stained glass and Victorian culture

The Church of England had inherited some internal problems from the previous century. Financial malpractice was among the most serious. The root problem was that income originally intended for an incumbent had often become diverted to recipients almost totally unconnected to the parish. Frequently recipients of the parish income did not perform the parochial duties implied by this income. Instead a subordinate, normally described as a curate, was paid a proportion of this income to carry out the parish duties. This lack of clerical income in turn encouraged ‘pluralists’ – clergymen who received more than one parochial income – and so further decreased the proportion of incumbents who actually resided in the parish. In 1810 as many as 47 per cent of Anglican clergymen were non-resident.10 In 1838 the Pluralities Act started to reverse this pattern, but because it imposed restrictions only on new appointments, it took up to twenty years to become fully effective.11 The presence of a resident clergyman was crucial to the power of the Anglican church. The lack of a clergyman who was embedded in the day-to-day life of the parish encouraged the people to think of the Anglican church as an elitist institution unconcerned with the welfare of its members. Some of this background is confirmed by the situation encountered by John Edwin Lance on his appearance in Buckland St Mary in 1830. On his arrival, there had not been a resident clergyman for fifty years; instead a certain Dr Palmer ‘came over from Illminster and took five services every Sunday in different places’.12 Buckland St Mary was a good place for Lance to attempt to reassert Anglican authority, for the Church of England was most effective in a parish where one or two sources of power acted in unison with the church. This typically meant an alliance between landowners, clergymen and civil authorities.13 The ‘closed parish’ was perhaps the ultimate example of this relationship, where the major landowner was also the clergyman and the magistrate. In this situation, religious, civil and financial power were in the hands of one man and challenges from alternative religions stood little chance. The closed parish was a social structure typical of preindustrial society and so by the mid-nineteenth century was being undermined by changes initiated by the industrial revolution. Although the population of rural parishes generally increased during the first half of the century, the second half witnessed a dramatic decline even against rapid national population growth. Buckland St Mary follows this pattern: the population rose from 565 in 1821 to 758 in 1851, only to decline to 474 by 1901.14 Landowners and clergymen intent on reasserting the influence of the Anglican church often attempted to recreate a preindustrial social structure, a hierarchical but benevolent society where the poor showed deference to the rich but the rich respected and cared for the poor. At Buckland St Mary Lance went about transforming the village infrastructure with forceful benevolence. He

3

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4

Stained glass and the Victorian Gothic Revival

built a house, which signalled his commitment to residence; he rebuilt the church, a sign of his Christian commitment; and he built and endowed a school, which signalled that education too was under Anglican control. A hint of the nature of Lance’s parochial presence emerges from an anecdote apparently remembered by Lance’s family. Lance was a ’staunch Tory’ and ‘expected his parishioners to vote likewise’, so when a report reached the rectory that a Liberal speaker was in the village he decided to investigate. When he arrived at the scene, he started to ride around the speaker’s audience and by the time he had ridden around the gathering three times the audience had disappeared.15

Victorian church-building While Lance’s activities were in many ways remarkable, projects similar to this had been attempted all over England by the 1860s. Lance was not the only wealthy Victorian prepared to fund ecclesiastical architecture and design; in fact most of the money that paid for nineteenth-century churches came from private sources. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the state intervened on behalf of the established church, and made two grants totalling £1.5 million in 1818 and 1824. The money was given to the newly formed Church Building Commission, whose brief was to provide accommodation in Anglican churches for the rapidly expanding population. This was the last direct aid that the state provided for church-building, but building continued at a remarkable pace: on average nearly one hundred Anglican churches were built or rebuilt every year in Victorian England.16 This figure does not include restoration projects and so the number of churches that underwent refitting and redecoration is substantially higher. Church-building was clearly a major influence on the revival of stained glass but cannot explain it alone: it is of course quite possible (and much cheaper) to erect a church with plain glass. In order to understand why Victorian churches took the form they did, and why stained glass was considered necessary, we need to investigate several strands of Victorian medievalism.

The Victorian Gothic Revival Arguably gothic had been consciously used as an archaic style since 1600 but it gained a new seriousness, popularity and momentum as Victoria came to the throne.17 To some writers, such as Thomas Carlyle, the medieval world was not so much pre-Reformation as precapitalist, and it offered a model for the idealised paternalistic social relations that capitalism had destroyed. Carlyle’s Past and Present depicts Abbot Samson

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Stained glass and Victorian culture

presiding over the medieval monastic community at St Edmundsbury, where social inequality is mitigated by mutual respect between rich and poor. Other writers, notably Sir Walter Scott, had been popularising the medieval world in novels such as Ivanhoe, as well as promoting the more general idea of ‘the Olden Time’ which though not really gothic, still looked back to a precapitalist era with affection.18 Gothic was used quite broadly in the eighteenth century but was never a dominant style. It was a style that accumulated political meanings for both Whigs and Tories but for many it was attractive chiefly for its novelty value. The eighteenth-century gothic style was used predominantly for secular, privately owned buildings. Although gothic was occasionally used for ecclesiastical buildings it was generally associated too closely with Roman Catholicism to be used for Anglican churches.19 The late eighteenth century witnessed a more systematic and scholarly approach to Britain’s gothic heritage. Partly due to restrictions placed upon European travel during the Revolutionary Wars, antiquarians started to piece together the history of the English Gothic style, and many of their taxonomies are still with us today. Measured drawings of gothic buildings were published and restorations of Britain’s gothic cathedrals began to be evaluated in terms of antiquarian authenticity.20 So by the 1830s the gothic style had acquired considerable momentum, and just before Victoria came to the throne it became decidedly more serious. A. W. N. Pugin’s architectural theories provided the foundation for promoting Gothic as a moral – and not just aesthetic – category.21 He published two crucial interventions in the gothic debate: Contrasts, or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day; Shewing the Present Decay of Taste. Accompanied by Appropriate Text, and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture.22 The crucial distinction made in Contrasts was that othic was a Christian style and that styles derived from Classical sources were Pagan, and True Principles develops this predominantly historicist approach into a more specifically architectural argument. Two concepts introduced in Pugin’s publications proved particularly influential for the history of Victorian design: his ideas about symbolism and the idea of revealed construction. In Contrasts Pugin stated that it is in gothic (or ‘Pointed’) architecture alone that ‘we find the faith of Christianity embodied, and its practices illustrated’.23 More specifically the ‘three great doctrines’ of Christianity – redemption through Crucifixion, the Trinity and the Resurrection – are the basis of gothic architecture. These doctrines are embodied and illustrated in the cruciform plan of churches, the triangular grouping of structures and ornament, and the ‘vertical principle’ of the strong upward thrust of gothic. The words ‘embodied’ and ‘illustrated’ are important here, for a true Christian

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building does not only contain evidence of Christian faith, but exemplifies this faith. Pugin’s ideas about the ‘honesty’ of revealed construction became both a key idea for the Victorian Gothic Revival and later a cornerstone of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He suggested that a building, or for that matter, any designed object, should not conceal its construction but expose it. Concealing construction was deceitful and revealed construction was honest; here moral ideas are characteristically grafted onto aesthetics. Thus gothic buildings exhibited their honesty with features such as flying buttresses and stone vaults, features that are both structural and beautiful. In True Principles the concept of revealed construction was developed into a more detailed agenda. Two prominent rules at the beginning of the work set out this concept: ‘1st, that there should be no features about a building that are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of the enrichment of the essential construction of the building’.24 If these rules are correct, every feature of a building should be either structurally essential or an embellishment of the structure. The important development in True Principles was that the functionalist concept of structural integrity was expanded to encompass how a wide range of materials could be correctly employed in artistic production. The principle of designing in harmony with the ‘natural properties’ of materials meant that the perceived essential properties of the material employed should dictate how it was used.25 Thus the architectural style of ancient Greece evolved from its suitability for wooden building materials and the great mistake was to use the same style when building in stone.26 Pugin went on to show how the design of medieval metalwork was in harmony with the essential properties of the metal and it was not long before parallel arguments were applied to stained glass.27 Closely linked to judging art in moral terms, and absolutely vital for the practicalities of funding the Victorian church-building project, was the implied status conferred on the patron of ‘true’ art. After a lyrical passage describing a gothic interior that expresses the ’sublimity of Christian worship’, Pugin describes the earthly origins of this kind of building: ’Such effects as these can only be produced on the mind by buildings, the composition of which has emanated from men who were thoroughly embued with devotion for, and faith in, the religion for whose worship they were erected.‘28 In what follows it transpires that the ‘men’ referred to include architects, craftsmen and patrons. This was one good reason for a Victorian such as Lance to pay for an ornate church: if a building was pronounced true gothic then religious credibility was conferred upon all who were involved in its production. Lance’s fine new church at Buckland

Stained glass and Victorian culture

St Mary suggested that life in the parish was both vigorous and pious, and that the Church of England physically and spiritually at its centre.

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The Oxford Movement A few years before Pugin published Contrasts another response to the preReformation period – this time theological – started to take shape. The Oxford Movement was a theological renaissance that reinterpreted the identity of the Church of England in terms of its pre-Reformation roots.29 If there was a tendency common to all followers of the Oxford Movement, or ‘Tractarians’ as they became known, it was an anti-Erastian perspective. They fervently believed that the church was not a human establishment sub-servient to the state, but a divine institution. For a Tractarian the state simply did not have the authority to overrule the church. This attitude underpinned some more specific doctrinal matters. In particular Tractarians believed passionately in the Apostolic Succession: the doctrine that the authority of the Christian church is derived directly from the apostles. For the Oxford Movement this meant that the Anglican bishops were descended, through ordination, from the apostles themselves: the authority of a bishop was divine, not worldly. Generally speaking the theology of the Oxford Movement stressed the continuities between the contemporary Church of England and the preReformation (and therefore Roman Catholic) church. This was to prove highly controversial in the context of the early Victorian period when prejudice against Roman Catholics was deep rooted and widespread. Roman Catholicism was associated with ‘undesirable’ parts of Europe – particularly France and Ireland – and many popular events like Guy Fawkes night testify to the ubiquity of these feelings.30 When Sir Robert Peel proposed to increase a grant to a Roman Catholic Seminary in 1845 (the ‘Maynooth Grant’) there was a violent outcry. Conspiracy theories were rife when, in 1850, when Pope Pius IX re-established the Catholic Hierarchy in England. This resulted in ‘Papal Aggression’; meetings all over the country, where local worthies denounced the pope and his supposed attempt to infiltrate Britain. Tractarians were represented as Roman Catholic spies, and to make matters worse, some events seemed to confirm this. In 1845 John Henry Newman, the great theologian of the Oxford Movement, seceded to Roman Catholicism having withdrawn from Oxford in 1842. Newman was the author of the last tract in the series Tracts for the Times, which set out the pioneering theology of the Oxford Movement.31 Newman’s Tract XC suggested that the thirty-nine articles – the points that define the nature of the Church of England – were largely compatible with Roman Catholicism. The storm of protest that followed meant that Newman withdrew from Oxford and his secession was widely predicted. Battles between Tractarians,

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Evangelicals and the state raged throughout the nineteenth century. The Goreham case in 1849-50 started as a battle between an Evangelical vicar and a Tractarian bishop over the nature of Baptismal Regeneration but ended with a secular court overruling an ecclesiastical court. In the early 1850s the Tractarian George Anthony Denison provoked a trial over the exact nature of the ‘Real Presence’ in the Eucharist and this time the Tractarian won, but only through a legal technicality. The Denison case allows us to confirm the theological position implied by John Edwin Lance’s activities as a church builder. George Anthony Denison was the archdeacon of Taunton, and Lance was one of his rural deans. During Dennison’s trial Lance was one of three signatories of a letter printed in the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury protesting that Dennison was not getting a fair trial. Public support for a controversial high-church figure shows that Lance had marked Tractarian sympathies.32 So after considering a number of factors we can begin to approach the complex influences on the revival of ecclesiastical design. The Church of England was under threat from competing religions: Roman Catholic and Nonconformist. Its civil power was being eroded by the state. There were a range of religious alignments within the Church of England, one extreme being represented by the Evangelicals (‘low church’) and the other by Tractarians (‘high church’). Evangelicals were close to Nonconformists on some points of doctrine, while Tractarian doctrine was in places similar to that of the Roman Catholics. In the middle were moderate churchmen (‘broad church’), who were united in the abhorrence of extreme positions on either side. The high-church party had been energised by the theological innovations of the Oxford Movement but these innovations were controversial in the context of the revival of Roman Catholicism. Ecclesiastical architecture and design had been stimulated by churchbuilding and the Gothic style had gained stature due to the activities of Victorian medievalists. One crucial link was still missing. Pugin was a zealous convert to Roman Catholicism and so his advocacy of the Gothic style merely served to reinforce the style’s connections to one of the Anglican church’s competitors. Added to this, the Oxford Movement was primarily concerned with theology; ecclesiastical architecture and design was at best a minor issue. The solution to these issues came in the form of an extraordinary undergraduate society, this time based at Cambridge University.

Ecclesiology It was the ecclesiological movement that transferred Pugin’s ideas so effectively into an Anglican context and converted the theological ideas of

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the Oxford Movement into the physical arrangement of churches. Without ecclesiology Pugin’s ideas would probably have had little physical presence in places such as Buckland St Mary. The Cambridge Camden Society (hereafter CCS) formed in 1839 to ‘promote the study of Ecclesiastical Architecture and Antiquities’.33 Despite their frequent protests that they were merely an architectural society, it became pretty obvious from both their implied theological position and the membership of the society that they were aligned to the theological radicalism of the Oxford Movement. In contrast to the Oxford Movement, however, the CCS survived the criticism of its enemies until its project was more or less accomplished. It did have its critics, such as the evangelical firebrand Francis Close, and there was a crisis in 1845 when the society was forced to dissociate itself from the university. It re-emerged, however, as the London-based Ecclesiological Society. The CCS was inspired by both Pugin and the Oxford Movement. The programme they devised adopted Pugin’s ideas about the Christian nature of gothic and the moral superiority of revealed construction. They implied allegiance to the Oxford Movement advocating architectural schemes that laid emphasis on the new theology. For example, the Tractarian emphasis on the spiritual authority of the priest, and the sacraments he performed, was physically expressed through large chancels and ornate baptisteries. The correct chancel, as recommended by the CCS, should be large (about one third of the length of the nave), separated from the nave by a step on the floor and a chancel arch above, and it should be decorated with a richness (in stained glass, encaustic tiles, metalwork, etc.) that would contrast with the relative plainness of the nave. I have already suggested that Lance’s decisions at Buckland St Mary were influenced by his desire to reassert the presence of the Church of England and his allegiance to the high-church party. Through Lance’s links with a local ecclesiological group we can see his actions as aligned more specifically to the ecclesiological movement. One of the ways ecclesiology spread so effectively was through local groups who sought to propagate ecclesiological principles in their diocese or district. In the South West for example the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society (EDAS), the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society (BWEAS), and the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society (SANHS) all influenced ecclesiastical design in their respective areas. Lance was a member of the SANHS and his brother in law, William Hamilton Turner, was a district secretary. Returning to St Mary’s Church at Buckland St Mary we can see that the basic design of the church shows Lance’s adherence to ecclesiological principles: the chancel is prominent, highly ornate and is clearly demarcated from the nave both internally and externally. The baptistery received corresponding emphasis: a large ornate font in front of the west

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door is capped by an enormous font cover that highlights the importance of this sacrament and presents baptism as the physical and symbolic entrance to the church (Plate 1). The font cover was made from oak timber salvaged from the original church; it therefore creates a point of physical continuity between the medieval fabric of the church and its recreation in the nineteenth century. Quotations stencilled onto the wall beneath the west window use typology, a medieval system of symbolism, and so the links with the Middle Ages are apparent physically and textually.34 In the quotations Peter describes the inhabitants of the ark as ’saved by water’; and Paul describes the Israelites who passed through the Red Sea as ‘all baptized unto Moses’.35 These scenes are represented visually in the stained glass surrounding the baptistery. The final quotation, from Matthew, connects Lance’s own status of priest with that of the apostles. Jesus, speaking to his disciples immediately after his resurrection, urges them to enlarge the Christian Church through baptism: ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’36 Every time Lance performed a baptism in this church he stood before these quotations, linking his actions to the Old Testament and Christ’;s instructions to his disciples. Here the baptism was not only given textual and architectural emphasis; it was used to link the authority of the priest to that of the apostles, implying the doctrine of Apostolic Succession so important to the Oxford Movement. Having considered some of the influences acting on Lance let us turn more specifically to the stained glass in the church. The windows too can be understood as the product of a series of debates, which generated ideas about what constituted a ‘correct’ stained-glass window. These debates were conducted in periodicals and monographs and by considering this material in some detail it is possible to see how Pugin, ecclesiology and Victorian architecture became key influences on a new generation of glass-painters.

Stained glass and ecclesiology Although the stated aim of the CCS was to ‘promote the study of Ecclesiastical Architecture and Antiquities’ the revival of stained glass was a subject discussed with great enthusiasm in their journal, the Ecclesiologist.37 Ecclesiologists became particularly enthusiastic about stained glass because as far as they were concerned here was an art that had died with the Middle Ages and under their guidance could be revived to its former status. The first article of length concerning the state of stained-glass production engaged much of the agenda for subsequent discussion.38 The author claimed that ‘the art of staining glass is now thoroughly understood’ and ’specimens have of late been produced equal in all respects to the best works of antiquity’.39 This opinion was not shared by many ecclesiologists,

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and it was not until the late 1850s that the authorities of the CCS would again speak of contemporary stained glass with such optimism. Entirely in keeping with the attitude of the Ecclesiologist, all the aesthetic recommendations in the article have a ‘moral basis. The mistakes made until recently in glass-painting were all the characteristics of Georgian stained glass. ‘Instead of ornamenting glass, we converted it into canvas; and thus the poor and showy daubs … took the place of the gem-like hues and quaint delineations of earlier ages.’ The ’severe’ drawing of the Middle Ages was replaced with the ‘youthful and comely portraits’; of Georgian paintings.40 This distinction refers to one of the dominant dualisms in the interpretation of stained glass. What the CCS complain about is that Georgian stained glass typically attempted to replicate many of the effects of oil painting. This meant painting a lot of enamel onto the surface of the glass to create depth and perspective (Figure 2). The so-called ’severe’; drawing of the Middle Ages describes a technique that relied predominantly on linear design, and is basically two dimensional and required less shading

2

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Jervais, detail from the west window of New College Oxford, 1777-85

3

Holy Trinity, Tattershall, Lincolnshire, baptism scene from late fifteenth-century window

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(Figure 3). The Georgian ‘painterly’ style offended the perceived essential property of glass, transparency, while the medieval design worked in harmony with the essence of the material. Every characteristic of medieval style was interpreted as serious and religious while every characteristic of the painterly style was portrayed as frivolous and irreligious. Ecclesiological descriptions of this style of glass frequently resort to images of the visual entertainments and phantasmagoria of Georgian fairgrounds. The principle of structural truth generated an equally strong argument for the superiority of medieval glass. Medieval stained glass characteristically consists of many pieces of glass bound together by lead, and these lead lines are simultaneously an essential part of the construction and a major element in the linear design of the window (Figure 3). This clearly appealed to Puginian thinking: the way the window is held together is there for all to see, and is made beautiful by its contribution to the design. This type of window is often described as ‘mosaic’ stained glass – an allusion to its construction from many pieces multi-coloured glass. Here was another argument against painterly stained glass. It is clear from Figure 2 that the iron grid plays no role in the design of the window and so structure and design were seen as working against each other. Glasspainters were also urged to subordinate the design of the stained glass to the stonework of the tracery, rather than designing pictures across several lights. Pictorial scenes spanning several lights ignored the mullions and so the construction of the window and thus constituted ‘a sign of the debasement of the art’.41 The dislike of shading led to a more specific criticism, that of ‘antiquating’ glass. This was a practice by which early Victorian glasspainters dulled the gaudy tone of the glass that was available to them. Medieval glass frequently appears to be covered with small black dots; this effect is caused by the deterioration of the exterior of the glass, which develops into a series of small holes which then collect dirt from rain water (Figure 3). In the early days of the revival some Victorian glass-painters imitated this effect by flicking a lightly loaded brush close to the glass, thus spraying it with small dark dots. It is not difficult to see why this technique offended ecclesiological principles: it was ‘unreal and deceptive’ because it dulled the transparency of the material and imitated the contemporary appearance of medieval stained glass, rather than how it might have looked originally. As one author put it in the Ecclesiologist: ‘Let honest newness put shame to spurious antiquity.’42 This gives a clue to what eventually became a key characteristic of the ecclesiological project. Though the medieval served as a starting point, imitation alone became inadequate and improvement was possible.43 This was partly due to the fact that few Victorians could actually reconcile themselves to medieval drawing as anything but defective. This is an example of Victorians being more

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influenced by what we now consider Renaissance art than they would care to admit.44 Despite the moral arguments championing gothic architecture, the ideas of beauty and ugliness generated in the postmedieval period still dominated Victorian aesthetics and so to imitate the proportions and aesthetics of medieval drawing seemed indefensible. This attitude is hard to reconcile with the ecclesiological reverence for the English art of the early fourteenth century and may have been an attempt to negotiate with the contemporary reverence for Renaissance oil painting, rather than an extension of ecclesiological principles. In defence of an earlier article the same author tries hard to reconcile these views and says that drawing does not have to be ’stiff’; or ‘coarse’ to be ‘true’ but that the ’severity’; of medieval glass is still preferable to the ’soft and shaded forms’ of some contemporary artists. This ambivalence is characteristic of the ecclesiological project as a whole: the aesthetics recommended by their principles were difficult to reconcile with contemporary culture. The debate on shading in stained glass is a clear example of this. Although shading was seen as untrue to the transparency of the material, representation in stained glass is only possible by obscuring this transparency. So what became the key issue was the mode and extent of obscuring the glass. The style of the fourteenth century provided a suitable model because it typically consists of two-dimensional, essentially linear, designs with ‘hard’ face painting, in which the chief mode of obscuring the glass is outline. The more ‘painterly’ style required more perspective, and therefore more subtle graduations of light and darkness spread over a larger area. The painterly style, however, was more likely to be acceptable to standard Victorian taste, and so many ecclesiologists were looking for a compromise between Puginian semantics and the received hierarchy of representation in western art. One of the key problems facing glass-painters in the 1840s was the material available to them. The glass available in the early 1840s was much more transparent than that used by medieval glaziers and so, in order to create the tone of medieval glass, an enamel wash was sometimes used over the exterior of the glass to prevent the window appearing too bright. This technique is similar to antiquating the glass except that it did not specifically imitate the appearance of medieval glass. This technique was common: few glass-painters applied a wash to the entire area, but most used it to dull this thin glass to some extent.45 Windows that did not employ this practice appear bright and garish in comparison to medieval glass, but this was the style endorsed in the early issues of the Ecclesiologist. Thus William Wailes’s windows at St Sepulchre’s Church Cambridge were defended against being ‘tawdry’; because ‘We [the Ecclesiologist] think there is no proof that the ancient windows looked otherwise than gaudy and bright when first made’.46 The tension apparent in this negotiation is one of

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the problems that the early Victorian glass-painter had to deal with: too much enamel, though likely to be acceptable to certain audiences, was regarded as deceitful by ecclesiological opinion, and too little enamel was likely to be interpreted as inartistic by the general public. With this in mind it was crucial for the glass-painter to be aware of what type of patron he was serving. The success of the window was highly dependent on who established the dominant interpretation, and how that interpretation was circulated. For example the stained glass inserted in the church of St Mary at Ottery St Mary in Devon was reviewed by John Duke Coleridge, and his review was published in the Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society (hereafter TEDAS). Later Coleridge’s review was reprinted in the Ecclesiologist, giving his opinions a national circulation.47 Coleridge, a leading and committed ecclesiologist, praised glass designed or overseen by Pugin or the architect William Butterfield, both strongly endorsed by the movement, but found William Warrington’s windows, paid for by Lady Rolle, almost unspeakable: ‘As far as her Ladyship’s generosity is concerned, the offering is splendid; but it would be so disagreeable to describe the window which she has been so kind as to give, in the language which befits it as a work of art, that I altogether abstain.’;48 A glass-painter working for a patron such as Coleridge was clearly better advised to make his products acceptable to ecclesiological opinion. By the early 1850s, ecclesiology had developed a certain self-confidence. The new generation of ecclesiastical architects had started to assert themselves and were in the process of developing their own style. William Butterfield, George Gilbert Scott, George Edmund Street and others were in the process of creating High Victorian Gothic, an assertive architecture that had moved well beyond Pugin’s ideas. The rising status of this new group of architects had repercussions for glass-painters and this is best explored through a paper by George Edmund Street, printed in the Ecclesiologist in 1852.49 Street started by observing that no contemporary stained glass was likely to last in taste. He identified three major problems. Patrons were not prepared to spend enough money on windows; glass-painters made too many windows; and stained glass was often made without enough awareness of the window’s architectural context. In line with ecclesiological taste Street singled out ‘Middle Pointed’ as the most suitable style. Deemed as essential to a good window were: the mosaic method, the transparency of the window, its intelligibility from a distance and the absence of shading or perspective. Most of these points had appeared regularly in the stained-glass debate, but Street’s insistence that perspective should be avoided in stained glass meant that, for him, stained glass could not be art. He suggested that a Christian artist should be a fresco painter, not a glass-painter, and wrote that stained glass was ‘capable of being

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executed to a great extent by workmen whose powers are little above being merely mechanical’.50 Rather than expecting the glass-painter to produce his own designs he recommended that suitable paintings should be used as models, and observed that a greater knowledge of iconography was needed. Street’s attitude towards glass-painting was shared by many architects. According to this attitude, an ecclesiastical interior should be consistent with a unified aesthetic and iconographical scheme, a scheme conceived and controlled by the architect. Ecclesiastical architects were busily constructing a new identity for themselves at this time. Their newly acquired professional status provided some guarantee against financial motivation and evidence of antiquarian knowledge often added to their credibility. Glass-painters were also attempting to raise the status of their profession, and, in this sense, were in competition with the architects. After all, it is hard to see how a glass-painter could shine as an artist while working in buildings conceived and strictly controlled by another person. This opposition underlies Street’s relegation of the glass-painter to mechanic: the status of the architect as author meant the suppression of other craftsmen working on the building. This relationship was clearly problematic for glass-painters and dominated the ambivalent relationship between stained glass and ecclesiology. Ecclesiology undoubtedly stimulated the market for stained glass, but it also created problems for aspiring glass-painters. In this context it not surprising that some glasspainters attempted to launch their careers outside ecclesiological circles. Not all Victorian architectural societies were as confrontational and dogmatic as the CCS and still provided the crucial link between antiquarian knowledge, glass-painters and wealthy patrons. The Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture, later the Oxford Architectural Society, was basically an antiquarian group.51 The ‘Oxonians’, like the CCS, had sister groups that operated in the provinces, such as the BWEAS. There were significant differences in the politics of these provincial groups; for example, while the BWEAS states its objects as a variety of antiquarian pursuits, the secretaries of the EDAS summarised their objects as ‘to endeavour to turn into a right channel that zeal for Church-building, which may otherwise waste itself in mistaken and injudicious efforts’.52 As will be discussed in Chapter 5, the BWEAS was crucial in launching Joseph Bell’s career, which suggests that the less dogmatic architectural societies could be just as useful to glass-painters as groups more closely aligned to ecclesiology. When examined in detail, the precise alignment of some architectural societies was very complicated. John Edwin Lance was a member of the SANHS – a group concerned as much with flora and fauna as with gothic architecture – yet his activities at Buckland St Mary show all the signs of a committed ecclesiologist. In this example it appears that an active group of ecclesiologists operated within a much less partisan

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organisation, and this could be seen as a convenient way of avoiding controversy. What was important was not the ideology itself, but how it functioned within its local field of cultural activity, and as has been suggested, a strict ecclesiological position posed serious difficulties for the aspiring glass-painter.

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The stained-glass debate beyond ecclesiological circles Those critics and glass-painters who could not reconcile themselves with the polemics of the CCS often ended up expressing themselves through these more liberal architectural societies. Another opportunity for this group was publishing articles in the Builder. The Builder was founded at the opposite end of the political spectrum to the Ecclesiologist. Its founder J. A. Hansom was a unionist and Owenite and although the Builder quickly turned into a middle-class periodical, under William Godwin it adopted the attitude of the reformer and provided, along with Weale’s Quarterly Papers on Architecture, an architectural periodical free from ecclesiological dogma.53 The Builder reported new stainedglass windows in a flat way, rarely offering value judgements, but did print controversial articles from authors with widely ranging attitudes. Some institutional bodies emerging in the early Victorian period had a peripheral effect on the revival of stained glass. The Government Schools of Design were launched in the late 1830s and, although they continued in a state of almost complete disarray until the early 1850s, were indicative of state interest in the training of designers. The most famous product of this phase of ‘Design Reform’ was the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851, and though the revival of stained glass was well under way by this time, the Great Exhibition was important in presenting the medium to a wider audience; this will be considered in detail in Chapter 7. The subsequent developments centring on Henry Cole and his circle did have consequences for stained glass. The genesis of the Museum of Ornamental Art and the South Kensington Museum started a long process of raising the status of ‘decorative art’; and to some extent enhanced the training available in this area.54 Although the South Kensington Museum and its staff were influenced by Pugin’s arguments, they did not advocate the gothic style as a moral decision. Henry Cole’s famous (but doomed) attempt to reform public taste through exhibitions at Marlborough House did not advocate any style in particular, but Pugin’s approach to design dominates the logic of his recommendations.55 South Kensington did not really attempt to take a lead in the promotion of stained-glass design until the museum held a stained-glass exhibition in 1864, and by this time the market was so well established that its effects were limited.

Stained glass and Victorian culture

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Champions of stained glass: the monographs of the 1840s and 1850s From 1845, a small but steady stream of monographs concerned with stained glass began to appear. None of these books agreed with ecclesiological principles until Francis Oliphant’;s A Plea for Stained Glass in 1855 – predictably at a time when Oliphant was starting up his own studio.56 Between 1845 and 1848 three important books were published: James Ballantine’s A Treatise on Painted Glass, Charles Winston’;s An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings and William Warrington’s The History of Stained Glass.57 Copies of these books found their way into many architectural society libraries.58 All of them insisted that glass-painting could be an art and they shared the project of raising the status of stained glass. All three books assumed that any successful stained glass was successful because it adhered to the ‘true principles’; of glass-painting and they all set out to establish their own versions of these principles. The stated purpose of Ballantine’s A Treatise on Painted Glass Shewing its Applicability to Every Style of Architecture was ‘to show that Glass Painting is a medium for expression worthy of the energies of genius [and] – to demonstrate its applicability to every style of architecture’.59 The book was dedicated to Lord Colborne, who was president of the Government Schools of Design, and this gives a clue to the book’s bias. Ballantine’s ‘true principles’ were based on the concept of ‘good design’, and he maintained that if these principles of design were followed, stained glass could be successfully applied to a variety of architectural styles and contexts. Ballantine favoured the ‘Primary Pointed’ and ’Secondary Pointed’ styles and derided later medieval glass, suggesting that ‘frivolity and absurdity’ were the main features of this period.60 In his view, geometric proportion and imitation of nature should be seen as the guiding principles of ornamental art and with this in mind stained glass could become an essential part of secular and religious interior schemes. Achieving consistency with the style of the rest of the interior seems to have been of more importance to Ballantine than the style itself. Ballantine’;s work was infused with the philosophy of the Schools of Design and was clearly aimed at courting favour in this area. He was in a good position to enhance the status of his studio after it secured the prestigious commission to glaze the new Palace of Westminster in 1843. To Charles Winston the ‘true principles’ of glass-painting were an almost tangible set of rules that careful observation of ancient examples would undoubtedly reveal. In a letter to Joseph Bell in 1849 he recommended him to examine the stained glass at Lichfield Cathedral, which demonstrated these principles:

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Nixon has just returned, and says he finds ‘my principles’; more right than he expected. He has made rough sketches – of the rest of the glass and I am [pleased] he is on the right path. It is strange to me how people continue to keep their eyes obstinately shut to palpable truths. I am sure what they call ‘my principles’ [are] nothing more than statements of what I have actually seen: there is no imagination at all in the matter, and I only wonder no one else communicated them before.61

When An Inquiry was published in 1847, there was no book that could match the amount of information it contained on the appearance, manufacture and techniques of stained-glass production. If only Winston had restricted himself to collecting antiquarian information, no doubt the CCS would have thought he was wonderful, but as the passage above shows, he was also attempting to assert his own critical perspective. Winston was convinced that his criteria for evaluating stained glass were correct, and when his opinions differed fundamentally from that of the CCS, the battle lines were drawn up obstinately on both sides. Winston disagreed with the ecclesiological position in several key areas. In fact given the confrontational tone of much of his writing it would be intriguing to know if he deliberately set out to discredit the CCS. There is no doubt that he was acutely aware of the Ecclesiologist when he wrote An Inquiry. For example, when discussing contemporary admiration for the ‘modern German School’ he was referring to the early ecclesiological championing of the Munich School and provocatively dismissed such a View of Catholic art’ as ‘chiefly, if not entirely, founded on narrow and exclusive religious grounds’.62 By the time the Ecclesiologist had started publishing opinionated ideas about stained glass, Winston had already been sketching stained glass for over a decade and it is very tempting to see An Inquiry as a book that consciously positioned itself against the CCS. While the Ecclesiologist claimed its critical authority on moral grounds, Winston’s claims were based on empirical observation of ancient glass, his own financial disinterest (he was a barrister) and strong appeals to ‘common sense’. Winston was adamant that stained glass should be evaluated as art; or in his own words one should ‘estimate its productions by those sound rules of criticism, which are alike applicable to all works of art; and not by the sole standard of antiquarian conformity’.63 Winston’s practical recommendations for glass-painters also placed him at odds with the CCS. His suggestion that ‘the Early English and the Decorated styles must, for the present at least, be discontinued’ must have provoked the CCS, though Winston based his advice on the limited potential of contemporary pot metal. Despite his practical approach it is clear that Winston’s favourite style was what he called the ‘Cinque CentO’

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– the style of the sixteenth century. According to Winston, the best glass was made between 1530 and 1550, but even here: ‘the peculiar circumstances of the sixteenth century caused its decline before it arrived at complete developement [sic]’.64 Here, as in his rejection of ‘antiquarian conformity’, Winston seems to be aligning himself with the idea of ‘development’, a concept that challenged the antiquarian phase of ecclesiology and justified an eclectic and modern approach to ecclesiastical art.65 For the Gothic Revival, ‘development’ suggested that ancient models could never provide sufficient authority to justify complete imitation: modern art had to develop with contemporary culture and though it might draw on the past, it had to reflect the modern world. In 1847 this was a relatively new idea, and Winston’s use of it emphasises his engagement with current thinking about ecclesiastical design. ‘Development’ also gave him a basis for encouraging artists to take up glass-painting: perhaps the nineteenth century might at last witness the full potential of the medium. In line with these ideas Winston stressed that a certain degree of pictorial treatment was consistent with the transparent quality of the material. He was convinced that stained glass should be made by artists and consequently the artisan should be prevented from masquerading as glasspainter: ‘If therefore we are anxious to cultivate glass-painting as an art, we must encourage artists to practise it, by ceasing to countenance those mere artisans who at present make it their trade, and confine it to the lowest degradation.’66 The Ecclesiologist’s review of his book, while acknowledging the depth of his knowledge on the subject, derided his opinions on the possibility of stained glass being art.67 Subsequently it is difficult to separate Winston’s opinions about stained glass from his obvious hatred of the ecclesiologists – and at times he seems more interested in discrediting them than in advancing his own case. Ecclesiology aside, Winston’s advice often shows that he was keenly aware of the difficulties facing contemporary glass-painters. He recognised that the only pot metal available was too thin and too transparent, and it was partly due to this that he recommended the Perpendicular and Cinque Cento styles. This was far more practical advice than that offered by the Ecclesiologist. The thought of not shading this already over-transparent glass as that journal recommended was simply not viable. By 1850 Winston had initiated experiments carried out at James Powell’s Whitefriars works with a view to starting production of superior pot metal. He was begging fragments from Bell in 1850 and 1851 in order to do this. Winston was not the first person to attempt this, but he was the most successful, and Powell’s antique glass became the first choice for glass-painters. Once irreconcilably estranged from the CCS, Winston lectured at the more liberal architectural societies, the newly formed Institute of British

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architects, and published in the Builder. Winston influenced the judging of the stained glass exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and was subsequently asked to advise on the installation of glass at the cathedrals of Norwich, Lincoln and Glasgow.68 Although his interventions in stainedglass projects were not always successful, Winston sustained his reputation as a critic until his death in 1864. He had a direct influence on several protégé glass-painters, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. To the layman, Winston was the foremost national authority on stained glass and his influence was an important alternative to the dominance of the CCS. Winston was once credited with almost single-handedly reviving Victorian stained glass, and this was an exaggeration, but in reacting against this it is easy to undervalue his importance to the revival of stained glass. Winston provided an antiquarian foundation for historical studies of stained glass, and did much to raise interest in glass-painting in spheres well beyond ecclesiology. Winston did not reinvent stained glass but he certainly helped it on its way. William Warrington’s History of Stained Glass received a review that was harsh even for the Ecclesiologist. Warrington, like Ballantine, was keen to enhance the status of the glass-painter and to this end his text refutes the idea that medieval glass-painters used artists to design their windows. Where Warrington differs from both Ballantine and Winston is in his faith in the perfection of medieval glass and the need to imitate it as closely as possible: ‘Real ancient models should be made available, and strictly followed in all modern works, if the fact now admitted by all be worthy of consideration – that the true and only standard of excellence is the medieval style of art.’69 In this passage, and in others, Warrington seems to be attempting to court favour with the ecclesiologists, but he was entirely unsuccessful. Warrington illustrated the styles of medieval glass with chromolithographs of his own windows, and this infuriated the Ecclesiologist: ‘We ask for medieval facts: and are put off with nineteenth century competition-sketches.’70 Thus while drawings by the CCS’s favoured architects were medieval facts, Warrington’s representations of the medieval style were lies. Warrington had dared to suggest that he too had the power to represent medieval art as it should be, and this was the power the CCS considered to be their sole property. Warrington had been unpopular with the CCS from the early 1840s for the practice of artificially ageing his glass. In the review of his book the Ecclesiologist set about destroying Warrington’s credibility and pointed out that ‘the alliance between Mr. Pugin and Mr. Warrington was soon supplanted by one with Mr. Wailes’, thus dissociating him from their former icon.71 The rest of the assault took the form of turning Warrington’s claims to authority – his status as a practising glass-painter – into the basis of his lack of authority. The criticisms are loaded with class-based contempt and

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attempt to present him as a self-important tradesman, a similar figure to Winston’s ‘mere artisan’. Warrington’s attempts to trace stained glass to Classical origins accompanied by Greek quotations were pounced upon by the Ecclesiologist, which tried to prove that he did not understand the language he was using: ‘We can assure Mr. Warrington that Greek and Latin is a very awkward thing, and that he is much more likely to cut his fingers at this work than in his own shop.’72 The author of the review here made a direct reference to the gulf in class status between Warrington and himself: university-based classical education was beyond him and he was advised to restrict himself to the purely mechanical activities of an artisan. The implication is that this privileged education gave the author an authority to talk about art that Warrington could never possess. To the Ecclesiologist Warrington inhabited the world of manual and not mental labour, and this is where they thought he should stay. There is little doubt that Warrington’s book is a shameless display of his own work, but the same could be said of the most of the books written by glass-painters in the 1840 and 1850s. The significant point is the form these criticisms took: class prejudice was used to simultaneously devalue Warrington and assert the authority of the CCS. This approach to cultural authority is characteristic of ecclesiology. The famous frontispiece to Pugin’s Contrasts was ironically dedicated to ‘The Trade’, mocking those whose interest in architecture was primarily financial. A credible artist or architect was almost defined by his lack of financial motivation, hence Winston’s dread of the ‘mere artisan’, who would bring down the aesthetic status of stained glass. A glass-painter trying to run a business was very vulnerable to being characterised as the ‘mere artisan’: he did have to make money but had to be careful that this was not perceived as his primary motivation. Architects generally managed this dilemma well. Ecclesiastical architects could use both their professional status and their religious conviction as barriers to accusations of financial interest. In the early Victorian period glass-painters were perceived as artisans, not professionals, and this subordinate status suited the architects very well. Despite its critics, The History of Stained Glass is a fascinating volume, and works hard to break down the barrier between mental and manual labour. Warrington, more than any other author, reimagines the glasspainter as a skilled manipulator of a diverse range of cultural codes: For this is an art that comprehends many subjects … a combined study of history, sacred and profane, a knowledge of ecclesiastical and civil costume, armour and armoury, heraldry and genealogy, conventionalism, symmetry, colouring, and the manufacturing of colours; chemistry; drawing, geometrical, mathematical, and artistical; together with a mechanical knowledge of combining numberless parts to compose a whole.73

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The truth of Warrington’s claims is borne out by Joseph Bell’s notebooks, which show an artisan teaching himself all of the above subjects in order to acquire the kind of vocabulary necessary to design stained glass. Warrington’s book expresses the heroic enterprise of the early Victorian glass-painter, and the use of his own designs as illustrations is very much part of the same project. In presenting himself as a historian, Warrington was claiming the right to represent the history of his own craft, and refusing to let non-practitioners write that history for him. Warrington’s struggle with the CCS was just part of the battle over who defined the status and appearance of stained glass. Warrington suffered by making an enemy of a powerful organisation, but his History of Stained Glass is a vibrant expression of the aspirations of the early Victorian glass-painter.

European scholarship The revival of stained glass was a subject that stimulated considerable interest amongst writers in France. Since the defeat of Napolean, gothic had become associated with the restored monarchy and the revival of the Roman Catholic church. During Louis-Phillipe’s reign (1830-48) the state set about restoring buildings of national importance under the newly formed Commission des monuments historiques.74 Considering the extensive corpus of medieval stained glass that existed in France, the revival of glass-painting skills became an issue of some importance. By the late 1840s competitions were held to select glass-painters capable of projects such as the restoration of the stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle, and this competition was won by Henri Gérente.75 Several published sources added to the scholarship under way in England. From 1837 Ferdinand Charles de Lasteyrie du Saillant started publishing a series of spectacular chromolithographs of French stained glass, starting in the twelfth century and ending in the eighteenth century.76 Each issue comprised two pages of text and four large colour plates – this was clearly a valuable source for glass-painters. Others writers were more polemical: Georges Bontemps, the director of the glass factory at Choisy-leRoi and later an associate of the stained-glass jury at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the International Exhibition of 1862, published his intervention in 184 5.77 Peinture sur verre au XIX siècle is a book that sets out to discredit the myth that the art of stained glass was lost. Bontemps points out that the time was ripe for the revival of glass-painting but many glass-painters now falsely claimed to have rediscovered the lost art singlehandedly. He goes to some length to show that the art was never lost but argues that the decline of stained glass was actually due to the Renaissance and the influence of Classicism – an argument that has a distinct Puginian logic.78 Bontemps was

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keen to point out that the revival of glass-painting was not just a technical matter; he favoured the glass of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was keen to direct the revival of French glass-painting in this direction. He saw no barriers to this as, in his opinion, the necessary knowledge, materials and techniques were all currently available. Lasteyrie published a further volume in 1852, Quelques mots sur la théorie de la peinture sur verre, which is full of practical advice for glass-painters and patrons about the design, subject matter and decoration of stained glass. Lasteyrie did not champion a particular stylistic period and seems relatively unaffected by Puginian arguments. The most interesting aspect of this later volume is the awareness of the historiography of stained glass: he includes quite a comprehensive bibliography of histories of stained glass, including works in English by Warrington and Pugin. Although there was quite a lot of interconnection between the leading members of the Gothic Revival in Europe, it is difficult to find any direct European influences on the English stained-glass market. What the publications of Bontemps, Lasteyrie and others tell us is that there was a parallel revival of stained glass in France in the 1840s. It is doubtful, however, whether French stained glass developed the independence from archaeological models that is evident in English stained glass by the late 1850s. Two potentially important German treatises on glass-painting were published in translation in Weale’s Quarterly Papers in the mid-1840s, by Dr M. A. Gessert and Emanuel Otto Fromberg.79 While these publications were important sources of technical information there is little evidence to suggest that they made much impact on the English debate surrounding stained glass. Several of these publications were used by Winston as sources.80 Probably more significant was a popular book published in 1832, G. R. Porter’s, A Treatise on the Progressive Improvement and Present State of the Manufacture of Porcelain and Glass, which seems to have drawn on many of these European sources and reproduced the information in one affordable volume.81 There is strong evidence to suggest that Joseph Bell was using Porter’s book in the early 1840s, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. Finally a group of publications should be mentioned that provided useful illustrations and antiquarian information, but did not really add anything to the theoretical debate about stained glass in the 1840s. A. W. Franks’s book of quarry patterns, published in 1849, was dedicated to Winston and provided a wealth of patterns for glass-painters to use as sources. Franks was the famous benefactor to the British Museum and a thorough antiquarian though he seems to have been completely detached from the ecclesiological debate.82 John Weale was a publisher who had a

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keen eye for developing tastes. His publication of examples of ecclesiastical art in the 1830s and 1840s anticipated widespread interest is this area. These publications were not part of the partisan debate but were valuable as sources for a number of glass-painters. So how did all this affect Lance and the way he glazed his new church at Buckland St Mary? I would suggest that Lance was influenced in a number of ways. To start with, the fact that he felt a project was necessary at all suggests that he was conscious of the need for revival within the Church of England. The form this project took – an extensive rebuilding and redecorating programme centred on a parish church – suggests that he was influenced by ideas generated by the Oxford Movement and ecclesiology. We can trace Lance’s links to ecclesiology through his membership of the SANHS, and his links to militant Tractarians through his support of George Anthony Denison. So we can see that Lance’s project and the shape it took were, to some extent, results of the kind of influences discussed in this chapter. When we turn to the style of the church and its fittings in more detail we can see more specific influences. The deep chancel, prominent baptistery and intensely decorated chancel are all features consistent with ecclesiology. What is particularly interesting is that the patrons responsible for glazing Buckland St Mary seem to have been particularly sensitive to the latest trends in glass-painting. When the east window was installed in 1857, the reputation of Michael O’;Connor was probably as high as that of any glass-painter working in Britain. Two years later, the rising stars of Victorian stained glass, Clayton and Bell, were commissioned to make the west window.83 The windows themselves constitute material evidence of the progress of the stained-glass revival. O’;Connor’s south chancel window contains a variety of antique glass, and the capacity of this glass to diffuse light rather than transmit it directly meant that he did not need to dim the glass with an enamel wash. Instead he was enabled to create a mosaic window that was bright but not dazzling; quite ’soft’ face painting was successfully combined with a strong linear design. The complex figure groups in the east window show a mature designer working successfully with his difficult material: the window is complex but legible (Plate 2). These developments are perhaps even more noticeable in Clayton and Bell’s west window (Plate 3). Clayton and Bell used the best antique glass available, made by Powell of Whitefriars, and the brilliancy and range of the palette shows how this material could be used with very little shading to create dramatic effects. Clayton and Bell were part of a new generation of glass-painters who had never had to work with the inferior glass of the 1840s. Their manner shows familiarity with this superior pot metal. The intensely leaded small flowers

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scattered around the lower half of the window are a good example of this. Here is truly mosaic glass: the impact is created primarily through glass and lead-line; enamel is used only for detail. Although Lance was clearly influenced by ecclesiology, some elements of his project do not conform to the ecclesiological rulebook. Stained glass carries the dominant pictorial iconography in the church. It is not subordinated to frescos or wall paintings, and the skills of the glass-painters employed were not just mechanical: they designed and made the windows. In fact we might consider why Lance did not choose a top ecclesiological architect to rebuild the church. Benjamin Ferrey, despite being the diocesan architect, was not really a top ecclesiological architect. It is quite likely that Lance wanted an architect who would do as he was told, rather than an assertive figure such as William Butterfield who liked to get his own way. The active intervention of the patron was a key feature of ecclesiology and this had important consequences for ecclesiastical design (a theme that will be explored in Chapter 4). This also points towards another important consideration for the historian of Victorian stained glass. Reading the Ecclesiologist creates an exaggerated impression of the influence of the CCS; whatever its power in the 1840s, in the 1850s the market for stained glass became too big for ecclesiology to control. As early as 1847 William Wailes commented in a letter to John Hardman ‘there is plenty of work for us all’.84 Lance almost certainly influenced the iconography of the windows, which supports the church’s emphasis on the sacraments. The lower half of O’Connor’s east window depicts five scenes from the Passion, and the upper half represents Christ in Majesty surrounded by apostles and saints. O’Connor had used the cartoon for the crucified Christ a year before at West Quantoxhead (about 20 miles away), but the design of the cross was altered between the two commissions – though whether Lance influenced this detail is unclear. Another detail points more positively towards Lance’s religious position. The two most prominent male saints worshipping Christ in Majesty are a king and a bishop and behind them stand apostles (Plate 2). This relationship makes a visual link between the episcopate and the apostles and so amounts to a statement of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. The presence of the king emphasises the distinctive highchurch allegiance to the monarch as the sacred head of the established church. The iconography of the stained glass in the west end of the church underlines and reinforces the role of the baptistery. Two windows in the north wall depict the Baptism of Christ and Noah’s Ark. The stunning west window depicts Christ in Judgment and the south window of the tower (installed a few years later) depicts the passage through the Red Sea in the main lights and the Plagues in the tracery lights. These windows combined

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with the quotations below the west window use the logic of typology to link all these images. The Crossing of the Red Sea and Noah’s Ark are linked to the sacrament of baptism through the biblical quotations below. The Deluge is also a type of the Apocalypse, as are the Plagues, and so these scenes link to the Judgement theme of the west window. A complex web of powerful iconographic meaning therefore surrounds the architectural space where the sacrament of baptism was performed. Baptism is the start of the path to salvation rather than damnation, a sacrament anticipated by Old Testament events, and this link is made through a medieval semiotic system. The architectural space is based on a medieval style, and the glass that lights it is evidence of the revival of a medieval art. The cover hanging over the font is made of medieval wood and the priest performing the rite was implicitly taking on a role that Christ gave to his apostles: to expand the church through baptism. Independent of its iconography, the stained glass contributes aesthetically to the baptistery. The ability of stained glass to change the quality of the light means that a combination of coloured light and lower light levels makes the space special and different, an atmosphere appropriate to a space where mystical transformations were held to be taking place. The church and its fittings say a lot about Lance’s project, but in order to leave his audience in no doubt he presented the new work to the parish in a very assertive way. The combined inscriptions on the windows construct a narrative of kinship, cultural production and patronage which epitomises the mature ecclesiological movement. From the east window moving anti-clockwise the windows are dedicated as follows: To the Glory of God an offering from my much loved Sister Mary Turner. J. E. Lance 1857.’ ‘Erected by Henry Porcher to the memory of his sister Madelina Lance.’ ‘To the Glory of God an offering from my sons in India. J. E. Lance 1857.’ ‘In memory of Ann Goswell who for 40 years was a devoted servant and faithful friend in the family of J. Edwin Lance she deceased Jan. 25 1873.’ ‘In blessed memory of Sarah Porcher who deceased Dec. 8 1869 at 73 widow of Henry Porcher. She contributed munificently towards the rebuilding of this church.’ ‘To the blessed memory of Henry Porcher who contributed munificently towards the building of this church. He deceased November 19 1857.’ ‘This window was presented to the church by Henry Davis a builder he built the church and completed the work in 1863 on 28th August in

Stained glass and Victorian culture

that year the church was consecrated by Lord Auckland Bishop of Bath and Wells.’

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‘To the Glory of God an offering from my highly esteemed and greatly beloved brother W. H. Turner R. D. late fellow of Corpus Christi College Oxford and Rector of Trent. J. E. Lance 1859.’ ‘This window was given by Charles Edward Lance for the love of God and of the parish of Buckland the pastor’s third son October MDCCCLXIL’85

Lance’s use of the first person gives him an authorial control over the church. He dominates the building and presents himself as the person who transformed the piety and power of his kin into the physical fabric of the church. Nowhere is this relationship more clearly stated than in the inscriptions at the base of the stained-glass windows. Blood relations and relations by marriage are all recorded as part of the project: the brother and sister of his dead wife (Henry and Sarah Porcher) and the husband of his sister were major contributors. Even the British Empire gets a look in: Lance’s sons in distant India are not above contributing to the decoration of their father’s parish church. This was particularly appropriate as the family’s wealth was largely derived from the activities of the East India Company. By listing the contributors, Lance constructs a picture of benevolent paternalism, a picture made all the more powerful by the inclusion of the builder and a servant. This is an invocation of the kind of ideal pre-Reformation community envisaged by Carlyle: rich and poor contribute to or are commemorated by the project; a strong hierarchy is present but its role is benevolent. This chapter has illustrated some of the ways in which stained glass fitted into the mid-Victorian world. The influences contributing to the revival of stained glass were social, religious and economic. The erosion of traditional social structures had initiated a reaction, and the form this reaction took was heavily influenced by the Victorian understanding of the medieval period. The Church of England was under pressure and responded with a theological revival informed by the medieval period. Through ecclesiology, the Oxford Movement had a profound effect on Victorian design. Ecclesiology proved to be the key link and combined the theology of Oxford with Pugin’s medievalism, which was primarily concerned with ecclesiastical design. This resulted in an ambitious vision of ornate gothic buildings in the vanguard of religious and social reform. A certain type of reformer was inspired by this vision, and saw a sumptuously decorated gothic church as the solution to parochial problems. Stained glass had a crucial role to play in this vision and this was the challenge that met the early Victorian glass-painter.

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Notes 1

See J. A. Hind, ‘Buckland St Mary Past and Present’; (t.s. circulated to local history libraries, 1974).

2 3 4

Hind, ‘Buckland St Mary’, p. 18. For a review see Builder, 21 (1863), 675-676. For the early career of Michael O’Connor see M. Wynne, ’Stained Glass in Ireland:

5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12 13

14

15 16 17

18 19 20 21

Principally Irish Stained Glass’; (Ph.D. dissertation, Trinity College Dublin, 1975), p. 133. For example in Somerset O’;Connor executed large commissions at Cricket Malherbie in 1851, West Quantoxhead in 1856 and Ilton in the early 1860s. T. Hoppern, The Mid Victorian Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 433. See A. D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740-1914 (London: Longman, 1976). For a thorough discussion of the relationship between the Church of England and its competitors see F. Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The vestry is an assembly of parishioners who make decisions on behalf of the parish. Before the formation of county councils in the late nineteenth century a vestry could raise local taxes and often decided who benefited from charitable funds. The vestry could, however, be a source of conflict between vicar and congregation; see Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, p. 67. Gilbert, Religion and Society, p. 131. Knight, The Nineteenth-Century Church, pp. 121-122. Hind, ‘Buckland St Mary’, p. 19. It seems that initially Lance’s appointment to Buckland St Mary was perceived as a temporary measure but his continued residence there points to the fact that he found the situation a good location for his activities; see Hind, ‘Buckland St Mary’, p. 19. For a discussion of rural church building in Devon see C. Brooks, ‘Building the rural church’, in C. Brooks and A. Saint (eds), The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 51-81). Hind, ‘Buckland St Mary’, p. 29. C. Brooks, ‘Introduction’, in Brooks and Saint (eds), The Victorian Church, p. 9. For the best general account of the Gothic Revival see C. Brooks, The Gothic Revival (London: Phaidon, 1999); see also M. J. Lewis, The Gothic Revival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002). For an interesting discussion of the ‘Olden Time’ see Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 21-69. Brooks, The Gothic Revival, p. 100. See Brooks, The Gothic Revival, pp. 129-139. For a discussion of the semiotic intricacies of Pugin’s theories see C. Brooks, Signs for the Times: Symbolic Realism in the mid-Victorian World (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 145-165. For a wealth of biographical information and material on different aspects of Pugin’s work, see p. Atterbury and C. Wainwright (eds), Pugin: A Gothic Passion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

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23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30

31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day; Shewing the Present Decay of Taste. Accompanied by Appropriate Text (London, 1836) and A. W. N. Pugin, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841). Subsequent citations of these books refer to the following editions: Contrasts (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969) and The True Principles (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853). The Leicester University reprint of Contrasts is based on the expanded 1841 edition. Pugin, Contrasts, p. 3. Pugin, True Principles, p. 1. Pugin, True Principles, p. 2. Pugin, True Principles, pp. 2-3. Pugin, True Principles, pp. 19-22. Pugin, Contrasts, p. 5. Recent scholarship has emphasised the continuities between Tractarian thought and older high-church traditions but concedes that an important new impetus and identity resulted from the movement; see p. B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760-1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For an interesting discussion of anti-Roman Catholicism in the eighteenth century and its intrinsic significance to British national identity see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (London: Vintage, 1996), pp. 10-58. Tracts for the Times by Members of the University of Oxford (Oxford: J. G. F. and J. Runnington, 1833-41). Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 23 January 1855. See ‘Laws of the Cambridge Camden Society’, repr. in J. White, The Cambridge Movement: The Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 225-227. For a more recent assessment of ecclesiology see C. Webster and J. Elliot (eds), ‘A Church as it Should Be’: The Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2000). In this study I will refer to the Cambridge group as the Cambridge Camden Society (or CCS) in order not to confuse it with the national ecclesiological movement. Typology juxtaposes an Old Testament image and a New Testament image to suggest that the former (the type) anticipates and prefigures the latter (the antitype). See 1 Peter 3: 20-21 and 1 Corinthians 10: 1-2. Matthew 28: 19. White, The Cambridge Movement, pp. 225-227. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 16-20, and for a response to the original article, 107-111. The Ecclesiologist has a complicated publication history: volumes 1-3 cover 1841 to 1844; volume 4 for 1845 continues under the original series and became volume 1 in the new series. Volume numbers in this book refer to the original series. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 16. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 17. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 17. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 110. M. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1980), p. 22.

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46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53 54

55 56 57

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59 60 61

it is important to point out at this stage that artists whom we now class as Renaissance were medieval to the Victorians; see for example Pugin’s recommendation of Raphael: Pugin, Contrasts, p. 12. Similar problems were encountered in Germany: the Munich glass-painters used a layer of gypsum applied to the reverse of the glass to dim some of their windows; see V. Elgin, The Makers of the ‘Munich Glass’: The Munich Royal Glass Painting Works (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Computer Publishing Unit, c. 1996). Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 109. Ecclesiologist, 13 (1852), 79. J. D. Colderidge, ‘On the restoration of the church of S. Mary the Virgin at Ottery S. Mary’, TEDAS, 4 (1853), 204-210. Ecclesiologist, 13 (1852), 237-247. For a discussion of the relationship between an architect and various glass-painters see M. Kerney, The stained glass commissioned by William Butterfield’, Journal of Stained Glass, 20:1 (1996), 1-30. Ecclesiologist, 13 (1852), 241. White, The Cambridge Movement, p. 24. See Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society 1845 and letter dated 1842 attached to TEDAS volume 1 in the West Country Studies library in Exeter. M. Brooks, ‘The Builder in the 1840s: the making of a magazine, the shaping of a profession’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 14:3 (1981), 88. For a recent discussion of the role of South Kensington see A. Burton, Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 1999). Burton, Vision and Accident, pp. 30-33. F. W. Oliphant, A Plea for Stained Glass (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1855). J. Ballantine, A Treatise on Painted Glass Shewing its Applicability to Every Style of Architecture (London: Chapman and Hall, 1845); C. Winston, An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings Especially in England with Hints on Glass Painting (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847); W. Warrington, The History of Stained Glass from the Earliest Period of the Art to the Present Time Illustrated by Coloured Examples of Entire Windows (London: published by the author, 1848). By 1849, the BWEAS had copies of Winston and Ballantine, and the EDAS had copies of Warrington and Winston. See Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society 1847, 10-11. The EDAS did not systematically list its library contents, but the copies of Warrington and Winston still exist in the Exeter University collections, and inscriptions inside the front covers record that they were both donated to the EDAS in 1847. Winston’s book is inscribed ‘1847 Presented by Mr. Kent Kingdom’. Ballantine, A Treatise on Painted Glass, p. 3. Ballantine, A Treatise on Painted Glass, p. 16. Archive of Art and Design (hereafter AAD), London, 1996/9, Letter from Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 7 February 1849. Words in square brackets have been added to preserve sense where the manuscript letters were unclear.

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63 64 65

66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79

80 81

82 83

Winston, An Inquiry, p. 299. A. J. Beresford Hope had Munich glass installed in his model church at Kilndown, Kent. For a review see Ecclesiologist, 7 (1847), 120-125. Winston, An Inquiry, p. 283. Winston, An Inquiry, p. 284. For a discussion of the idea of development and its relevance to the Gothic Revival see D. B. Brownlee, ‘The first high Victorians: British architectural theory in the 1840s’, Architectura, 15 (1985), 33-46 and M. Hall, ‘What do Victorian churches mean? Symbolism and sacramentalism in Anglican church architecture, 1850-1870’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59:1 (2000), 71-95. Winston, An Inquiry, p. 283. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 81-97. For an account of Winston’s direct involvement in specific stained-glass commissions see C. Sewter, ‘The place of Charles Winston in the Victorian revival of the art of stained glass’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 24 (1961), 80-91. Warrington, The History of Stained Glass, preface, p. iii. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 81. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 89. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 83. Warrington, The History of Stained Glass, p. 3. Brooks, The Gothic Revival, p. 269. S. Brown, Stained Glass: An Illustrated History (London: Studio Editions, 1992), p. 133. F. C. Lasteyrie du Saillant, Histoire de la peinture sur verre d’après ses monumens en France, 2 vols (Paris, 1857). This is the collected edition; the plates were originally published in a series starting in 1837. G. Bontemps, Peinture sur verre au XIX siècle: les secrets de cet art sont-ils retrouvés? (Paris, 1845). Bontemps, Peinture sur verre, pp. 30-31. M. A. Gessert, ‘The art of painting on glass, or glass staining’, trans. William Pole, Quarterly Papers on Architecture, 1:2 (1844), 1-13. ‘An introductory essay on the art of painting on glass, by Emanuel Otto Fromberg’, trans. H. J. Clarke, Quarterly Papers on Architecture, 4:8 (1845), 1-119. Winston cites Fromberg and Gessert; see Winston, An Inquiry, p. 3 (note k) and p. 16. G. R. Porter, A Treatise on the Progressive Improvement and Present State of the Manufacture of Porcelain and Glass (London, 1832). This is part of a series called the Cabinet Cyclopedia described as ‘Conducted by Dionysius Lardner’ which ran to 133 or 136 volumes (opinions vary) between 1830 and 1849. Winston refer’s to Porter’s Treatise as though Lardner were the author. In 1852 it was advertised for the price of 3s 6d. A. W. Franks, A Book of Ornamental Glazing Quarries, Collected and Arranged from Ancient Examples (London: J. H. Parker, 1849). The west window was paid for by William Hamilton Turner, Lance’s brother in law. Turner was also an important patron of early Victorian stained glass; his church at Trent in Dorset has an early Wailes set in the chancel from 1842 and glass by Joseph Bell and Wailes in the nave from the 1850s. Given Lance’s tight control over the

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interior at Buckland St Mary it is likely that he was involved in the decision to turn to Clayton and Bell. Quoted in S. Shepherd, ‘The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835-52’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1997), p. 66. Only inscriptions dated within a decade of the consecration have been included – these can reasonably be considered as part of Lance’s project. The inscriptions referring to Ann Goswell, Sarah Porcher, Henry Porcher and Henry Davis are on brass plaques directly beneath the windows; the others are in the windows themselves. Three further windows are dedicated to the latter members of the Lance family between 1879 and 1914.

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2 ✧ Victorian glass-painters and their inheritance

A

LTHOUGH much of this book is devoted to a detailed examination of small and medium-scale glass-painting ateliers, in order to understand the revival of stained glass it is crucial to ask just why the big studios were so successful. This is not an easy question to answer, but some conclusions can be drawn about how studios related to each other, and how they worked within the market as a whole. This chapter briefly examines eight glass-painting operations and assesses their significance within the early Victorian market for stained glass. These are the operations which I believe were most influential on the market as a whole and many interesting figures have had to be omitted. 1 hope these glass-painters, and others, will be pursued by future scholars. This chapter will draw upon a number of studies based on systematic recording of stained glass: information yielded by this type of research offers the best opportunity for observing how the market for stained glass spread.1 Before turning to the big studios, it is important to examine the nature of the market for stained glass prior to the Victorian period. Victorian historians of glass-painting are unreliable in this area, as many of them liked to pretend that glass-painters had achieved nothing between the end of the medieval period and their own era. This position is clearly untenable and it is evident that there was a significant demand for stained glass in the later eighteenth century. Despite this, in my opinion, there were several important factors that meant that a large-scale and sustained revival of stained glass could not happen until the 1840s.

Stained glass before the Victorians Glass-painters fell on hard times in the second half of the sixteenth century. The decline of glass-painting was a direct result of the Reformation: figurative images were now seen as more Roman Catholic than Protestant and so the demand for pictorial stained glass collapsed.2 Protestant feelings

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against religious images ran high, and waves of iconoclasm destroyed large quantities of medieval stained glass. Aristocrats requiring a public record of their lineage and property rights sustained a smaller market for heraldic stained glass, but generally the English glass-painting profession shrank as the flow of commissions dried up. It is difficult to detect a revival on any significant scale until the last quarter of the eighteenth century although there was some encouragement for ornate church interiors in the 1620s and 1630s under the influence of Archbishop Laud.3 From the 1770s, a series of high-profile commissions attempted to transfer the representational possibilities of oil painting onto glass. The most famous example of this type of stained glass is the west window of New College Oxford, made by Thomas Jervais, from oil cartoons painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (Figure 2).4 This window inaugurated a series of highprofile commissions in this new painterly style. Although this manner of stained glass did give the medium some exposure, the link between oil painting and stained glass became problematic for the profession as a whole. One problem was that the artist who painted the cartoons was generally perceived as the creator of the window, while the glass-painter was often seen as merely an accomplice. Praise for the efforts of Jervais and Reynolds at Oxford followed this pattern: The idea is due to Sir Joshua Reynolds; and Jervais pledged his art for the execution of it, and succeeded to admiration.’5 Reynolds had the ‘idea’ – he was the creator; Jervais on the other hand was credited with the ‘execution’ – the mechanical part of the project. This relationship with painting would never have allowed the ‘artist in stained glass’ to emerge. The popularity of painterly eighteenth-century stained glass was brief. One reason for this is that the new style had limited appeal to the increasing number of gothic enthusiasts emerging in the later eighteenth century. In fact, when antiquarian scholars like John Carter started to criticise James Wyatt’s restorations of English cathedrals, painterly stained glass was identified as one of the problems. When criticising Wyatt’s restoration of Lichfield Cathedral in 1795, ‘Viator’ took exception to Francis Eginton’s new windows: ‘On the execution of the East windows let those judge who are not fascinated with modern window-staining. Nothing is more easy than to fancy our contemporaries exceed all who went before them; but, a very little acquaintance with the old stain will obtain for it a decided preference over the new glare.’6 In this context, painterly stained glass was not just divorced from gothic, but associated with a decorative scheme that destroyed Britain’s gothic heritage. Although painterly stained glass was celebrated in some quarters, a suspicious number of the enthusiasts turn out to be either glass-painters or their friends.7 Overall it is difficult to find convincing evidence that painterly stained glass ever

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enjoyed widespread or sustained popularity. In two important ways it limited opportunities for the glass-painter: it separated him from the design of his windows, and it cut him off from an important patron group. Eighteenth-century gothic did, in fact, create considerable enthusiasm for stained glass. Stained glass appears repeatedly in real and fictional situations as a medium that signals mystery, medievalism and atmosphere. The celebrated gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe introduces her arch villain Schedoni in The Italian bathed in the ‘sacred gloom’ produced by the ‘painted windows’, and windows in the Gothic Abbey in The Romance of the Forest contained ‘fragments of stained glass, once the pride of monkish devotion’.8 Horace Walpole, that fashionable champion of gothic, was a great stained-glass enthusiast and used it to create suitably theatrical interiors at his famous mansion in Twickenham, Strawberry Hill. Walpole, however, was not so much interested in contemporary stained glass as in ancient glass, which he acquired in significant quantities.9 Although Walpole was a keen collector, and so might be expected to want old glass, it is probable that his preference was fuelled by his dislike of the painterly style. Walpole was not alone in his preference for old glass and this trend is confirmed by the emergence of agents specialising in importing stained glass from continental Europe.10 Viator’ would have been pleased to know that Eginton’s glass at Lichfield would last less than a decade, before being replaced by ancient glass imported from Belguim.11 Some patrons enthused by medievalism did commission contemporary stained glass in large quantities. In the 1790s, William Beckford spent large sums of money on new stained glass commissioned for Fonthill Abbey: his bill to the Egintons came to at least £954.12 In another significant example, Francis Eginton and his son William Raphael Eginton painted a series of figure windows for Charles Howard at Arundel Castle. The elder Eginton and Joseph Backler also made major painterly windows in the same location, the latter painting depicting the Granting of the Magna Carta to the Barons.13 This is an example of painterly stained glass closely aligned with eighteenth-century gothic: the Magna Carta episode was a favourite of those inspired by gothic political history, and depictions of it seem to have made quite regular appearances in eighteenth-century gothic interiors.14 So painterly glass was not completely rejected by eighteenth-century gothic, but its appeal was not widespread. Even if painterly stained glass had appealed to more gothic patrons it is doubtful whether this would have resulted in many ecclesiastical commissions, as eighteenth-century gothic was largely a secular affair. A valuable piece of documentary evidence that helps us understand glass-painting in the later eighteenth century is William Peckitt’s commissions book.15 This document describes the vast majority of the

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commissions executed by Peckitt in his glass-painting career, stretching from 1751 to 1795. Peckitt was a major figure in the world of eighteenthcentury glass-painting, and although some patrons found his draughtsmanship unsatisfactory his reputation in his own time was high. Analysis of the commissions book shows that heraldic glass was probably Peckitt’s single most important product.16 Although the subject matter of Peckitt’s windows was mainly secular, many of his major patrons were still clergymen, employing him to supply pot metal, repair existing windows and install heraldic glass. Peckitt did not execute many major ecclesiastical windows, though he did work extensively at New College Oxford and made large windows for Exeter Cathedral, Oriel College Oxford and a handful of other locations. Peckitt’s heraldic commissions ranged from single crests costing a few shillings to large ‘pedigree’ windows costing hundreds of pounds. Peckitt’s most extravagant secular patrons were the Milnes family, who spent over £800 on Peckitt’s glass. Most of the Milnes glass was heraldic, but the scheme in their library depicted the arms of King John and those of the barons who signed the Magna Carta: here was gothic political history represented through heraldry.17 Another gothic influence appears in the shape of Horace Walpole, who commissioned Peckitt to paint heraldic glass and restore broken glass, while some panes were apparently for theatrical effect: ‘Sixteen long pieces of Yellow Glass with rays to form a star in the skylight of the Closet’.18 So domestic gothic did provide Peckitt with some work, but when we turn to other secular glass the difference between the work of the Georgian and Victorian glass-painter becomes all too apparent. ‘A Horse called Harlequin from the Life’ was painted for a local gentleman, and Miss Boutcher was provided with a portrait of a ‘Lap Dog’ surrounded by Rococo ornament.19 ‘An Elephant and a Rhinoceros on small panes’ were ordered by a Mr Woodhouse of York, while Pole Crosby happily mixed the secular and religious, ordering ‘The Resurection on a small pane The Assendsion The Transfiguration A Horse A Cock Hen and Chickens A Flower Piece’.20 On a grander scale Peckitt painted an allegorical window for the library of Trinity College Cambridge depicting George III with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Francis Bacon.21 It seems possible that he tried to develop the secular side to his glass: in 1780 he took out a patent for flashing, cutting and polishing glass, and his samples of this process were clearly aiming at decorative effects suitable for domestic settings.22 Peckitt’s career shows that the church was still an important patron but that clergymen were unlikely to ask for large windows carrying religious pictures. The secular nature of much of Peckitt’s work shows that, surprising as this may seem, the demand for figurative religious windows had not recovered since the Reformation. When compared to his Victorian counterparts, Peckitt suffered from the lack of a consistent demand for

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ecclesiastical stained glass. This is not particularly surprising when we consider that the revival of the gothic style was a predominantly secular affair and that painterly stained glass had an uncertain cultural status. By the end of Peckitt’s career stained glass was starting to move back towards its gothic roots: single figures informed by gothic examples are increasingly evident in the work of the younger Eginton and stained glass was beginning to align itself with the antiquarian gothic of John Carter, rather than the Romantic Gothic of James Wyatt.23 So in the decades leading up to the Victorian period the prospects for the stained-glass profession looked better: interest in gothic was accelerating and stained glass was becoming reconciled with its original style. The demand for heraldic glass was still steady and the first of the Church Building Acts in 1818 heralded the boom in church-building. Arguably this transition from Regency to Victorian stained glass is best illustrated by looking at the key link figure, Thomas Willement.

Thomas Willement Thomas Willement was Artist in Stained Glass to Queen Victoria but had started his career as a glass-painter many years before Victoria came to the throne, and in 1826 described himself as ‘Heraldic Painter to the King’.24 He was unique in being a major Victorian glass-painter who had also been involved in gothic projects of the Romantic period; he worked in some capacity for William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey.25 Comprehensive documentation relating to Willement’s career has survived and much of this was subsequently entered onto a database by Michael Archer and the late Clive Wainwright at the Victoria and Albert Museum.26 This affords a rare opportunity to examine one of the most significant careers in the history of early nineteenth-century stained glass. Willement’s background was relatively affluent; his father Thomas Willement senior was a successful coach painter who expanded into highclass interior decoration.27 The connections of the elder Willement must have helped his son assemble his unusually aristocratic network of patrons. Geographically, Willement’s commissions were spread all over England and Wales.28 His success was no doubt helped by his royal patronage, and his publications on heraldry underlined his authority as a scholar.29 Willement was not just a glass-painter, though glass was his main product. Of the 1,671 records in the database, 1,228, or 73 per cent, were stained-glass jobs, but he also made furniture, designed metalwork, executed decorative painting and worked with textiles and ceramics. The following analysis concerns just Willement’s stained-glass production. Figure 4 shows the number of pieces of work Willement executed between 1810 and 1865. The first sharp rise occurs in the second half of the 1820s;

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this could represent Willement’s initial success in establishing himself as a glass-painter or could reflect a more general expansion in demand for the medium. There is a noticeable rise in the late 1830s but the most dramatic rise in demand for Willement’s glass occurs in the first half of the 1840s,

4

Thomas Willement, number of pieces of work, 1810–69

5

Thomas Willement, number of ecclesiastical and secular commissions, 1810–69

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probably due to the influences of ecclesiology, church-building and the Victorian Gothic Revival. Willement’s output is more or less sustained in the second half of the 1840s and then starts to drop quite sharply, though he still worked through as many commissions in the last five years of his career as he did in the late 1820s. Figure 5 illustrates whether Willement’s glass was installed in ecclesiastical or secular contexts and Figure 6 shows whether his windows were figurative or heraldic. Secular commissions show a steady rise from the late 1820s to the late 1830s and then a sharper rise, which peaks in the first half of the 1840s. Ecclesiastical commissions fluctuate until the first half of the 1840s, when the number of commissions surges and continues to rise in the second half of the decade. This is a clear illustration of the dramatic impact of Victorian church-building on the market for stained glass. Demand for secular stained glass was healthy but the surge in the demand for stained glass was largely due to the new ecclesiastical market. It is perhaps surprising that Willement executed more heraldic than figure commissions as late as the 1840s, but this does emphasise the strength of the residual market that was so important to Peckitt and had kept glasspainting in existence since the Reformation. Willement was also something of a heraldic specialist, with a particularly aristocratic clientele, and so it would not be surprising if his work consisted of an unusually high proportion of heraldry. It must also be conceded that figurative painting was never Willement’s greatest strength, and this too probably delayed his

6

Thomas Willement, number of commissions for heraldic and figure glass, 1810–69

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commitment to figure work. Despite this, by the 1850s figure glass had become Willement’s main product. As will be described in more detail below, Willement seems to have been charging relatively high prices in the 1840s, which suggests that he had continued pricing his glass in line with Regency precedents. It would be fascinating to know whether Willement lowered his prices in the face of market pressure, or whether his patrons were simply so wealthy that it did not matter to them. It is unclear whether Willement inherited any money, but by the mid-1840s he was something of an aristocrat amongst glasspainters. In 1845 he purchased Davington Priory, and proceeded to restore the priory and church, executing the work himself.30 Willement’s activities as a patron were not restricted to his own residence: the database reveals that he paid for at least thirty-four windows at various locations around the country (Plate 5). These gifts may have been tactical donations that secured loyalty from patrons, but all these features of Willement’s career suggest that he was working with large profit margins and it seems probable that the money he made from stained glass was at least partially responsible for making him an owner of significant property. Willement’s career marks the clearest point of continuity between Regency and Victorian stained glass and, given the potential offered by the surviving documentation, he deserves to be the subject of a major study. This is not feasible in the context of this book, but there is no doubt in my mind that Willement will eventually emerge as one of the single most important figures in the revival of Victorian stained glass.

William Wailes William Wailes ran the most successful stained-glass studio in early Victorian England, and he too ended up owning an estate. In the area covered by my doctoral research he dominated the market, numerically outperforming the local glass-painters and easily outperforming the other national producers. His early dominance is underlined by other studies: he was the most prolific glass-painter in Carlisle, second in Norfolk and third in Flintshire.31 Wailes’s business was founded in 1838, which meant he was up and running just in time to catch rising demand in the early 1840s. Wailes must have been the most prolific producer in the country in the early Victorian period: by 1851 he was employing seventy-six workers.32 It is important to realise that the size of Wailes’s operation was unprecedented in the history of English glass-painting. Big commissions in the medieval period were executed by a using a combination of several separate firms, and a single stained-glass operation on this scale had never been known before. The capacity of Wailes’s operation may have been a significant factor in his

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popularity, as he was regularly commissioned to make large windows, especially in the early days of the revival. In the South West he installed major windows at Ottery St Mary in 1843, at Taunton St Mary Magdalene in 1844, and Westhill in Devon in 1846. In the late 1850s William Wailes’s company managed to fill the huge west window of Gloucester Cathedral with pictorial glass in only eighteen months – it is doubtful whether any single stained-glass studio had ever achieved this kind of productive capacity.33 It appears that the genesis of Wailes’s operation had very little to do with the residual cultural practices of the Georgian period. Harrison records that he was a tea dealer and grocer who decided to turn his hand to stained glass: he is someone who appears to have been unconnected to decorative painting, heraldry or ceramics and in a curious way this may have been the key to his success.34 If Wailes had no connection to the Regency glasspainting profession his prices were probably based on the cost of production and bore little relationship to inherited traditions. A vital clue appears when, in 1841, Pugin wrote to his patron, Lord Shrewsbury: ‘in the article of Stained glass alone, since I compleated my arrngmts with this northern man [Wailes], a saving of 60 per cent over Willements prices has in many cases been effected.’35 This gap in prices is probably what the Ecclesiologist referred to in 1843 when it stated that ‘The charges made a few years ago were most exorbitant; at least double and treble what is now demanded.’36 If Willement was pricing his glass according to his training in the Regency period, and Wailes was pricing his glass based on the cost of production, Pugin’s comments point towards a key development in the market for stained glass in the early Victorian period.37 Wailes cannot be given all the credit for initiating this price drop, for as the following chapters will argue, regional glass-painters played an important part in this process. It does seem likely, however, that Wailes was the first glass-painter with a national reputation to abandon the high charges still used by Willement. This would go some way towards explaining why Charles Winston objected to him so much: in a letter to Joseph Bell, Winston described Wailes as a ‘wretched caricaturist’.38 For Winston a drop in prices was counter-productive: he was trying to encourage artists to take up stained glass and a drop in the price of the medium would make it hardly worth their while. For those trying to raise the status of the medium, cheaper stained glass was problematic, but a dramatic price drop would have created a whole new group of patrons, and for them cheaper windows constituted a new opportunity. Wailes’s low prices did not seem to damage his artistic credibility. Between 1841 and 1846 he made stained glass to Pugin’s designs and this accounts for his early endorsement by the Ecclesiologist. Despite the transferral of Pugin’s loyalties to Hardman in 1845, Wailes maintained his

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reputation amongst the ecclesiologists. A definitive example of this is J. D. Coleridge’s comments on his glass at Ottery St Mary. Coleridge was not shy of publishing harsh condemnations of stained glass, but his comments on Wailes, though not as enthusiastic as his praise of Hardman or Butterfield, are warm: ‘Indeed, there is hardly a more painstaking, or meritorious artist, than Mr. Wailes, nor one whose works display a more steady and satisfactory advance in all the higher qualities of his art.’39 In fact Wailes’s reputation does not seem to have declined significantly within the period covered by this study. It seems likely that his market share decreased in the 1860s amid new competition, but the firm continued as Wailes and Strang until about 1914.40 The variety of Wailes’s windows equals the scale of his output. In the early 1840s he could produce competent large figures, medallions containing scenes on a patterned ground, or flowered quarries. By the mid1850s new designers enabled him to make large pictorial windows, and some commissions were highly individualised, such as the pattern windows installed at Huntsham in Devon for Mr Troyte.41 Although Wailes is reported to have been conservative, the products of his studio show a swift response to new materials.42 His windows from the early 1850s show a manner that uses far less shading than his earlier glass and strike a successful balance between the potential of antique glass, attractive draughtsmanship and ecclesiology.43 Although Wailes came from a wealthy family (his father left £20,000), he was the third son and so it is unclear how much of his father’s money he inherited. By the time he retired he had made enough money to purchase an estate – Saltwell Park in Gateshead – which he unselfishly donated to the town as a public park.44 It would be fascinating to know whether he, like Willement, had made enough money out of stained glass to become a major landowner. Whether or not this is the case, I would argue that Wailes ought to be considered one of the great figures of Victorian art manufacturing and that he deserves far more academic attention than he has thus far received.

John Hardman and Co. John Hardman and Co. started to make stained glass at Pugin’s request in 1845 and eventually became one of the most successful studios in the country.45 Hardman’s reputation, however, was not made overnight and it was not until the late 1840s that the company’s windows became clear favourites among stained-glass patrons. Hardman’s difficulties highlight the complexity of making stained glass in the early Victorian period, and the fact that many of his windows have suffered badly from loss of enamel shows that even a well-resourced studio like Hardman’s could make

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mistakes. Pugin was well aware of these difficulties and as late as 1850 said, ‘I consider everything up to this an experiment we are now finaly [sic] starting’.45 Perhaps reflecting these initial problems, Hardman’s studio received little attention from the Ecclesiologist until 1849, but from this point its name appeared in that journal on a regular basis. The archival evidence shows that to some extent early Hardman glass had a captive market: until the end of 1847 much of Hardman’s glass was going into buildings that Pugin was working on as architect, for example St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw and the Palace of Westminster. Anglican commissions in these early years came from prominent ecclesiologists such as Thomas Thorpe, a founder member of the CCS. By 1850 Pugin’s architectural commissions had tailed off and he spent more and more of his time designing windows. It was also about this time that Hardman’s reputation shot up in Anglican circles to the extent that Pugin could exclaim in 1851, ‘It rains windows’.47 Hardman bought most of his pot metal from Birmingham glass-makers but faced similar difficulties to other glass-painters in that the quality of this basic material was poor. One of his suppliers, Stock and Sharpe, supplied Joseph Bell with ‘Ancient glass for painting on’ in his restoration of the east window of Bristol Cathedral in 1847. There is no evidence that this glass was used by Hardman, but it would be strange if they had not been aware of it. Evidence has survived of Hardman and Pugin’s efforts to procure a suitable flashed ruby pot metal; James Hartley and Co. of Sunderland had conducted experiments to produce an antique ruby in Easter 1850. Hartley had some success, but the glass would not stand much firing. In 1851 Hartley experimented with tones of white glass, but despite making promising samples had difficulty producing the glass in any quantity.48 All this information just confirms that Winston was not the only one encouraging glass-makers to produce good pot metal. He was, however, the most successful, as his collaborations with James Powell and Sons led to the production of a consistently high-quality antique glass. Hardman’s operation was an awkward affair chiefly because it took place in several locations. Pugin was in charge of drawing the cartoons, and this operation was based at his home, the Grange in Ramsgate. The finished cartoons were then sent by post to Hardman, who oversaw the production of the windows in Birmingham. The windows were then installed by either Hardman’s journeymen or local glaziers. Pugin and his two pupils, his son Edward and his son-in-law John Hardman Powell, manned the cartoon room. Pugin initially drew the delicate sections, the face painting and figure groups, while the pupils did more repetitive work. To complicate matters, Pugin used Francis Oliphant (who had quitted his position as chief designer for Wailes in 1845) on a freelance basis to assist with designs. Oliphant

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worked mainly from his base in London, and would send his cartoons to Pugin for approval, at which point they were quite frequently altered. J. H. Powell eventually became a wonderful stained-glass designer, but was not considered skilled enough to take over Oliphant’s role until 1851. So in the late 1840s, when commissions were starting to flood in, a cartoon might be drawn in London, altered in Ramsgate and then sent to Birmingham for production. This arrangement makes Hardman’s operation look very ungainly. Pugin felt this himself as wrote in a letter of circa 1849: ‘Our great disadvantage is never seeing the work in progress. I make the cartoons & that is all. but I am sure that the old men watched everything & I predict that we shall never produce anything very good till the furnaces are within a few yards of the easel.’49 Hardman’s studio became well known as an upmarket and exclusive operation, and there is some evidence to suggest that this was a deliberate tactic. For a start Hardman would only make glass to Pugin’s designs and after 1846 Pugin designed stained glass exclusively for Hardman. In addition Pugin decided that entering competitions was beneath them, a tactic he had learnt from Willement, another glass-painter who managed to cultivate an upmarket image.50 Hardman’s prices in 1851 were just within the guidelines quoted by the Ecclesiologist: between 30s and £2 per square foot for the best glass. In letters Hardman quotes prices up to 40s per foot for fifteenthcentury-style subject windows. These prices all suggest that Hardman placed himself at the top end of the mid-Victorian market.51 Pugin always had an eye for an important commission. He took special care with the window for St Andrew’s Wells Street in London, the fashionable high-church venue, and made a special effort to please J. D. Coleridge at Ottery St Mary. One of Pugin’s greatest coups was the ‘Medieval Court’ at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Most exhibitors had to display in the categories set out by the Exhibition Commissioners, but Pugin managed to obtain a discrete exhibition space to display his own products.52 So Pugin’s stained glass, ceramics, furniture, metalwork and textiles could be seen together in a coordinated display which was a great success. Many famous visitors were seen there, including Queen Victoria herself. Hardman was the only glass-painter allowed to exhibit in the Medieval Court and he was the only Englishman to win a prize medal for stained glass.53 The first Hardman windows in my sample area in the South West were at Ottery St Mary where the key ecclesiologist, John Duke Coleridge, had a keen appreciation of ecclesiastical design. Coleridge’s praise for Pugin’s glass and Hardman’s success in the Great Exhibition seem to have stimulated further commissions in Devon: two windows were installed in 1851 at Upton Pyne, one at Stoke Cannon in 1850, one at Alfington in 1852 (paid for by John Coleridge), two at Broadhembury in the mid-1850s, and

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two at Cheriton Bishop circa 1857. When H. T. Ellacombe started to glaze his church at Clyst St George in 1853, his prize project was a Ward and Hughes east window made with antique glass. When he filled the west window, in 1858, he chose Hardman. Hardman sustained his studio’s high reputation through into the twentieth century, in contrast to the majority of the early Victorian operations. Pugin left behind him a talented (and welltrained) designer in the person of John Hardman Powell, who continued designing elegant windows for many years.

William Warrington William Warrington seemed to have a bright future in the late 1830s. As a pupil of Thomas Willement he had a rare opportunity for learning glasspainting and in 1838 he made glass to Pugin’s designs.54 Despite this favourable start to his career, by the late 1840s he was decidedly out of favour with ecclesiology. This was partly due to Warrington’s hostile reception in the pages of the Ecclesiologist, where he was portrayed as a tradesman dealing with a subject beyond his reach, as described in Chapter 1. In a sense Warrington had started the argument when he wrote a letter in 1846 that criticised Wailes for adopting a Romanesque manner in a window in St James’s Church in Piccadilly. Warrington suggested that a landscapestyle window would be more appropriate.55 The Ecclesiologist noticed this correspondence and used the opportunity to mock Warrington as a copyist.56 There is some basis for suspecting that Warrington was prejudiced against Wailes, and this too can be traced to the lower prices that Wailes charged for his glass. We know from Pugin’s comments in a letter of 1841 that Warrington charged similar prices to Willement: ‘the reason I did not give warrington [sic] the windows at the hospital is this – he has become Lately so conceited that he has got nearly as expensive as Willement’.57 Warrington was attempting to charge high prices for his glass, but he did not have Willement’s reputation, or his network of aristocratic patrons. When Wailes started to undercut his prices, Warrington must have needed to totally rethink the viability of his business. His History of Stained Glass attempted to raise the status of the medium to the point where his prices seemed justifiable. In fact Warrington’s attitude was similar to Winston’s: if the price of stained glass was allowed to drop, the chances of achieving art in glass-painting were very slim. Warrington was somewhat stranded: here was Wailes happily producing a large number of cheap windows and receiving praise from ecclesiologists, while he charged more and received harsh criticism. With this background in mind, Warrington’s criticism of Wailes in the mid-1840s is understandable, but with the Ecclesiologist generally against him and supportive of Wailes, his business suffered.

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The effect that the Ecclesiologist had on Warrington can be traced in some detail in my sample area in Devon. Warrington installed thirty-two windows, but twenty-seven of these occur in three churches between 1849 and 1851: St Mary’s at Bicton, St Mary’s at Ottery St Mary and St Mary’s and St Giles’s at Buckerell. At Bicton an entire set was commissioned by Lady Rolle to fill the new church by John Hayward. J. D. Coleridge’s critique of Warrington’s glass at Ottery St Mary was initially delivered in a paper to the EDAS in 1851, and this seems to have ended Warrington’s career in east Devon for some years. Lady Rolle changed her loyalties at about this time: having used Warrington twice in the late 1840s she turned to Pugin to build a mortuary chapel in 1850 and to Hardman to make the windows to Pugin’s designs. Although Warrington erected a set of chancel windows in 1851 not far from Ottery, after this he did no further work until 1858, suggesting that adverse publicity had affected his business. Warrington did pick up isolated commissions in the late 1850s but never glazed an entire church, or participated in another high-profile project in the Exeter area again.

Michael O’Connor Michael O’Connor was born in Dublin and in common with Warrington served an apprenticeship with Thomas Willement. According to his obituary he met Willement through being called to London as a witness to a lawsuit concerning ‘some blazonry of arms’.58 Here again we see a herald who became a glass-painter, rather than a glass-painter who learnt heraldry. His apprenticeship must have been served in London, but by 1833 he had returned to Dublin.59 Between 1833 and 1842 he exhibited a number of pieces at the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibitions and so probably planned to practise in Ireland. It seems that there was not a sufficient market there to support his business and in 1842 he moved to Clifton, in Bristol, where he collaborated with Pugin to produce the glass at St Saviour’s in Leeds.60 By 1845 he had established a studio in London where he produced large quantities of glass until his death, helped from the mid-1850s by his son, Arthur. Michael O’Connor may have actually worked with Warrington for a brief period: the east window of Banwell in mid-Somerset is in Warrington’s idiosyncratic manner, and is reported as being by Warrington, but is signed with O’Connor’s monogram.61 In contrast to Warrington, however, O’Connor attracted considerable praise from the Ecclesiologist, and he was particularly successful in my sample area from the early to late 1850s. Coleridge described O’Connor’s glass at Ottery St Mary with cautious praise, though much of this credit was awarded to Butterfield, who supervised the windows. Despite this, O’Connor seems to have been the

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obvious candidate for major ecclesiological projects in Somerset in the mid1850s, notably at West Quantoxhead in 1856, and the chancel glass at Buckland St Mary in 1857. He also executed a complete set for the rebuilt church at Cricket Malherbie in 1851. These three commissions together with the glass he installed at Ottery St Mary account for nineteen out of the twenty-two windows he installed in my sample group. So while he did not work at many different locations, he does seem to have been a favourite for larger glazing schemes. It is worth noting that by the late 1850s Michael O’Connor’s eyesight was failing – many O’Connor windows of the early 1860s show evidence of a different hand, which presumably was that of his son, Arthur.

Ward and Nixon/Ward and Hughes James Henry Nixon worked on the restoration of the famous medieval stained glass at St Neots in Cornwall as early as 1829. With Thomas Ward as his partner, he produced attractive windows using quite ‘soft’ face painting from the mid-1830s. So Ward and Nixon too were already established when the market expanded in the 1840s. Their painting style meant that they never found favour with those who looked for severe medieval drawing, but their skilful painting did have its admirers, especially among those looking for art in stained glass. Ward and Nixon’s windows were described quite regularly in the Ecclesiologist and the Builder in the 1840s, but more important for them was their contact with Charles Winston. In a letter of 1849 to Joseph Bell, Charles Winston talks of Nixon’s window ‘at Bloomsbury’, implying that this was going to be a great step forward, and talks of Nixon’s endorsement of his ‘principles’.62 This clearly suggests that Nixon, like Bell, was one of Winston’s protégés; this is not surprising considering that both glass-painters had an attractive painting style and were not aligned with strict ecclesiology. Henry Hughes, a pupil of Nixon, became Ward’s partner some time in the early 1850s and the firm went from strength to strength. Family connections seem to have facilitated major commissions at Lincoln Cathedral. The firm executed a series of large windows in the cathedral including the great east window in 1855, which alone cost £2,000. Ward and Hughes seem to have been popular across the country; in the nineteenth century as a whole they were the most successful studio in Norfolk, Suffolk and Flintshire.63 The figures, which record all windows up to 1900, probably exaggerate their influence on the early Victorian market. Ward and Nixon made little impact in my own sample area, but their influence on the South East may have been greater due to the geographical proximity of their London base.64

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Ward and Nixon were never favourites with ecclesiologists but as the market broadened the firm proved that its glass appealed to a broad constituency.

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James Powell and Sons James Powell and Sons was a company of crucial importance to the revival to the stained-glass industry and the only glass manufacturer to run a successful stained-glass operation in the early Victorian period. When Arthur Powell took over the firm in 1844, after the death of his father, he showed an immediate interest in the stained-glass market by producing stamped pattern glass.65 Arthur Powell set up a stained-glass department, which employed a large number of independent designers, and some of the most successful Victorian glass-painters worked for him at some stage in their career. It was Powell’s industrial products that achieved success early. This may well have been due to an early article in the Ecclesiologist, which recommended the appearance and reasonable price of quarry glass, specifically referring to Powell’s products made to the CCS’s designs.66 The firm clearly profited from its glass: John Gordon-Christian records that the turnover of the window department doubled between 1852 and 18 72.67 Although it may not have been the first to produce antique glass, its glass was universally considered the best and this was a product that became fundamental to the whole stained-glass industry. Given the early success of Powell and Sons it is surprising perhaps that no Powell glass was installed in my sample area until 1853. This was probably because local glass-painters like John Toms and the Beer family both made good quarry glass, which was cheaper than Powell’s. The late 1850s seem to herald a change in attitude in Somerset: at West Quantoxhead, Buckland St Mary and Corfe, the windows that were not filled with representational glass were filled with Powell’s stamped quarries. The east window of Brampford Speke in Devon and the north transept window at Buckland St Mary contain figure groups surrounded by Powell’s quarries. The scenes in both these windows were probably painted by one of the many designers who worked for Powell at some stage in their career. Powell’s made a major pictorial window in Devon at the end of the period in question: a fine east window at Axminster in Devon, installed in 1860.

Henri Gérente On Henri Gérente’s death in 1849 the Ecclesiologist called him ‘the first of modern glass-painters’.68 At this time Gérente had only been making

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stained glass for five years but had previously designed windows for other studios.69 It seems he was interested in the English market from an early stage as he exhibited a window at the Royal Academy destined for the church of Notre Dame de Bon Secours in Rouen in 1844.70 A large boost to his status came in 1847, when he won a competition organised by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts: he was judged the most competent glass-painter to restore the famous medieval glass at Sainte-Chapelle. His work was also admired by other leading French ecclesiologists such as A. N. Didron, the founder of Annales archéologiques, which was the leading French medievalist journal. Gérente’s first windows executed in England were in Ely Cathedral. Comments on his initial window suggest admiration: ‘The drawing is rather too archaic for our taste, but always vigorous and sometimes very graceful.’71 This sums up Gérente’s manner well; his work is a spirited but very close reproduction of medieval glass, probably based mainly on tracings. Characteristically Charles Winston’s opinion of Gérente differed from that of the ecclesiologists, as he expressed in his private correspondence to Joseph Bell in no uncertain terms: ‘I entirely agree in your estimate of M. Gérente. He is at present making a trading – through England, and as his cue is to humour the follies of the age he has completely succeeded (no difficult task) in humbugging the ‘earnest men’ at Cambridge and Canterbury. I consider him as nothing more than an injurious imitator of old glass … Artist he is not’.72

Winston then offers the advice ‘never trust a Frenchman out of your sight’, and in a subsequent letter states that Gérente exists ‘only through the ignorance and bigotry of his patrons’.73 While Winston’s comments are somewhat extreme it is hard to find the CCS enthusing about Gérente’s work while he was alive. On Henry Gérente’s death his brother Alfred took over the studio and many of Henry’s outstanding commissions. Alfred Gérente continued to work in England but not always successfully: his west window of All Saints Margaret Street executed in 1853 came in for some harsh criticism and was later replaced.74

Notes 1

This research consists of my own doctoral research and the work of others. My sample area consisted of 365 Anglican churches or chapels in the archdeaconries of Taunton and Exeter as they were in the Victorian period. For a detailed analysis of this information see J. Cheshire, ‘Early Victorian Stained Glass’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter, 1998). I have also drawn upon the work of the following scholars: M. Seaborne, ‘Victorian and later stained glass in Flintshire churches’,

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2 3

4

5 6

7

8

9

10

11

Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society, 35 (1999), 115–142; L. N. S. Smith, The Stained Glass in the Churches of the Anglican Diocese of Carlisle: A Catalogue and Gazetteer (Kendal Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, c. 1994); B. Haward, Nineteenth Century Norfolk Stained Glass: Gazetteer, Directory, an Account of Norfolk Stained Glass Painters (Norwich: Geo, 1984); B. Haward, Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass: Gazetteer, Directory, an Account of Suffolk Stained Glass Painters (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989). See Richard Marks, Stained Glass in England during the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 229–240. For a discussion of pre-Victorian glass-painting see S. Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britain c. 1760–1840: A Revolution in Taste’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1989. While Baylis usefully identifies the sources that combined to create the ‘Gothick’ style, in my opinion she exaggerates the popularity and impact of eighteenth-century stained glass, and is wrong in suggesting that the painterly style gave a boost to the glass-painting profession. This window has been the subject of much discussion; see C. Woodforde, The Stained Glass of New College Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951); C. Brooks, ‘The Transparency of the Medium’, unpub. lecture, Society of Antiquaries of London and Victorian Society conference, Burlington House Piccadilly, 27 November 1993; Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britian’, pp. 59–65 and Cheshire, ‘Early Victorian Stained Glass’, pp. 52–58. Gentleman’s Magazine, 87:1 (1817), 314. ‘E. M. S’ to editor. Gentleman’s Magazine, 65:2 (1795), 1074. See also Gentleman’s Magazine, 75:2 (1805), 926 for a correspondent distressed at the removal of medieval tracery to make way for a contemporary window. ‘E. M. S’ (see note 5 above) admits to being friend of Joseph Backler and shamelessly advertised his current exhibition. See also Gentleman’s Magazine, 85:2 (1815), 28–29, a letter by James Pearson defending English glass-painting against European competition. See Ann Radcliffe, The Italian or the Confessional of the Black Penitents, ed. F. Garber (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 103 and Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest, ed. Chloe Chard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 15. For details of stained glass at Strawberry Hill see C. Wainwright, The Romantic Interior: The British Collector at Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 82–84, 88–90. The early nineteenth-century trade in importing stained glass is surprisingly well documented; see Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, pp. 61–68; J. Lafond, ‘The traffic in old stained glass from abroad during the 18th and 19th centuries in England’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, 14:1 (1964), 58–71; B. Rackham, ‘English importations of foreign stained glass in the early nineteenth century’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, 2 (1927), 86–94. Eginton’s glass was replaced by imported glass taken from Herkenrode Abbey and installed by John Betton of Shrewsbury in 1806–8. See Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britain’, p. 236; Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, 16.

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12

13 14 15

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16

17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26

For details of stained glass at Fonthill Abbey see Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, pp. 116–117. Knowles records that the Egintons were paid as much as £12,000 for their work at Fonthill Abbey, but the source of this information is unclear. For details of this commission see Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britain’, pp. 132–137. For gothic politic history see Brooks, The Gothic Revival, pp. 38–48. T. Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book, 1751–1795’, Walpole Society, 54 (1988), pp. 334–453. There are limits to what can be deduced from Peckitt’s commissions book. Of the commissions listed 185 include heraldic work, as opposed to 40 that specify ecclesiastical subjects and 66 that specify secular subjects. Several windows contained a mixture of heraldic and picture glass and so it is unclear what proportion of Peckitt’s income derived from each type of glass. See Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book’. For the library see commission number 302; for other Milnes commissions see numbers 233, 247, 258, 266, 273, 291, 301, 303. See Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book’, commission number 83; for other Walpole commissions see numbers 77, 184, 189. See Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book’, commission numbers 34 and 25. See Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book’, commission numbers 4 and 29. See Brighton, ‘William Peckitt’s commissions book’, commission number 198. Samples from this process are contained in the collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, under the group number C. 19–1950. For a detailed description of the transition from painterly glass to ‘Gothick’ see Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britain’, pp. 155–174. P. Hawley, ‘Thomas Willement FSA’ (unpub. article by a descendant of Willement). Although Willement is a vital link figure, I must cast some doubt on the date of the east window of Butleigh Church, Somerset which Willement himself listed as being installed in 1829. Two documentary sources suggest that the window was new in the early 1850s; see M. McGarvie (ed.), Sir Stephen Glynne’s Church Notes for Somerset (Taunton: Somerset Record Society, 1994), pp. 62–63 and Ecclesiologist, 14 (1853), 457. The documentary evidence is contradictory; this would make sense if Willement took out his old window and reinstalled it including some new glass. See Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, p. 117. Baylis records that Willement was employed to provide border designs, which were taken from the twelfth-century glass at Canterbury Cathedral, but that the glass was painted by either Francis or William Eginton. See Baylis, ‘Glass-Painting in Britain’, p. 220. The database was compiled from the following sources: T. Willement, ‘A chronological list of the principal works in stained glass, etc. … from the year 1812 to 1865 inclusive’; T. Willement, A precise account of the principal works in stained glass … of 1840’; ‘A debtors ledger’, covering 1840–69; portfolios of Willement’s drawings. I am very grateful to the late Clive Wainwright for making this valuable information available. The ledger is in a private collection; the other manuscripts are in the British Library, MSS 52413 and 34866–34873. The database contains 1,671 records, each record representing ‘a piece of work’, of any size, as defined by Willement himself. Although a ‘piece of work’ may have been of any size, if I assume

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27 28

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29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

that the size of a piece of work varied uniformly over the period covered, the database can be used to establish some idea of the chronological distribution of Willement’s output. Hawley, Thomas Willement FSA’. From a total of 1,228 stained-glass jobs, 437 were installed in London and Kent, which represents about 35 per cent of his output recorded in the database. For example, in 1821 he published Royal Heraldry: The Armorial Insignia of the Kings and Queens of England from Coeval Authorities. For a detailed account of this restoration see C. Wainwright, ‘Davington Priory, Kent’, Country Life, 150 (1971), pp. 1650–3 and 1716–19. See Haward, Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass, p. 132; Seaborne, Victorian and later stained glass in Flintshire churches’, p. 129. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 83. David Welander, The Stained Glass of Gloucester Cathedral (Gloucester; Canon David Welander and the Priests of Gloucester Cathedral, 1985), p. 78. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 19. See M. Belcher (ed.), The Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 290. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 19–20. Stanley Shepherd’s thesis shows that Wailes wrote to Hardman in 1847 asking him what conditions he offered to his workers. This also suggests that those managing stained-glass ateliers in the early Victorian period had few inherited trade structures to work with and so were forced to organise their own. See S. Shepherd, ‘The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1997), p. 66. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter from Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, March 1849. TEDAS, 4 (1853), 210. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 83. The west window of Huntsham contains ‘campanula bell flowers’ designed by Troyte; see TEDAS, 6 (1861), 231. Although Troyte had powerful family connections this commission still suggests that there was flexibility in Wailes’s operation. Haward, Nineteenth Century Norfolk Stained Glass, pp. 151–152. Examples of Wailes’s glass from the early 1850s can be found at Pucklechurch near Bristol, and in the nave at Trent in Dorset. Welander, The Stained Glass of Gloucester Cathedral, p. 71; J. Knowles, ‘GlassPainters 1750–1850’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, 13:3 (1962), 519. The following account has been largely based on Stanley Shepherd’s valuable doctoral thesis. Shepherd, ‘The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, p. 74. Shepherd, ‘The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, p. 74. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, p. 21. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, p. 39. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, pp. 42–44. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’, p. 66.

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54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

See A. Wedgwood, The Medieval Court’, in p. Atterbury and C. Wainwright (eds), Pugin: A Gothic Passion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 237–245. Wedgwood is mistaken in stating that none of the exhibits in the Medieval Court received medals, as Hardman’s stained glass clearly did. See Reports by the Juries on the Subjects in the Thirty Classes into which the Exhibition was Divided, 4 vols (London: Spicer Brothers, 1852). Sections relevant to Hardman can be found in vol. 4, section C, division C2 and in the ‘supplementary report’: vol. 4, pp. 1556, 1557. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 17. Builder, 4 (1846), 353. Ecclesiologist, 6 (1846), 104–105. Belcher, Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin, p. 269. Letter dated 28 August 1841. Ecclesiologist, 28 (1867), 230–231. M. Wynne, ‘Stained Glass in Ireland: Principally Irish Stained Glass’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Trinity College Dublin, 1975), p. 133. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 18. Builder, 9 (1851), 178. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter from Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 7 February 1849. Haward, Nineteenth Century Norfolk Stained Glass, p. 152; Seaborne, Victorian and later stained glass in Flintshire churches’, p. 129. Hughes, working on his own, did make an impressive set of windows for Talaton in Devon in 1860. Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 82. Ecclesiologist, 4 (1845), 147–148. J. Gordon-Christian, ‘Source material: the archives of the Whitefriars Studios, London’, Artifex, 1 (1968), 30–46. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 97. S. Brown, Stained Glass: An Illustrated History (London: Studio Editions, 1992), pp. 132–133. Dictionnaire de biographie française (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1933). Ecclesiologist, 9 (1848–9), 149. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter from Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 27 February 1849. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter from Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 27 March 1849. P. Thompson, ‘All Saints Church, Margaret Street, reconsidered’, Architectural History, 8 (1965), 79.

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3 ✧ Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

A mere artisan?

J

OHN TOMS inhabited a different world from the people who produced the ecclesiological discourse on stained glass. It is doubtful whether he set out to gain artistic credibility, at least in the same sense that William Warrington did; nor did he represent himself as a pious religious artist producing Christian art. In fact, more than anyone, Toms resembled Winston’s worst nightmare: the ‘mere artisan’ who turned his hand to stained glass. Toms never totally transcended his original trade and continued decorating, plumbing and plain glazing right to the end of his career. By 1860 the way he advertised his services suggests that stained glass was the most significant part of his business, but he did not drop the more basic aspects of his trade: John Toms, Glass Stainer and Decorator, Plumber, Glazier and Painter. Stained Glass Windows of All Descriptions Designed and Executed. Mural Painting and Paper Hanging in Every Variety of Style. Memorials in Glass, Stone, Brass Plates or Otherwise on the most reasonable terms.1

Toms would never have been accepted as a genuine ecclesiological artist, yet he dominated the market for stained glass in West Somerset for a decade.2 What Toms’s career shows is how the discourse radiating from the national scene through the Ecclesiologist and from the local scene through the EDAS infused, but did not in the end dominate, glass-painting on this comparatively humble level. Toms produced for a market enthused by ecclesiology but his patrons were also wary of the controversial side of ecclesiological politics. This is the gap in which Toms was able to build a successful glass-painting business.

The discovery of the John Toms archive In 1983, a brick kiln was discovered in the top floor of 2 High Street Wellington.3 Hidden in the debris inside the kiln were various documents

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

relating to John Toms, who ran his glass-painting business from the premises. An estimates book covering the period 1852–66 was found in the kiln, and provides an illuminating picture of the market for stained glass in a rural community in the mid-nineteenth century. At least seventy-four of Toms’s windows survive, allowing a detailed investigation of his products. In addition further research has revealed an extensive collection of documents relating to the Sanford family, who were Toms’s most important patrons. Biographical information on Toms is limited. He was born in 1812,4 the only son of John Toms and Elizabeth Taylor.5 He married Sarah Salway and had five children: two sons and three daughters. The earliest document relating to him is a tender for re-seating a church in 1842, and he died in 1869.6 By 1848 he was a competent glass-painter and a few years later submitted a window to the Great Exhibition of 1851.7 Stained glass became a major element in Toms’s business from the late 1840s but never became his only source of income. He was never in the front rank of glass-painters and was hardly ever mentioned in the nationally circulating periodicals, but the fact remains that he ran a successful stained-glass business for many years. Toms is extremely interesting for this study because his work shows that ecclesiology created opportunities for a range of people, not all of whom conformed to their agenda. Toms’s career is not about the triumph of ecclesiological principles but his story shows that ecclesiology was at least partially responsible for creating the space in which an enterprising artisan could manoeuvre. Toms was a multi-skilled artisan who carried out a wide variety of tasks. The largest number of commissions in the estimates book concern painting of some variety. These jobs varied from decorative ecclesiastical painting, such as the commandment boards surviving at Clatworthy (Figure 7), to secular commissions for exterior work.8 Several large estimates were made for interior painting and decorating schemes involving papering, varnishing and a variety of other decorating tasks such as gilding and graining. Among the designs found in the kiln were several panels of wallpaper patterns that are probably Toms’s designs.9 The other area of work that features significantly in the estimates book is leadwork, a skill Toms used mainly in the context of plumbing and plain glazing but which is also crucial to a glass-painter.

Stained glass: materials and techniques The materials Toms had at his disposal, or, more accurately, chose to use, did not alter radically from 1848 to the end of his glass-painting career in the early 1860s.10 The palette does show evidence of expansion, though this is not dramatic. Several colours appear for the first time in the late 1850s.

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7 John Toms, St Mary Magdalene, Clatworthy, Somerset, commandment board, 1854

The very thin blue and ruby glass that Toms used in 1848 at Ayshford is still present in his picture windows of 1858 and 1859, despite the fact that by this stage he had access to better glass. Toms used different glass in places: the two south aisle windows at Nynehead use thicker, slightly dimpled glass for the faces of the figures, and the sky above the baptism scene in the south aisle west window contains a variety of antique glass (Plate 4). So Toms had access to antique glass by the late 1850s but he does not seem to have used it extensively.11 This may have been due to its price, for Toms had a major price advantage over some of the better-known glasspainters and the fact that he did not switch to antique glass would have helped him keep his prices down. Toms was not the only glass-painter who made limited used of antique glass. William Warrington stands out as an example of how the materials so

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

criticised by Winston in the late 1840s could be used to create very attractive windows, though this required a refined painting technique. Most of the early Victorian glass-painters who possessed this level of skill had served an apprenticeship, and Toms lacked this type of training. This is the chief reason why much of Toms’s glass seems crude. Some of Toms’s designs on paper show that he was a competent draughtsman but this does not transfer well into his glass-painting because Toms was not sufficiently skilled as a glass-painter to achieve subtle graduations of shadow on glass. The exact manner and techniques used in shading glass were of crucial importance in the early Victorian period and it is worth describing them in some detail. The basic technique for obscuring a window is to apply an enamel paint to the surface of the glass and then fire the glass in a kiln. The vitreous part of the paint then melts and fuses with the surface of the glass, fixing it permanently. To achieve subtle effects in a pictorial window, complex techniques enabling subtle graduation of shadows must be mastered. One method relies on a series of very thin layers of enamel, or ‘washes’. Deep shadows consist of several layers of wash, while lighter areas are treated with fewer applications. In this way the shading can be subtly graduated. ‘Stipple’ shading is an effect created by dabbing a wet wash with a very soft brush, which leaves small spots of glass totally free from enamel. Enamel can also be removed from a dry wash with a pointed stick (‘stick work’) or, for very fine lines, with a needle. Critics disagreed over which techniques achieved the best effect. Some critics believed that subtlest effects were produced by applying several washes with highlights taken out, while Charles Winston was a champion of stipple shading, which he claimed produced the least opaque shadows.12 Winston stated that stippling ‘collects the colour into little lumps or dots, leaving interstices between them less loaded with colour’. He claimed that ‘ancient artists’ never applied more than two coats of enamel, and that the first coat was finely stippled and the second coarsely stippled. Significantly, he suggested that the application of the second coat of enamel softened the first coat and therefore the stippling of the second coat penetrated the first. As a consequence, even in the deeply shaded portions of the window tiny spots of glass would be left free of enamel.13 This clarifies Winston’s otherwise paradoxical description of stipple shading as creating ‘transparent shadows’. Most glass-painters used a combination of techniques, but for those not benefiting from the use of antique glass, leaving glass totally unpainted was not really feasible. The transparency of early Victorian coloured glass meant that all but the tiniest area left unpainted would produce a glaring and gaudy effect. So working with the glass of the 1840s necessitated using a lot of shading, and the ability to control the depth and type of shadow became all the more important. These techniques required skill and delicacy in the

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8 John Toms, St Peter, Knowstone, Devon, detail of nave south window, 1856

physical application and removal of enamel, and experience in firing the glass. It seems more than likely that Toms was self-taught in both these areas and this goes some way towards explaining the appearance of his glass. Consider for example details of faces by Toms at Knowstone from 1856, and by Bell at Rattery from 1842 (Figure 8, Plate 6). The change from the white wash to the brown enamel in Toms’s window is quite abrupt when compared to the more gradual transition of tone that Bell achieved. Toms’s window seems to use washes, but there is no evidence of ‘highlights’ or stippling. Toms did gain more finesse in his shading, as can be seen in his work at Nynehead (Plate 7), though in much of his glass the shading is heavy handed. Toms occasionally picked highlights out of the enamel, but not to the same extent as his contemporaries. The face painting at Nynehead shows evidence of highlights (for example in the hair of St James in Plate 7) and some of his borders use this technique. Toms normally used a shaded ground to his pictorial scenes, and this may well have been as much a stylistic decision as one relying on technical knowledge. His pattern glass too relies almost exclusively on shading: an enamel wash was always used in favour of alternate small areas of unpainted and totally obscured glass.

Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

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Design sources Toms clearly designed his own products, as suggested by the cartoons in his own hand. The only clue to how he acquired his drawing skills is the rather vague comment: ‘John Toms was apprenticed to a painter who had great artistic leanings.’14 This suggests that he learnt to draw from the artisan to whom he was apprenticed. Whatever the truth of this matter, Toms’s windows are creative collages of images available to him at the time. The clearest example of this is his figure of Mary Magdalene (Figure 9), which he used at least three times, including in the window he exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851.15 The significance of this is not just the identity of the artist, but the book in which the picture was reproduced. Sacred and Legendary Art by Anna Brownell Jameson was first published in 1848, was immensely popular, and ran to many editions by the end of the century.15 It was from a line drawing in this book that Toms almost certainly took his

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John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, detail of south aisle window, 1859

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10 Illustration from Anna lameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, first published 1848

design (Figure 10). The volume appeared regularly in the libraries of antiquarian and ecclesiological societies and so Toms may well have had access to a volume via his contacts with the Sanford family. The appearance of Toms’s Mary Magdalene window therefore depends on some factors that are not immediately obvious. At some stage in the process there is clearly a decision by Toms as to the suitability of the picture, but his access to ecclesiastical images that could act as the basis for stained-glass designs was limited. The continuing admiration in Britain for Italian art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to some extent accounts for the popularity of Jameson’s book, and the extent of its circulation meant that Toms had a reasonable chance of acquiring a copy. Another factor determined by the possibilities of contemporary printing technology is the actual appearance of the reproduction. The difference between a finished oil painting and a line drawing is huge, but a line drawing can be quite similar to a stained-glass cartoon. In fact in Toms’s window, the lead lines follow the linear design of Jameson’s illustration quite closely. Timoteo’s painting was probably represented by a line drawing because chromolithographs were too expensive; cheap colour printing did not emerge until the later

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

nineteenth century. This does not mean glass-painters in the early Victorian period did not have access to colour reproductions, but does suggest that they were more likely to encounter line drawings than chromolithographs. My belief in Toms’s debt to Jameson is not just based on this example. At Combe St Nicholas four windows by Toms each have four small figures in the tracery lights. After depicting the apostles, Toms opts for a strange selection of patriarchs: Augustine, Polycarpus, Ignatius and Clement. The four Latin fathers would have been a standard choice, but apart from Augustine the figures that Toms selected were rarely depicted in Victorian iconography. In Sacred and Legendary Art Jameson links the lives of Ignatius and Clement, and in a separate place Ignatius and Polycarpus, and so it seems that Toms was using Jameson’s text to create iconographical connections.17 Toms’s Mary Magdalene is the most direct visual link to Jameson’s illustrations but the style and drapery of Toms’s figures bear strong similarities to illustrations elsewhere in the book. Joseph Bell copied long passages from Jameson into his notebook, which shows that a glasspainter in a similar situation was definitely using Jameson. Another fascinating point is that Toms’s figures have a similar posture to that of some figures in the productions of local glass-painters in East Anglia, for example Samuel Yarington’s east window of Aylsham from 1842.18 The strange sideways stance with the figure looking over his shoulder points to a common source from which the design was taken. In addition the Virgin and Child that can be seen in Plate 8 must have been based on the corresponding figures in the Sistine Chapel. All this points to a close relationship between the design of stained glass and the images available to glass-painters at the time. To understand Victorian glasspainting, we need to study how religious images circulated in Victorian culture, and it will be immediately clear to scholars that the situation at the end of the century was completely different to that in the 1840s. Toms’s reliance on models for his figure designs is suggested by his repeated use of several cartoons. For example the extraordinary bearded patriarch used as a large figure at Bradford-on-Tone (Plate 8) and the west window at Clatworthy appears as a small tracery figure at Milverton and Combe St Nicholas (Figure 11). All three scenes in the east window at Clatworthy (Figure 12) come from cartoons used at West Buckland. Although Toms reused many designs, this was common practice among national and local glass-painters and has clear advantages in saving labour time. Toms’s use of published material was not restricted to figure cartoons. It is an enduring irony of Winston’s An Inquiry that despite his violent condemnation of ‘servile imitation’ the illustrations he provided were used by many glass-painters as designs for their windows. Toms took some designs directly from Winston. The leaf quarry used throughout Combe

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11 John Toms, St Nicholas, Combe St Nicholas, Somerset, detail of tracery light, 1855

12 John Toms, St Mary Magdalene, Clatworthy, Somerset, east window, c. 1860

St Nicholas (Figure 13) corresponds exactly to Plate 39 in Winston (Figure 14). Toms also used a trinity symbol (Figure 3, Plate 16 in Winston) as a source for symbols at Milverton. Winston was not the only visual source: one of the quarries from Milverton corresponds exactly with Plate 23, Figure 14 in volume 3 of TEDAS, and the quarries in the west window of Milverton are also exact copies of Plate 20, Figure 7 in volume 3 of TEDAS. The exact relationship between Toms’s sources and his original work will never be known, and is not really important: the significant point is that he was using published sources as models for figure and pattern work.

Prices Despite the existence of the estimates book, it is still difficult to obtain an accurate idea of how Toms priced his glass, but useful information can be

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

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John Toms, St Nicholas, Combe St Nicholas, Somerset, detail of pattern window, 1855

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14

Charles Winston, Plate 39 from An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, first published 1847

gleaned from the surviving evidence. Again the most complete source of pricing information is Joseph Bell’s jobs book and so this issue will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 5. The basic method of pricing a stained-glass window was by area. This was a residual cultural practice that had been used since the Middle Ages.19 Different types of glazing were charged at various rates per square foot. For example, Joseph Bell itemised figure and canopy glass at 25s per square foot, and ‘Early English’ pattern glass at 12s 6d per foot.20 In the estimates book entries Toms normally quotes a finished price without indicating how he has calculated it, making it difficult to find out what price per foot he was charging for various types of glass. In an entry for 1852, however, he did note the measurements of the windows as 2ft 9in. by 2ft 3in„ and lists three different options for filling the windows at three different prices, charged per light.21 Unfortunately it is unclear whether this order was executed, and

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if so where, but assuming the measurements do represent the total area to be glazed, a price per foot in this instance can be obtained. In this example Toms charged between about 35 6d and 7s per square foot. This was for a pattern window using quarries with a border, the most expensive type having a ‘rich ornamental border’ and ‘enamelled ground figured quarries’ and the least expensive having ‘Plain coloured border … enamelled figured quarries, pattern transparent and the same colour as the glass’. This corresponds quite closely to what Bell was charging for similar types of glass, though it is difficult to make direct comparisons because Bell did not use quarries nearly as much as Toms. In 1848, however, Bell charged 7s per foot for one of his ‘Cologne’ patterns and 6s per foot for an ‘Ivey [sic]’ pattern.22 These prices compare favourably with those quoted by the Ecclesiologist in 1844: 30s to £2 per foot for the ‘best’ glass, and quarry glass at 10s per square foot.23 In this context it seems that both Toms and Bell sold their glass relatively cheaply. Not all Toms’s glass was priced by area: he offered certain panels and figures at a fixed price. This enabled him to make estimates with several options. In 1854 he made an estimate for the east window of Knowstone with five options, the most expensive at £20 and the cheapest at £10. The differences in price represented the number of figures in the window, the number of symbol medallions in the window and the type of pattern glass in the background. In the estimate given for the nave window at Knowstone in 1856, a basic estimate was offered with deductions as options. For example, ‘If glazed with quarry No. 1 less 1£, if without centre subject less 1£’.24 Examples such as this show the fallacy of approaching a stained-glass window as an autonomous product of one designer or glass-painter. Patrons and glass-painters often negotiated over the final appearance of a window, and the price the patron was prepared to pay was a significant factor in the final appearance. What is extremely difficult to establish is exactly what the prices charged represented. The key question here is whether the price was calculated purely in relation to labour and materials, or whether a more arbitrary element existed that depended on the artistic value of the window. It seems likely that in the vast majority of stained-glass businesses there was a very direct relationship between labour time used and the price charged. The way Toms made his estimates indicates precisely this. In addition to the time-consuming nature of the work, it involved a higher level of skill than the other types of work that he performed, and it is fair to assume that this was one of the factors that made it more lucrative. Although it did not turn him into an artist, glass-painting would have raised Tom’s status in what economic historians have called the ‘aristocracy of labour’.25

Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

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Toms and the Sanfords The town of Wellington, where Toms had his workshop, was far from an Anglican stronghold. The absence of the major landowner (the famous Duke of Wellington) combined with the strength of employment in local industry facilitated the strength of Nonconformist religious practice.26 The social structure of the neighbouring parish of Nynehead was a total contrast. The Sanford family, the major landowners, had been in residence since the late sixteenth century.27 By 1810, land in the adjacent parish of Burlescombe had been inherited by the Sanfords from the Ayshford family, at which stage the patriarch of the family adopted Ayshford as a middle name. With this property the Sanfords became rectors of Burlescombe and the chapel adjacent to Ayshford Court. In the Victorian era the Sanfords were pillars of the local community. Edward Ayshford Sanford, who inherited the estate in 1833, was the member of parliament for Somerset and later Somerset Western Division from 1830–41. Sanford was ‘of Whig principles’ and shared the seat at different periods with W. Gore-Langton, C. J. K. Tynte and T. D. Acland (junior), all of whom were liberals.28 In the 1873 register of landowners the Sanford family held just over 5,000 acres with an estimated gross rent of over £8,000.29 This puts the Sanfords in the category of major gentry, rather than the elite of landowning society, but the listed income from land does not include income from property in London, which may have been considerable. E. A. Sanford’s position on church politics can be pinpointed from his public objection to the Tractarian George Anthony Denison. One of the many ‘Papal Aggression’ meetings around the county was held in Taunton Castle on 28 November 1850, and reported in The Times two days later.30 Sanford proposed the first resolution condemning the corruption of the Roman Catholic church and specifically referred to the Romish infiltration of the Church of England through Denison. A subsequent letter from Lord Cavan to Sanford shows that Cavan urged him to follow up his charges against Denison, aided by evidence he had procured from Joseph Ditcher, a neighbouring evangelical vicar.31 Sanford understood his denunciation of Denison as a responsible act for a member of the Church of England, but he could not be described as low church.32 In fact Sanford was an active patron of religious art, and his public stance against the Tractarians was probably more about dissociating himself from the controversy of the Oxford Movement than being actively against the high-church party. Ecclesiology in Somerset reflected the variety of religious practice evident in the county. The Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society (SANHS) was based in Taunton, which like Wellington had a strong Nonconformist tradition, and the activities of the group were an interesting

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indicator of the tone of local politics. While the EDAS maintained a strong ecclesiological position, the Somerset group was far more moderate and only the barest traces of ecclesiological dogma can be detected. It still functioned as a focus for antiquarian activities, but its journal contains little of the tone of a moral crusade so typical of the strong ecclesiological position. In addition it was not established until 1849, by which time the EDAS had been active for some years. The members held a considerable range of political positions within the Anglican church. For example the evangelical Lord Cavan was a vice president, but the high church was strongly represented. Rule XVIII of the Society states, ‘No Religious or Political Discussions shall be permitted at meetings of the Society’, which clearly defines the Society’s interests as nonpartisan.33 Edward Ayshford Sanford and his son and heir William Ayshford Sanford were members. Sanford’s second eldest son, Edward Ayshford Sanford junior, was a clergyman and had been a member of the EDAS for several years by the time the SANHS was formed, as had Thomas Tanner, to whom Sanford had presented the livings of Burlescombe and Nynehead. It seems likely that through these two clergymen a moderate ecclesiological influence came to bear on Sanford and his circle, which proved to be a crucial factor in establishing John Toms as a glass-painter. In a tantalising reference in the Builder it was reported that ‘Mr. Sanford’ gave a lecture to the SANHS on painted glass, but unfortunately this lecture was not published in their journal, and it is not even clear which Sanford delivered it.34 It does show, however, that there was an active interest in stained glass in the family corroborated by the number of windows that they commissioned from John Toms. The Sanfords also had something of an aesthetic pioneer in their midst. The Reverend John Sanford, uncle of E. A. Sanford, has been described as ‘one of the leading English collectors of Italian pictures during the first half of the nineteenth century’.35 John Sanford was rector of Nynehead between 1811 and 1819, shortly after which he married Eliza Morgan and subsequently divided most of his married life between Florence and his town house in London. Between about 1815 and 1837 he acquired an impressive collection of over 200 paintings, which ranged considerably in date but were predominantly Italian. In 1837 the collection was moved to London. Sanford retained about sixty paintings and the rest were sold at Christies for a total of £2,410 17s 6d. On his death in 1855, most of the remaining pictures passed into the family of his daughter’s husband, subsequently the 2nd Lord Methuen, and joined the collection of pictures at Corsham Court. Although there are no positive connections between John Sanford’s collection and the work of John Toms it is interesting to speculate on possible links. It seems more than likely that the rest of the Sanford family would at least have seen the collection, if not in Florence then at

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

least in its reduced state in London. This may well have inspired Toms’s patrons and led them to influence him. There are certainly signs of this in Toms’s sources: Sacred and Legendary Art is a work concerned chiefly with Italian Renaissance art and it is possible that Toms was put onto this as a source by one of the Sanfords. Whatever the truth, there was a family connection to the art of the Italian Renaissance and it seems likely that this too influenced Toms in an indirect way. The first stained glass likely to be the work of Toms dates back to 1842 and was installed in the north aisle of Burlescombe church in Devon. Thomas Tanner had been vicar of Burlescombe since 1819, and of Nynehead since 1835, and had been presented to these livings by the Sanford family. By 1846 Tanner was a member of the EDAS, and the zeal with which he carried out restoration work suggests he was a committed ecclesiologist. Interest in stained glass obviously ran in the family: Sarah Yeatman, his sister, was an amateur glass-painter who painted a window that still exists in Bradninch Church in Devon. Notes made on the restoration of Burlescombe in 1844 suggest a strong ecclesiological influence and record that ‘some stained glass was added by the vicar to the windows in the Ayshford aisle’.36 This glass is very basic and exhibits only the most rudimentary painting work: silver stain and enamel washes are used but little else, and the only subjects attempted are sacred symbols, ornamental borders and crude heraldry in the tracery lights. Toms’s first signed work exists at the chapel at Ayshford, installed in 1848 as part of a restoration funded by the Sanford family.37 The tracery lights contain what are probably his first figure designs and they contrast dramatically with his attempts at Burlescombe some six years earlier. Just what had brought about this transformation is unclear but given that Tanner was an ecclesiologist with an active interest in stained glass his involvement seems likely. It seems that in 1842 Tanner encouraged Toms to make some stained glass for Burlescombe Church. By the time the Ayshford chapel was glazed, Winston’s An Inquiry had been published, and the simultaneous improvement in Toms’s technical ability may well have been linked to the information made available in Winston’s book.

The development of Toms’s work After he painted his first figures for Ayshford, Toms developed rapidly as a glass-painter. By 1850 he had drawn more cartoons and reused some of the Ayshford figures for a commission at Milverton in Somerset. The west window of Milverton, dated 1850, also contains Toms’s first small scenes in the tracery lights (Figure 15). By 1851 Toms had started producing largerscale figures and figure groups, and had submitted his Mary Magdalene

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15 John Toms, St Nicholas, Milverton, Somerset, detail of west window, 1850

window as an exhibit for the Great Exhibition (Figure 9). Toms’s glasspainting in the tracery lights at Bathealton shows increasing delicacy and the tracery figures executed for Combe St Nicholas in 1855 are framed by good architectural niches suggesting increasing competence in archaeological designs (Figure 11). Between 1857 and the early 1860s Toms was particularly active. In 1857 he extended his range of large figures with designs of St lames, the Virgin Mary, St Andrew, St Peter and two patriarchs.38 Some of these large figures were enlargements of figures previously executed in tracery lights. In 1858 Toms executed a major east window at West Buckland, containing scenes of the Nativity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion and Resurrection, and a large figure group in a window at Nynehead depicting the Baptism of Christ (Plate 4). Two windows containing large figures of Mary Magdalene and St James were executed in 1858 and 1859 for Nynehead church (Figure 9, Plate 7) and at least three windows were installed at Bradford-on-Tone in 1859 (Plate 8). Clatworthy contains an undated east window (Figure 12) and a figure and canopy design dating from the early 1860s in the west window. At an unknown date Toms worked at Nettlecombe in Somerset. Some strange late-medieval glass in the north aisle has been repaired with panels probably painted by Toms, and there is evidence to suggest that the church once possessed a Mary Magdalene window similar to those at Nynehead and Clatworthy.39

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

Some of the cartoons found in Toms’s kiln show designs that do not correspond to any existing windows. This clearly suggests he made windows of which no other trace has survived, visual or documentary. Two of the cartoons are particularly interesting. The first depicts a quite elaborate Crucifixion scene, more detailed than the existing scenes at West Buckland or Clatworthy. Another shows a canopy in a confident High Victorian manner, suggesting that Toms developed stylistically in ways not represented by extant glass (Figure 16).

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John Toms, cartoon for canopy, c. 1860

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Iconography The iconography of Toms’s glazing schemes seems to have depended largely on the religious alignment of his patrons. Some schemes can be linked to high-church theology, though much of his glass contains little that can be interpreted as partisan. The first scheme that suggests that Toms’s glass was being used as a vehicle for high-church iconography was the glass installed at Milverton between 1849 and 1850. The vicar of Milverton, Thomas Hans Sotheby, was an acquaintance of E. A. Sanford, and seems to have been influenced by ecclesiology. The west window, probably commissioned by Sotheby, overlooks the baptistery, and the two small scenes in the tracery depict the Anointing of David by Samuel and the Baptism of Christ: two typological references to the sacrament of baptism. The Anointing of David is a rare subject in Early Victorian stained glass and this points towards the intervention by the patron.40 Other windows at Langford Budville, also commissioned by a Sotheby, consist of medallions containing symbols of the Crucifixion, again suggesting the ecclesiological emphasis on the sacrament of the eucharist. So Toms’s commissions for Sotheby are characteristic of ecclesiology in that they lay emphasis on the sacraments, and the same emphasis is evident in a nearby church at Bathealton, which Toms glazed in 1854. The visual content of the stained glass is relatively conservative: four evangelist symbols, a cross and a pious pelican. Even here, though, the pelican symbol is a favourite of high-church enthusiasts, the legend of the pelican feeding its offspring with its own blood being symbolic of Christ giving his blood through the eucharist for the sake of mankind. This kind of symbol was rarely seen as controversial, however, and so it was a safe option for a politically conscious patron such as H. G. Moysey, Sanford’s friend and neighbouring landowner. The text around the scenes at Bathealton, however, points to more specifically ecclesiological doctrine. A south chancel window reproduces an extract from the liturgy for the eucharist, and quotes from the creed are carried in another chancel window and one in the south aisle. The actual quotes used from the creed refer to faith in the Resurrection, while the words ‘Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam Sanctorum Communiorem’ emphasise the Catholic nature of the Church of England and its descent from the apostles – both key points of the doctrine of the Oxford Movement. Although the choice of quotes points this way, the iconography is clearly working well within the parameters set by the Book of Common Prayer and so is not open to the accusation of popery. This kind of selective quotation from the Church of England’s liturgy was typical of ecclesiologists, and was exactly what infuriated their opponents. By representing legal texts in a selective way ecclesiologists could create an

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iconographical scheme far removed from the spirit of the reformed English church, while being safe from controversy or prosecution. Few of Toms’s remaining windows can be interpreted as expressions of strict ecclesiological doctrine. His windows of the late 1850s can hardly be seen as controversial, and by this date commissioning a stained-glass window had become a much more normal thing to do and not an act necessarily associated with the high-church party. The east windows at West Buckland and Clatworthy (Figure 12) depict scenes from the Life of Christ, and the south aisle west window at Nynehead depicts the Baptism of Christ. The style of these windows does show that Toms was pursuing a more pictorial manner, and was indulging in more perspective than would have been appropriate to a keen follower of ecclesiological taste. This indicates that as he became known locally and more people became interested in stained glass, ecclesiology became less important to Toms’s business.

Toms’s market As illustrated by Figure 17, Toms’s market was largely concentrated on Wellington and its surrounding parishes. The isolated commissions further afield can be explained through links to Wellington through the patron

17

John Toms, geographical distribution of windows

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network; for example the commissions in north Cornwall were from the Sandys family, who were related through marriage to the Sanfords.41 Toms received little attention from the press, either in local newspapers or periodicals, the exceptions being two mentions in the Builder in 1857.42 Both these factors suggest that the way information circulated about Toms’s windows was not through the rapidly emerging network of national communications. One commission allows us to glimpse the spread of Toms’s reputation on a much more humble level. In 1856, when Toms’s bill for his work at Combe St Nicholas is recorded in the parish vestry minutes, there is an item described as ‘Expenses of churchwardens journey to Bathealton £1 12s 0d’.43 Toms’s glass at Bathealton was installed by 1854 and what clearly happened is that the churchwardens travelled to Bathealton to inspect the glass before ordering some for their own church. This emphasises a basic but crucial point about how glass-painters established themselves: the best means of advertising on a local level was to have windows installed in public buildings. Glass-painters were aware of this and quite often donated a window free in order to gain further commissions. The presence of a new window in a church not only advertised the glass-painter but also promoted stained glass as a purchasable cultural product. To most people stained glass was a great novelty in the 1840s, and never before had it been within the price range of the middle classes or the financial power of the average vestry. The presence of a new window in a local building would have alerted many people to the availability of stained glass and created significant local demand. So a key moment in a glass-painter’s career was gaining the first commissions in the local area, and in this respect Toms was aided by his links to the Sanford family. It is worth turning to Toms’s relationship to the Sanford family in more detail because it reveals much about how a glass-painter’s reputation could spread.

The Sanfords and patron networks When the details of Toms’s commissions are examined, the most prominent common factor in the spread of his market seems to have been the influence of the Sanford family. The majority of Toms’s commissions can be traced back to the Sanfords through personal links. Two significant patrons of Toms’s glass were Thomas Hans Sotheby, vicar of Milverton and Langford Budville, and Henry Gorges Moysey of Bathealton Court, Sanford’s neighbouring squire. Sotheby was a member of SANHS and was probably responsible for commissioning the large quantity of Toms’s glass at Milverton in 1849–50. He definitely commissioned Toms for stained glass at Langford Budville in 1852.44 Moysey was quite intimate with the Sanfords and rebuilt Bathealton Church in 1854, personally funding a set of windows

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

by Toms.45 It was Moysey’s son who was vicar at Combe St Nicholas and probably initiated the vestry’s interest in Toms.46 The influence of the Sanfords also explains the presence of Toms’s windows outside the Wellington area: windows at St Minver and St Enodoc in north Cornwall were made for Sanford’s relations. In another case a window stylistically identifiable as the work of Toms exists at Harpford in Devon, well outside the immediate vicinity of Wellington. The link in this case seems to be provided by the Tucker family: documentation shows that Henry William Tucker, curate of West Buckland, the adjacent parish to Wellington, purchased a window by Toms in 1858.47 Marwood Tucker was incumbent of Harpford from 1811 to 1845 and so a family connection seems more than likely.48 So through an entry point into a lucrative network of patrons Toms acquired considerable momentum for his stained glass. He did, however, attract commissions that seem to have come from outside Sanford and his circle. These came in the late 1850s and early 1860s, by which stage he must have been quite well known on a local level, especially with a workshop in Wellington High Street. Two windows were erected in Wellington parish church in 1857; for one of these Toms paid for the tracery glass himself as his contribution to a subscription list.49 These were the windows that were reported in the Builder, and so it may be that Toms was starting to gain independence from Sanford’s circle.

Toms and church-building As mentioned in Chapter 1, the dramatic increase in stained-glass production has to be understood in the context of the parallel rise in churchbuilding and restoration. The architectural context of Toms’s work illustrates this point well. St Bartholomew’s Church at Bathealton was completely rebuilt for a total cost of £1,881 8s 6d.50 A complete set of stained-glass windows was installed by Toms for a cost of £52: under 3 per cent of the total cost. Almost all the commissions where Toms provided multiple windows were part of a larger building or refitting project. The commissions at Milverton, Bathealton and Combe St Nicholas were an element in a larger restoration scheme, and commissions at Burlescombe, Ayshford and West Buckland were part of a more general refurbishing of fittings. The increase in church-building and restoration in the 1840s and 1850s clearly gave stained glass a great boost. The number of windows erected in buildings in this period must have promoted stained glass very effectively and it seems likely that by the 1860s stained glass had achieved a certain amount of autonomy from the building trade. Basically this meant that people were more likely to commission stained-glass windows independent of any building work. This could not happen until

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commissioning a stained-glass window became a fairly normal thing to do and how this came about is the central subject of this book. John Toms is of great interest to this study precisely because of his multiple status as plumber, decorator and glass-painter. His patrons were perfectly aware of this status and apparently unconcerned about the ecclesiological vision of pious religious artists working for worthy patrons. This is most strikingly illustrated by Mr Pulman, the vicar of Wellington, who in 1853 employed Toms to fix a water closet in a house and in the same year commissioned Toms to erect a stained-glass window in his church.51 Despite this, many of Toms’s patrons, particularly in the early stages of his glass-painting career, were influenced by the ecclesiological debate, mostly through links with the EDAS. It seems, therefore, that Toms’s patrons were to some extent motivated by ecclesiology and its ideas about patrons, but did not really care too much about the detailed ideal of artistic production recommended by Pugin. Just how Toms considered his own status is very hard to recover. The fact that he submitted a window to the Great Exhibition in 1851 points to an effort to increase his credibility, though the practicalities of making and pricing stained glass necessitated an approach to windows that made it very difficult to construe them as works of ‘Art’. Toms, at least initially, either adapted or directly copied visual sources from published material. Some of this material was from specialist ecclesiological publications and some was from popular works of art history. The specialist ecclesiological material was probably obtained for him by ecclesiologists. The more popular material could have come from a variety of sources and its widespread circulation was the result of cultural trends beyond ecclesiological circles. The form these popular sources took was itself determined by the possibilities and financial viability of visual reproduction in the nineteenth century. Through this published material Toms was also able to acquire an understanding of the aesthetics, iconography and terminology that enabled him to offer acceptable cultural products to his patrons. The estimates book shows how some of Toms’s products involved much negotiation with patrons as to the content and final appearance of the window. Many of Toms’s windows were installed in the context of larger building or restoration projects, suggesting that the market for stained glass in the 1840s was largely generated by the contemporary increase in church-building and restoration. This shows that the demand for stained glass was created by related but distinct historical concerns. The early success of stained glass meant that more Victorians saw modem stained glass: it became a more familiar medium. This must have given many people the idea that they too might commission a stained-glass window. It was, after all, a product that had become affordable and available to many people for the first time.

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Glass-painters: John Toms of Wellington

The somewhat crude appearance of some of Toms’s work can be explained by his lack of technical finesse in the application and firing of enamel. Toms was probably self-taught in this area: he did not have the links to the ceramic trade which seem to have supplied many early Victorian glass-painters with these skills. Given the limited possibilities open to him, Toms’s achievement is remarkable and by taking him seriously, we can gain a valuable insight into just what an aspiring artisan could achieve as a glass-painter in the 1840s.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6 7

8

9

10

11

The Sanford Papers, an important source of documentary information for Toms, are held at the Somerset Record Office (hereafter SRO) in Taunton. SRO, DDSF 4542/4. For details of my systematic recording of stained glass see J. Cheshire, ‘Early Victorian Stained Glass’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter, 1998). The kiln’s discoverer contacted the late Chris Brooks, who then catalogued and recorded the archive. Chris Brooks photocopied the estimates book and photographed the designs but the present location of the originals is unclear. Wellington Weekly News (3 June 1869). R. L. Thorne, The History of Wellington’ (unpub. volume in Somerset Local History Library), p. 68. SRO, Taunton, DDSF 2506. Thorne, The History of Wellington’, p. 68. For catalogue entry see Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition 1851, 3 vols (London: Spicer Brothers, 1851), p. 707. The window was alongside the other stained glass in Class 24 (Glass). ‘Estimates book’, 5 October 1862. At Hockworthy commandment boards exist signed with Toms’s monogram and dated 1853. The commission for Hockworthy specifies boards to be ‘like those at Hemyock’ (‘Estimates book’, 5 October 1852) but there is no evidence of these boards surviving. Boards of similar design signed with Toms’s monogram exist at Clatworthy dated 1854 (no reference in estimates book). Toms’s ‘Stock in trade book’ lists ‘Paper hangers’ to the value of £15 – the most valuable single item in the book. This suggests that paper-hanging was an important part of Toms’s business. The latest extant window dated by Toms is the west window of Clatworthy, in which only the figures ‘186’ are legible. Several windows survive dated 1859, and it seems that his commissions tailed off dramatically about 1860. The latest entry in the estimates book for stained glass is for some rolled Cathedral glass in 1862. Toms’s ‘Stock in trade book’ lists 100 feet of coloured glass, 24 feet of ground glass, 50 feet of patent rolled glass, 25 feet of green glass and 800 feet of sheet glass. Only the coloured and ground glass are listed under ‘Glass Painting Room’. Given that antique glass was significantly more expensive than ordinary coloured glass, it seems likely that it would have been listed separately if any had been in stock. This suggests to me that Toms never used antique glass in significant quantities.

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12

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13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

For an advocate of the former technique see E. W. Twinning, The Art and Craft of Stained Glass (London: Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1928) p. 149; and for the latter, C. Winston, An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings Especially in England with Hints on Glass Painting (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847), p. 249. Winston, An Inquiry, pp. 249–250. Thorne, The history of Wellington’, p. 68. This figure was used at Nynehead, Clatworthy and Bradford-on-Tone. The link to Sacred and Legendary Art was first pointed out by Pauline English of NADFAS. A. B. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1848). For a study of Jameson see J. Johnson, Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters (Aldershot: Scholar, 1997). Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, pp. 626, 693. B. Haward, Nineteenth Century Norfolk Stained Glass: Gazetteer, Directory, an Account of Suffolk Stained Glass Painters (Norwich: Geo, 1984), Figure 64. For a discussion of medieval pricing practices see R. Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 48–51. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 12 April 1851 and 12 December 1848. ‘Estimates book’, 9 September 1852. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 12 December 1848. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 19–20. ‘Estimates book’, 14 July 1856. See E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day (London: Penguin, 1969), pp. 159–163. A. L. Humphreys, The Materials for the History of the Town of Wellington, co. Somerset (London: Henry Gray, 1889), p. 212. A family tree of the Sanfords compiled by D. E. Bennett in 1989 is kept in the Somerset Local History Library. Information on political alignment of members of parliament taken from M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1976). General Register Office of Return of Owners of Land 1873, 2 vols (London, 1875). The Times, 30 November 1850. SRO, Taunton, DDSF 3762. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 24 December 1850. Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, 2:1 (1851), 183. Builder, 17 (1859), 78. B. Nicholson, The Sanford Collection’, Burlington Magazine, 97 (July 1955), 207–214. See also F. Russell, ‘Sanford, J’, in L. Macy (ed.), The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, (accessed 30 April 2003), www.groveart.com. Devon Record Office, Exeter, Burlescombe Parish Records MF 4. Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society, 2 (1847), 121. Apart from his Mary Magdalene figure, Toms does not seem to have painted any large figures until 1857, when two windows in the north aisle of Wellington Church were

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39

40 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48

49 50 51

glazed; see Builder, 15 (1857), 483. Three large figures depicting the same subjects are now reset in clear quarries in the south aisle of Burlescombe; these are probably the same figures. See Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, 25 (1950), 179–182. This item reprints a letter from 1948 by the Dean of York to Dr Eeles. The letter describes a stained-glass tour that identified several Toms windows and refers to a Mary Magdalene window at Nettlecombe. Much of the information in the letter is incorrect and many windows are wrongly attributed. This is the only instance of this scene being depicted in stained glass installed in the archdeaconries of Taunton and Exeter between 1840 and 1860. William Ayshford Sanford married Mary Marshall in 1793. Anne Marshall married John Sandys in 1803 and the Toms window at St Minver commemorates their son and daughter. Builder, 15 (1857), 53 and 483. SRO, Taunton, Vestry Minutes of Combe St Nicholas, D/P/com. n 4/1/1, 1856. No documentation exists for the Toms glass at Milverton. A reference in the vestry minutes on 15 April 1848 stated that £143 17s 7d was spent on an east window, but this has not survived. Sotheby funded the major restoration of Milverton Church in 1848, using the ecclesiological architect John Hayward. A specification exists; see SRO, Taunton, DDSF 3025. Concerning Langford Budville, the estimates book shows an accepted estimate for stained glass for the east and two side windows of the chancel, and the tracery of the south aisle; see ‘Estimates book’, 3 August 1852 and 18 August 1852. Only the south aisle tracery glass survives. Amazingly the Pevsner volume does not even mention this interesting church, built by C. E. Giles. Moysey had business and personal links with the Sanfords, see Somerset Record Office, Taunton, DDSF 4535 for exchange of land between Moysey and Sanford in 1851 and DDSF 3960 for letter from Moysey to Mrs Sanford showing that considerable intimacy existed between the families. See SRO, Taunton, West Buckland Vestry Minutes, D/P/w. bu 9/1/2. Despite several entries in the Oxford and Cambridge alumni volumes for the Tucker family not enough information is contained to recover a definite family link. As the Tuckers were commoners and not major landowners their family does not appear in Burke’s Landed Gentry or any peerage. ‘Estimates book’, 1857 (no day or month entered). Documentation concerning the rebuilding, including the attribution to C. E. Giles, is contained in SRO, Taunton, D/P/bal/4/1/2. For water closet commission see ‘Estimates book’, 23 April 1853. For proof of Mr Pulman as the patron of the Toms window in the south aisle of Wellington Church see Builder, 15 (1857), 53.

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4 ✧ Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

T

HE BEER FAMILY made stained glass from the earliest days of the Victorian Gothic Revival and did not cease until the last years of the nineteenth century. Their output was extensive, at least 149 windows, and this accounts for most but not all of their glass. Although much glass has survived, virtually no documentation exists for the Beer business and so analysis of this side of their operation has to be somewhat speculative. This chapter will concentrate on the extant corpus of glass produced by Robert and Alfred Beer and the network of patrons that they served. The earliest extant windows made by Robert Beer date from 1842, in St Andrew’s Chapel Exwick.1 He may have been producing glass as early as 1820 but no firm evidence has come to light.2 Little other information survives about him until he moved to Exeter in 1837, though we know that he married Elizabeth Drake in Teignmouth in 1827, and had two sons and two daughters by the time he came to live in Exeter.3 He moved into premises at 13 Okehampton Street, and five years later installed the windows mentioned above in a building that was received with great enthusiasm by the Ecclesiologist.4 In the 1840s he built up his business, having picked up valuable contacts via the EDAS, the strident local ecclesiological group. By the time of his death in 1849 he had executed a number of major windows and established a successful glass-painting studio. After Robert’s death his son Alfred assumed control of the business and advertised the succession in the following terms: A. BEER begs to inform his late Father’s Patrons and the Public, that he has succeeded (having superintended it for some time past, during his Father’s illness) of [sic] ANCIENT and MODERN GLASS PAINTER, in all its different styles – Ecclesiastical, Palatial, and Domestic, – and hopes by a strict attention to business, and a constant devotion to the study of the art, to merit that share of the public patronage which was so liberally accorded to his late Father. N. B. Figures, Arms, Crests, Foliage, Decorations etc. executed in the first style, and on moderate terms. Dated 7th August 1850.5

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

This notice is preceded by a similar plea by Elizabeth Beer (Robert’s widow) begging a continuance of patronage. These notices give an interesting clue as to the status of the Beers and their family business. Elizabeth refers to their practice as a business and Alfred refers to himself as ‘glass-painter’ rather than ‘artist in stained glass’; like John Toms, the Beers approached their business in a pragmatic way. Robert Beer had gained a high level of public esteem, and by 1856 the Exeter Flying Post was referring to Alfred Beer’s ‘usual style of excellence’.6 The transition of patrons from Robert to Alfred Beer was extremely successful. Alfred executed windows in several churches in which Robert had previously worked: Heavitree contains at least two windows in the manner of Alfred Beer and Cruwys Morchard has a west window by Alfred. By 1853 Holy Trinity Church at Buckfastleigh had seven windows by the Beers, at least two by Robert and the rest probably by Alfred, and the newspaper report stated ‘it is but justice to him [Alfred] to say that his talent has not degenerated from that of his lamented father’.7

The Beer studio Attributing exactly who did what in the Beer studio is not easy and documentation is scarce. What is known is that the studio was located in Exeter, first at 10 Okehampton Street from 1837 to 1847 and then at 41 Bartholomew Street. By the 1841 census Robert Beer had taken on the fifteen-year-old William Splatt as an apprentice and the 1861 census records the new owners, Elizabeth and Alfred Beer, as employing five men. In 1852 another apprentice, Elizabeth’s nephew Frederick Drake, was taken on, having already been a pupil for over a year. Drake stayed with the Beers until at least 1865, when he was described as a journeyman and was paid 30s a week. This rate of pay puts Frederick Drake on a comparable wage to a bricklayer, carpenter, mason or other skilled worker and well above the majority of working-class wages.8 It is comparable to the rates paid by John Hardman’s studio in Birmingham. J. H. Powell, who by 1850 was drawing many of Hardman’s cartoons, was paid £120 a year, about 435 per week.9 A worker lower down the scale, Edwin Hendren, was paid 145 per week in 1849. Though Hendren was subordinate to J. H. Powell he certainly helped draw the cartoons and seems to have helped Powell with designs. So at 305 a week, albeit fifteen years later, Drake’s income comes somewhere in between the two, and as he probably had less responsibility than John Hardman Powell, 305 a week would appear to be a good income. It is likely that Drake was the best-paid subordinate glass-painter in the Beer studio, but the fact that the Beers could afford to pay him this wage, and that they employed four other workers, suggests that the studio

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generated a comfortable income for the family. Drake was a talented glasspainter and cartoonist, as could be seen from the products of his own studio a few years later. It seems likely that the Beers were keen to retain him as an employee, and his wage probably reflects this. On Alfred’s death the business continued as E. and S. Beer, almost certainly describing Elizabeth and Susan Beer, the respective widows of Robert and Alfred. At this date Frederick Drake set up his own studio, having been refused a partnership by his aunt and her partner. Several conclusions can be deduced from this. It seems almost certain that the move from Okehampton Street to Bartholomew Street constituted an upgrading of the business, as the latter address is much closer to the commercial centre of Exeter. It is clear that by the time of Robert’s death, Alfred Beer was a skilled glass-painter and the same can be said of Elizabeth Beer. It is unlikely that Elizabeth and Susan Beer would go into business independently without being skilled glass-painters themselves. The most likely scenario is that Elizabeth helped Robert in the process of producing windows and that Susan also played an active role in the studio. What is difficult to establish is exactly who painted what. For instance, in the late 1850s for a given piece of painted glass there are several possible painters: Alfred, Elizabeth or Susan Beer, Frederick Drake, or even William Splatt, if he was still with the studio. Despite this it is reasonable to assume that there was a hierarchy in the process of production typical of most glasspainting operations, with the most skilled glass-painters executing the most delicate work – face painting, drapery and representational work generally – while the apprentices or more junior glass-painters were probably responsible for the more repetitive pattern work of borders or quarries. This is suggested by the fact that the earliest windows produced after the death of Robert are distinguishable by differences in face painting and drapery, suggesting that this was the part of the window previously produced solely by Robert. In contrast some elements of pattern work that first appear in the early 1850s survive into the mid- and late 1860s; for example, the distinctive border of the north aisle east window of Filleigh from about 1850 (Plate 9) was still being used with slight variations at Chagford in 1860 (Plate 10).

Robert Beer’s development as a glass-painter Assessment of Robert Beer’s stylistic and technical development is difficult because of the small number of extant windows. Evidence of his glass in the early 1840s is restricted to partial windows at Exwick and Oldridge; then there is a gap until 1845, when he executed glass at Dunsford that has survived in good condition. Beer’s palette for this period remains restricted, but this may well have been due to the medieval style demanded by his patrons.

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Plate 1 St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, interior looking towards the baptistery

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Plate 2 Michael O’Connor, St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, detail from east window, 1857

Plate 3

Clayton and Bell, St Mary, Buckland St Mary, Somerset, detail from west window, 1859

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Plate 4 John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, south aisle west window, 1858

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Plate 5 Thomas Willement, St Thomas the Martyr, Mamhead, Devon, detail from west window, 1831 Plate 6 Joseph Bell, Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, detail from south chapel east window, 1842

Plate 7 John Toms, All Saints, Nynehead, Somerset, detail from south aisle window, 1859

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Plate 8 John Toms, St Giles, Bradford-on-Tone, Somerset, west window, c. 1860

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Plate 9 Alfred Beer, St Paul, Filleigh, Devon, detail of north aisle east window, c. 1851

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

Plate 10 Plate 11

Alfred Beer, St Michael, Chagford, Devon, detail of east window, 1860 Robert Beer, St Mary, Dunsford, Devon, detail of east window, 1845

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Plate 12

Robert Beer, St Martin and St Mary, Chudleigh, Devon, east window, 1847

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Plate 14 Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, detail of south chapel south window, 1842

Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

Plate 13 Alfred Beer, All Saints, Dulverton, Somerset, detail of east window, 1864

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Joseph Bell, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset panel, 1850

Plate 16

Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Somerset, south chancel window, c. 1861

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Plate 15

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

Plate 17

Plate 18

Sowton, St Michael and All Angels, Devon, interior looking towards the altar

William Warrington and Michael O’Connor, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, adjacent north Lady Chapel windows, c. 1850

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Plate 19 The stained-glass gallery at the Great Exhibition colour lithograph first published 1852

Plate 20 William Wailes, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset, south chancel window, 1842

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

The west window at Exwick shows that Beer had access to purple in the early 1840s, but he did not use it in the east window at Dunsford, probably because the glass was based on the restricted palette of the fourteenthcentury glass at Exeter Cathedral. Beer’s glass of the late 1840s exhibits a palette similar to that of Toms in the late 1850s: no antique glass, but an extensive range of purples, blues, greens and pinks. Beer’s face painting suggests an interesting development. His early style can be seen in the face of Mary Magdalene shown in Figure 18. The shading technique is similar to that of Toms, but the graduation of the shadow is finer, giving a more subtle appearance to the glass. The style, however, is ‘soft’: the representation of the face is achieved through graduated shadow

18 Robert Beer, St Andrew’s Chapel, Exwick, Exeter, Devon, 1842

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rather than the heavy individual lines of ‘hard’ face painting. Beer’s face painting at Dunsford (Plate 11) and Cruwys Morchard (Figure 19) has a distinctly Renaissance feel and the coloured enamel gives an added indication of a painterly approach. This soft style, typical of the Georgian glass-painter, seems to have undergone modification when the commission was for an ecclesiological patron. Figure 20 shows a detail of a face from Oldridge, where Beer has used a combination of soft shading and strong, hard lines. The appearance of this window, made for a founder member of the EDAS, suggests a stylistic push towards the medieval period. The face of St Luke at Thorverton, painted in 1848 for a member of the Colderidge family, also suggests a style leaning towards the medieval rather than the Renaissance (Figure 21). From the surviving evidence then, Robert Beer’s manner varies considerably between commissions, which suggests strong input from patrons. One possibility is that Beer tended towards a painterly manner, but when working for a keen ecclesiologist was encouraged to adopt a more medieval manner.

19 Robert Beer, Holy Cross, Cruwys Morchard, Devon, detail of east window, 1847

20 Robert Beer, Oldridge Chapel, Devon, detail of east window, c. 1843

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21

Robert Beer, St Thomas of Canterbury, Thorverton, Devon, south aisle east window, 1849

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Trends in the market: memorial windows A group of four windows executed in the last years of Robert Beer’s life point towards developments on a national level in that they were all memorial windows. Two that have not survived were executed at Holy Trinity Buckfastleigh, both commemorating members of the patron’s family.10 The other two are at Abbotsham and Thorverton, and in both the iconography is tailored to the window’s memorial function. The Christian belief in life after death is expressed through the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension scenes at Abbotsham, and the scenes at Thorverton refer more directly to the life of the deceased. The interesting point here is that in both these windows Christian iconography has been adapted to create meanings that refer to the patron or the patron’s family. Although in many cases the meaning of a memorial window was a statement of faith in Christian beliefs, to some extent it was being diverted to serve secular purposes. This was a crucial development in the transformation of stained glass from a specialised product appealing mainly to clergymen to a product that had mass appeal. A simpler way of looking at this trend is approaching this type of window as a personalised product. The south aisle east window at Thorverton (Figure 21) is a good example: it commemorates ‘Luke Herman Coleridge Surgeon of this place’ and depicts St Luke, patron saint of physicians, and quotes and corresponding scenes from Matthew 25:36, including ‘[I was] sick and ye visited me’. Here both biblical quotation and pictorial representation of the Bible allow the life of the deceased to be created as a model of Christian behaviour. This trend culminated in individual portraits being incorporated into figure groups, which started in the 1840s, but became quite common in the late nineteenth century.11 This memorial window is the last recorded window before Robert Beer’s death. Two years earlier, in 1847, he made what is arguably his best window: the east window of Chudleigh (Plate 12). Despite being described as ‘in the Decorated style of English architecture’ the scenes in the window are closer to models of the Italian fifteenth century than the English fourteenth century; in terms of contemporary categories, more Renaissance than medieval.12 In the absence of a medieval model, as at Chudleigh, Beer’s figure groups seem to have tended towards what we would now consider a Renaissance manner. The Exeter Flying Post reviewed the window in glowing terms, declaring that ‘This fine window forms the main ornament of the church’. After naming Robert Beer as the maker, it stated that the window was ‘one of the best works of this able artist’.13 It seems that the architect David Mackintosh was responsible for the general design of the window, though just how much involvement he had is unclear. Whatever the truth of this matter, the east window of Chudleigh is a wonderful

Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

example of early Victorian stained glass. With a strong light behind it, this window is a dramatic but coherent composition and shows just how successful early Victorian stained glass could be.

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Exeter, the EDAS and Robert Beer Running a glass-painting business in a city like Exeter gave the Beers several potential advantages over a glass-painter like John Toms, who worked from a small market town. Exeter was the centre of an entire diocese and therefore the focus of ecclesiastical power in the area. In fact, given that the Diocese of Truro was not created until the 1870s, Exeter was the centre of Anglican power in the whole South West. This meant that if the Beers could get accepted by the local clergy their potential market was huge. Exeter was also something of a high-church stronghold. The appointment of Henry Philpotts to the See of Exeter was one of the last acts of the Duke of Wellington as prime minister. Chadwick describes Philpotts as holding ‘Tory principles of the extreme right’, but Philpotts, like many other prominent high-church bishops, was extremely cautious in his support of the Tractarians.14 He was clearly wary of the controversial side of ecclesiology, as he was one of members of the CCS who resigned in 1845 when the ecclesiologists were being publicly accused of Popery. Traditionally a Tory stronghold, Exeter was populated by a high proportion of professionals such as doctors and lawyers who served the great landed estates in the area. Devon was also predominantly agrarian in economic structure and this, combined with the high-church and Tory bias, made it an area where the Anglican church and ecclesiology had a firm foundation. Functioning as a focus for Victorian church-building in Devon, the EDAS pushed a strict Puginian programme and was strongly affiliated to the CCS. A glance at the membership list is enough to show how close to the local centres of power it was: Philpotts remained patron even after his resignation from the CCS and most of the powerful Devon families were represented, for example the Rolles, Courtenays, Carews and Aclands. Another large family, the Coleridges, were not great landowners, but exerted a considerable influence on the EDAS, with as many as nine members. By the time the first volume of Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society (hereafter TEDAS) was published, the EDAS had inserted itself into the ecclesiastical planning process: it gained the right to approve designs put before the Diocesan Church Building Society. We have already seen that the influence of the EDAS seems to have filtered through to John Toms as far away as Somerset and in this context it is not surprising that Robert Beer’s early career was intimately involved with the same group.

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The first secretary of the EDAS was John Medley. Medley established a close relationship to an aspiring and talented Exeter architect, John Hayward, and the culmination of this collaboration was St Andrew’s Chapel in Exwick, for which Beer provided stained glass.15 Medley was described as the ‘general designer’ of the church, which suggests an active role in the design of the architecture and stained glass.16 The east window was described as ‘copied from Broughton in Oxfordshire’, presumably after Medley, or possibly Hayward, had traced the glass. Medley’s curate in the parish of St Thomas was John Loveband Fulford – another leading light of the EDAS, and a member of the committee.17 Fulford wrote an early paper on the medieval stained glass in Exeter Cathedral, significantly containing a description of how to trace stained glass.18 Fulford’s tracings of the medieval glass were published in volume 2 of TEDAS and Robert Beer’s east window of Dunsford draws heavily on these models for the design of the canopies (Plate 11, Figure 22). The restoration of

22 J. L. Fulford tracing of medieval stained glass in Exeter Cathedral published in TEDAS in 1847

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Dunsford Church was funded by Colonel Fulford and the Rev. Subdean Stephens, who was the incumbent and a member of the EDAS.19 By the time the Dunsford glass was complete Beer’s windows were being enthusiastically reviewed by the Exeter Flying Post, which was starting to take great pride in the idea of a local glass-painter.20 Already Beer was achieving the kind of publicity that would eventually free his son from the restrictions of the strict ecclesiological market: the initial impetus from Medley and Fulford led to the exposure to – and creation of – a wider, and in some respects less restrictive, market. Before turning to Alfred Beer, however, it is important to look at Beer’s relationship with Medley and his circle in more detail as it points towards a crucial feature of ecclesiology and one which proved important for the Victorian glass-painter.

The active ecclesiologist If ecclesiology is emptied of its stylistic arguments, it still remains distinctive. In other words it was not just admiration for the gothic and belief in its moral value that constituted an ecclesiologist, but an idiosyncratic attitude to artistic production. In Chapter 1 I suggested that the erection of a correct gothic church conferred religious credibility upon those involved in its creation, and it is apparent that this logic could be reversed if someone who already possessed religious credibility fulfilled the role of artist. The status of the amateur was itself undergoing a transformation in the Victorian period. John Ruskin’s hugely successful Modern Painters was originally published as being written by ‘an undergraduate at Oxford’ and Winston’s An Inquiry as being by ‘an amateur’. They are both writing in the mode of the representative of rational public thought and in a sense their standing as authors gains from their self-confessed amateur status. In this context acceptance of the amateur ecclesiastical artist became possible. The Victorian amateur glass-painter is a phenomenon that has already been noticed by Haward, who points out that by 1862 Heaton and Butler’s catalogue was encouraging amateur glass-painters to execute windows that could be fired at their own works.21 My own research has shown that amateurs were active much earlier: the business generated by amateurs for Joseph Bell was considerable and it seems clear that amateur glass-painting was widespread. The amateur religious artist had several possible motivations. For some creating ecclesiastical fittings and objects must have been a form of religious activism; with ecclesiology stressing the necessity of ‘correct’ fittings within a church, active participation in this project constituted the fulfilment of religious duty.22 It is also evident that the amateur could enhance his or her religious credibility by designing and making ecclesiastical fittings. This points towards a key element in the

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amateur ethic: the action and impulse of artistic production, if devoid of financial motivation, was itself a guarantor of aesthetic acceptability. Consider for example this extract from the Ecclesiologist: The medallions of the East window … are drawn by the hand of a lady, who proposes to fill the remaining windows of the chapel likewise. We cannot conclude this notice without mentioning that the same benefactor had presented a painted window of her own execution to the neighbouring parish church; that she is the same to whom we are indebted for the promise of an eastern window to Prior Crauden’s chapel at Ely; that to the Ely Cathedral restorations her brother has also been a munificent contributor; that the same ‘brother and sister’ are the individuals to whose piety the church owes the sole endowment of a colonial bishopric; and lastly to whose untiring charity this present foundation of S. Mary Magdalene is due. May these works all breathing the spirit of the religious – Quid retribuam Domino? – meet imitation acceptance and the righteous man’s reward.23

There is a curious link here between the politics of class and the production of aesthetic credibility. Once the artist was above suspicion, so was the art. The true artist had to be above suspicion in both financial and religious terms. Established architects often managed to achieve a degree of religious credibility that nullified their financial interest, but the ‘mere artisan’ was defined as motivated by financial gain and was very unlikely to be accepted as a credible Christian. Once sufficient class status had been gained, financial interest became less probable and Christian status more likely. This was the background to the architect’s transformation into a middleclass professional: the professional ethic here served as a barrier to excessive financial interest. This shift in class status was crucial in the formation of the successful ecclesiastical architect, and a parallel shift was eventually achieved by glass-painters, or ‘artists in stained glass’. Those who could not achieve this transformation had limits set to the status of their products, but this lowly status could be elevated by the intervention of an amateur with religious authority, or an artist with aesthetic authority. The amateurs described above are doubly credible due to their dual status as patrons, which signals both financial disinterest and religious piety. This ethic of amateur involvement sometimes appeared to be breaking down the class-based categories of artist and mechanic. Some middle-class amateurs actually carried out the processes most firmly associated with artisans: Miss Rickards of Stowlangtoft painted and fired her own stained glass, and the Simcoe sisters ‘worked the stone with their own hands’ in the construction of Dunkeswell Abbey as well as making the stained glass.24 All is not as it might seem, however, because this labour is only evidence of piety due to the class and consequent financial disinterest of the labourer. When an artisan performed the same task, the labour was evidence of

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financial interest and therefore could not be interpreted as piety. More usually amateur involvement reinforced the residual division of labour by casting the amateur in the role of designer. This meant that the product derived its artistic value from the amateur and thus the artisan was again impeded from accumulation of artistic credibility. The usually inferior appearance of the amateur product became less important than its status as the product of a pious impulse. This background became crucial for the success of Robert Beer’s early career: John Medley and his curate J. L. Fulford were keen on actively participating in church decoration. Consider for example this extract from an article by Fulford on the medieval glass in Exeter Cathedral: It is not necessary that one should be able to draw or sketch, to copy stained glass; if it were so I should never have copied any myself. I would adopt the language of the Cambridge Camden Society, ‘Try it!’ Try it, not as the antiquarian, but as the Churchman; not simply for the purpose of conveying information unto others that such and such things have been and are, but to bring together facts, so that we may be enabled to act upon them, and thus benefit our Church, and assist in promoting the Glory of God.25

Here antiquarian pursuits gain a religious value; the call to active ecclesiology takes on the tone of a call to prayer. Tracing stained glass constituted bringing together facts, and acting upon them presumably involved converting antiquarian knowledge into contemporary art. Thus the involvement of the amateur became an ethical prerogative and led to the frequent active intervention of ecclesiologists in artistic production. In fact this is the key to the practice of ecclesiology: the insertion of the ecclesiologist directly into the process of artistic production. This was particularly important in the first years of the ecclesiological movement before a body of artists arose specifically to serve this market. Eventually the role of the ecclesiologist was often filled by the architect. Major architects such as Street and Butterfield often insisted on designing the entire interior scheme for their buildings, though at times, even major architects had to submit to the wishes of their patrons. Amateurs probably felt more comfortable interfering with the work of a local glass-painter than they would have meddling with an established national practitioner, and it is more than likely that Fulford and Medley were actively involved in the production of windows that they commissioned from Robert Beer. Many of Robert Beer’s early windows bear a strong resemblance to Fulford’s tracings of medieval glass. The similarities in the canopies and borders at Exwick and Dunsford have been mentioned already, but Beer’s figure of the Virgin Mary and child also bears a strong resemblance to Fulford’s tracings. When Beer executed a memorial window in the south

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aisle of Heavitree Church the report in the Builder stated that some of the lights were ‘bordered after a specimen at Exeter Cathedral’.26 Much of Beer’s glass at Heavitree has been destroyed, but two panels exist that retain borders resembling Fulford’s tracings of the Cathedral glass. The combined evidence from Exwick, Dunsford and Heavitree makes it almost certain that Robert Beer used Fulford’s tracings of medieval glass as models for his own designs. In addition to Exwick, Medley also paid for the rebuilding of the chancel at the chapel at Oldridge between 1841 and 1843.27 The east window contains stained glass by Beer and there is also stained glass in the nave tracery lights. This tracery glass has a distinctly amateur look about it and is nothing like any existing glass by Beer. It may have been painted and designed by Fulford or Medley, but no documentation exists to support this. Beer’s first five known commissions are directly connected to either Medley or Fulford and when this knowledge is combined with the actual appearance of the glass the involvement of one of them is highly probable. In 1845 Medley was appointed to the colonial see of Frederickton, in Canada, where he eventually built a church containing glass by Beer.28 By this time Beer had made other contacts in EDAS and in 1846 he executed what was probably his first commission independent of Medley and Fulford, at the church of St Michael and All Angels, Heavitree, Exeter. During the restoration of this church Beer executed an east window containing figures of the evangelists, a window in the south chancel and at least one window in the south aisle.29 The glass was cited by the Exeter Flying Post as added evidence of Beer’s skill as a glass-painter. How Beer attained this commission is undocumented, but links with EDAS were probably instrumental: Mr Atherly, the vicar, was a member, and so was the architect carrying out the restoration, David Mackintosh. The next year Mackintosh and Beer produced the window already described at Chudleigh. Also in 1847 Beer executed five windows at Cruwys Morchard, where the incumbent G. S. Cruwys was an EDAS member. In 1849 Beer made the memorial window already described for the Coleridge family at Thorverton.30 The design for Coleridge’s memorial window was shown to the EDAS committee, which shows that Beer was known to them by this date. By the last couple of years of the 1840s Beer may have been attracting commissions beyond EDAS: at Aylesbeare and Combe Raleigh there is no obvious connection to EDAS, which suggests that he may have been gaining some autonomy from ecclesiological enthusiasts. The evidence above supports a thesis that he was actively pulled into producing glass by clergymen who wanted to take part in its production. Visual models, also produced under the influence of ecclesiology, served as direct sources for elements of his window designs. By the last years of the 1840s his windows

Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

were starting to become personalised products referring as much to secular as religious hierarchies. In this, and in his increasing independence from ecclesiological patronage, his career anticipated the direction stained glass was to take in the national market.

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Alfred Beer: a second-generation Victorian glass-painter Alfred Beer was a second-generation Victorian glass-painter and that fact alone presented him with a range of opportunities not open to his father. He had inherited his father’s patrons and contacts but there were other factors in his favour that owed more to the development of the market for stained glass. In 1850, when Alfred started doing the bulk of the figure work for the Beer studio, he was only twenty years old. Little is known about his education but he had some form of artistic training because his descendants possess a landscape instruction book and a figure drawing manual that he used when he was fourteen. Beer’s apprenticeship in his father’s studio would have been extremely valuable. He would have acquired experience of all the processes needed to make a window and, as he became a more competent glass-painter, paid special attention to the difficult shading and face-painting techniques. Possibly just as important, Beer would have gained a good idea of how the business worked, and what type of customer he was serving. Setting up as a glass-painter in the 1830s must have been very difficult: there was little agreement about what constituted good stained glass, and little was written about the subject. This would have made it very hard for an aspiring glass-painter to know what kind of product and what kind of customer to aim at. Alfred Beer’s experience must have been totally different: he would have had a good range of medieval sources available to him and a better idea of what his patrons wanted. With this in mind, it seems possible that second-generation glasspainters may have performed some of the functions previously carried out by ecclesiologists. As a glass-painter like Alfred Beer became more expert in the matters of style and iconography he could assume more authority in these areas and advise his patrons from a more authoritative position. Beer’s father had been obliged to accept the authority and active intervention of ecclesiologists in order to become familiar with the emerging market. This is the key to the role of ecclesiology in the Victorian revival of glasspainting. Amateur activity, endorsed by ecclesiological ethics, made a process of education available to the glass-painter and this eventually facilitated the development of a wider market for stained glass. The increased status that second-generation glass-painters could acquire meant that they could have more control over the appearance of their windows.

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This freedom can be sensed in the spectacular mature work of Alfred Beer, which is executed in an intense and moody manner that would have been totally unacceptable to a strict ecclesiologist in the 1840s (Plate 13). So Alfred Beer was well placed in several ways. He had inherited valuable patrons and contacts and he was probably better informed than most of his patrons in gothic detail and religious iconography. His glowing reviews in the local newspapers suggest that he managed to acquire considerable status for his windows and there is evidence to suggest that he interacted very effectively with his patrons. Despite all these advantages, Alfred Beer still had a lot to do. Stained glass and its market changed continually in the 1850s and 1860s and it was not easy for a provincial glasspainter to keep his windows up to the same standards as the large-scale national producers. The surviving corpus of Alfred Beer’s windows shows continual adjustment of both glass-painting techniques and materials. Indeed the ‘constant devotion to the study of the art’ mentioned in the advertisement reproduced on p. 78 must have been quite close to the truth.

Alfred Beer’s windows Alfred Beer developed a distinctive style, which suggests that he was largely responsible for the design of his windows. Although his glass at Greinton contains elements that suggest that the architect David Mackintosh may have been involved, his later windows exhibit an individualism that must have come largely from Alfred Beer himself. To have the time to design and develop new cartoons Beer must have relied quite heavily on the other glass-painters in the studio. There was plenty of expertise at hand: Elizabeth and Susan continued to produce windows using Alfred’s cartoons after his death, suggesting that they were capable of painting the most delicate sections of the windows, and Frederick Drake was also a highly skilled glass-painter by the time of Alfred’s death. The north aisle east window at South Molton provides the evidence for this: the window was executed in 1865/66 and while the upper scenes are in the hand of Alfred Beer, the lower scenes are clearly not. These lower scenes are probably the work of Frederick Drake, executed after Alfred became incapacitated. Exactly what role Frederick Drake played in the later works of Alfred Beer is very hard to establish, but he may have executed face painting to Alfred’s cartoons. This expertise within the studio would have allowed Alfred Beer time for the more creative work of developing designs and drawing new cartoons. Even if Robert Beer had achieved enough aesthetic credibility to design more of his glass, he may not have had sufficient expertise available in the studio to delegate all the glass-painting. This is another way in which the second generation of Victorian glass-painters had an advantage over their

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23

Alfred Beer, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Aylesbeare, Devon, south chancel window, 1850

predecessors: there were far more skilled glass-painters available in 1850 than there had been twenty years earlier. The earliest known window painted by Alfred Beer is the south chancel window of Aylesbeare from 1850 (Figure 23). The style of the window is similar to Robert Beer’s memorial window at Thorverton, but the face painting is clearly identifiable as the work of Alfred. This may have been a window started by Robert and completed by Alfred during his father’s illness. Robert Beer’s face painting varied considerably in manner, but Alfred’s hand is quite distinctive. Figure 24 shows a detail of a face painted by Alfred, now in the organ loft at Heavitree. The large rounded forehead of this figure can be seen in many of Alfred’s windows, for example Filleigh (Plate 9) and Dulverton (Plate 13). Equally distinctive are the great contrasts in light and shade that Alfred Beer used in his glass. This effect can be

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observed as early as 1850, but is particularly noticeable in the large scenes of his mature years such as the south aisle east window of South Molton31 (Figure 25). By 1855 Alfred Beer was experimenting with a variety of glass types. The grisaille glass that forms the background to the scenes at Monkokehampton is unusual: it has small parallel score lines on the reverse side, presumably a sign that the glass has been treated in order to make it more opaque. This is not ‘antique’ glass in the sense that it was specially designed for glass-painting; what seems more likely is that it was a material that Alfred Beer found readily available and thought he could adapt for his work. By 1865 Alfred Beer was using large sheets of flashed glass: the south aisle east window at South Molton (Figure 26) uses flashed ruby treated with silver stain. This technique allowed him to have transparent red and yellow tones on the same piece of glass and to make intensely coloured but relatively transparent windows. When he painted this flashed glass in his characteristic manner the dramatic style so typical of his later work

24 Alfred Beer, St Michael and All Angels, Heavitree, Exeter, Devon, detail of window now the organ loft

25 Alfred Beer, St Mary Magdalene, South Molton, Devon, detail from south aisle east window, c. 1865

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Alfred Beer, St Mary Magdalene, South Molton, Devon, south aisle east window, c. 1865

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emerges. When figures 20 and 25 are compared, the difference between the techniques of Robert and Alfred Beer is clear. Both have applied a white enamel wash to the exterior of the glass but the detailed shading on the inner surface differs considerably. Robert used numerous strong lines in the hair and beard to frame the lighter central section of the face. The beard and hair area was also painted with more brown enamel, probably in another wash. The strong enamel lines also form a crosshatched area on the right cheek, which creates an area of deep shadow. Alfred Beer’s technique was totally different. Large areas are left totally free of interior enamel, while the deepest part of the shaded section is almost totally obscured. The transition from these very deep shadows to the light areas shows Alfred Beer using stipple shading: a slightly speckled effect in the shading is observable even in the deep shadow, suggesting that the brush was used to create tiny spots of glass free from interior enamel. This is close to Winston’s ‘transparent shadows’, though the exterior wash prevents any part of the glass being totally free from shading, which runs against Winston’s advice. Apart from this, it is interesting that Alfred Beer seems to have practised much of what Winston preached. Winston basically recommended using as much perspective as was feasible within the mosaic system and believed Cinque Cento glass was the zenith of glass-painting achievement due to its ‘transparent shadows, and contrasts of light and shade’.32 It is extremely unlikely that Alfred Beer was consciously trying to impress patrons with his adherence to Winston as late as 1865, and it is difficult to believe that the latter would have approved of Alfred Beer’s work, but Winston’s criticisms of early Victorian glass-painting do seem to have had some effect. There is another simpler reason for Alfred’s move to a more pictorial manner later in his career, a trend typical of several other glass-painters. Many Victorian glass-painters aspired to become oil painters and painted extensively on canvas during spare time; both William Wailes and Francis Oliphant are examples of this.33 Although glass-painters increased their aesthetic status in the Victorian period, it never approached the kind of credibility possible for oil painters. With this in mind, once the importance of strict ecclesiological aesthetics had faded in the 1860s, ambitious glasspainters were not content to restrict themselves to the limited range of representation offered them by the likes of G. E. Street, and moved towards a more pictorial style closer to Winston’s recommendations. Winston’s position did, after all, offer more to the glass-painter; he wanted stained glass to be accepted as high art and glass-painters wanted to be accepted as artists. Antique blue glass started to feature in Alfred Beer’s windows from the mid-1850s and did to some extent affect his manner. A comparison between scenes at Filleigh and Chagford depicting the same subject is instructive (Plates 9 and 10). The window at Filleigh was made using the thin pot metal

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

used by early Victorian glass-painters. The blue glass forming the background to the scene at Filleigh is very dark, this is a consequence of the heavy shading that was necessary to dull the tone of the glass. As a result the scene is only effective in a strong light, when it is transformed into a composition of considerable drama. The Chagford scene executed ten years later shows a marked contrast in light control. The dull blue sky behind the angel and the red cross have been replaced with a pale yellow diapered background and a smaller yellow cross. This both lightens the scene and clarifies the action, as the presence of the angel is now highlighted by the yellow ground. Significantly, the cartoon has been redrawn: it is possible that Robert Beer prepared the cartoons for Filleigh, but this cartoon is characteristic of Alfred. The most noticeable difference is that the disciples in the foreground at Chagford are designed to be identifiable. The sleeping disciples at Filleigh are jumbled together, while at Chagford the halos function to define the three individuals. The foreground figure is clearly identifiable as St John and the elder figure as St Peter. The fact that Peter is holding a sword is a specific reference to St John’s gospel, where Peter is described as the apostle who cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant. This was favoured over Peter’s standard symbol of the keys: here biblical narrative is privileged over symbolism. This can be identified as a move away from the formalism demanded by ecclesiology towards a more broad-church use of biblical representation. It is doubtful that this variation was conceived in terms of ecclesiastical politics but it does support the thesis that the hold ecclesiology had over the appearance of stained glass weakened as the market expanded. The palette at Chagford has changed dramatically: slate blues and olive greens are used in preference to the brighter colours of the earlier window. The use of greyish tints to blues and greens became widespread in the mid1860s and was mainly a reaction to the bright and intense palette of the mid-1850s and early 1860s. Alfred Beer did not normally use these tints; his latest windows at South Molton continue to use an intense palette, but it is interesting to note that he also worked with these colours. Alfred Beer used antique glass extensively from the mid-1850s onwards but he continued to apply an exterior wash, and to create dramatic chiaroscuro effects. He had learnt his craft using the materials of the 1840s and though he used these materials effectively, they constituted new possibilities for the development of an existing manner, rather than the starting point for window design. Alfred Beer’s window at Filleigh shows a remarkable confidence in terms of overall design. The use of a vine as a background pattern and a framework in which to set scenes became a popular format in the 1850s and many studios continued to use it into the 1860s. Figure 27 shows another medallion window with a vine framework at Exminster, this time adapted to incorporate a larger central figure. The fact that Alfred Beer used this

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Alfred Beer, St Martin, Exminster, Devon, south aisle window, c. 1855

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manner in one of his earliest windows suggests that he was very much in touch with the most current designs being produced by the ecclesiological movement. It is unclear whether this is the manner referred to as the ‘first style’ in the notice in the Exeter Flying Post quoted on p. 78, and quite what the archaeological source for this kind of glass was is difficult to pinpoint. The use of identifiable naturalistic foliage points towards the Decorated gothic period favoured by the ecclesiologists, but the overall appearance bears little resemblance to fourteenth-century glass. In fact the use of small figure groups in medallions is more typical of the twelfth century, as the description ‘first style’ suggests. Small scenes in medallions were recommended by the Ecclesiologist in response to Winston’s advice that the Early English and Decorated styles be discontinued.34 This was probably the basis for its adoption by a number of glass-painters. What this style did have in its favour, from the glass-painter’s perspective, is a large amount of flexibility: the background pattern work and borders could be produced in large quantities by the subordinate glass-painters in the studio and cartoons could be reused from previous work. This style could suit almost any size of window using as few as two scenes for a two-light window, or as many as twelve as at Filleigh. In contrast, mounting small scenes in architectural canopy work must have been much more labour intensive: more elaborate design work would be needed to fit the architectural work to the window tracery. An equally significant factor was probably the fact that it was easier to produce credible small scenes and figures than it was to produce large ones. So windows involving small scenes and pattern work seem to make sense in terms of both the studio’s business practices and the aesthetic demands of the 1850s. The vine framework window appears to be a manner without a thoroughbred archaeological precedent, but which did make signals in the right direction for the ecclesiological patron. Alfred Beer showed remarkable confidence in the design of his windows from an early stage in his career. In 1853 his window at Buckfastleigh was described as ‘an early perpendicular window’, which shows that he aimed to design windows to quite precise archaeological specifications.35 Starting in the late 1850s he produced a whole series of windows in a late medieval manner. The Exeter Flying Post described the window he executed at Colaton Raleigh as being ‘in the style of the fifteenth century’36 and from 1858 to 1861 he produced three further windows in this manner. One was executed in 1858 at Poughill (Figure 28) and two in 1861 at Cheriton Fitzpaine.37 The perspective of the designs and the elaborate Perpendicular style canopies both signal a deliberate move towards a late medieval manner. Beer’s move towards Winston’s favoured Cinque Cento style and the increased artistic credibility that went with it seem to have been recognised by the Exeter Flying Post, which described the window at

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Alfred Beer, St Michael and All Angels, Poughill, Devon, north aisle east window, 1858

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Colaton Raleigh as one of Beer’s ‘excellent productions in this beautiful art’.38 There is, however, another reason for this move towards pictorialism, because this style of window must have been a costly product. Pictorial glass was the most expensive category of stained glass and so a window with large scenes would typically command a high price. Prices quoted by the Hardman studio confirm this: the highest prices were for ‘perpendicular’ or ‘fifteenth century glass’ (they did not offer a Cinque Cento style window).39 So, for the glass-painter, a late medieval or Cinque Cento manner offered upmarket prices and potential for accumulating artistic credibility. This group of late medieval style windows is extremely useful for illustrating how the market for stained glass was changing by the late 1850s. Beer’s manner was already moving well away from anything recommended by the Ecclesiologist: the late medieval manner, the dramatic expressions of the figures and the use of perspective all depart from Puginian recommendations. All the windows are memorial windows and four out of the five refer directly to the lives of the purchaser of the window: three contain Resurrection scenes, and the south aisle west window at Poughill refers to the deceased child by depicting Christ with children. Here then the windows are personalised: Christian iconography is being used not to refer to a theological position within the Church of England or an idealised version of rural power structures, but to link the lives of a particular family to Christian doctrine. The act of purchasing a stained-glass window, however, had not become an act divorced from the politics of local hierarchies: many of Alfred Beer’s later patrons were people in positions of secular rather than religious authority. The window at Colaton Raleigh was commissioned by Mr Divett, who had been one of Exeter’s two members of parliament since 1832, and the two major windows at South Molton were commissioned by the Pearse family, who were lawyers, and the Thorne family, which included a town councillor and a physician.40 These patrons are typical of a new kind of secular power emerging in the mid-Victorian period, which had major repercussions for ecclesiastical interiors. Although some were rich enough to finance an entire project, more often funds came from a number of sources, each person paying for a specific section of the fabric. This had the effect of fragmenting the unity of the interior as individual patrons personalised the portion of the fabric that they had paid for. Controlling the unity of the interior in this context became very difficult and an interesting example of this will be discussed in Chapter 6. This was one of the results of stained glass becoming cheaper: windows were now affordable to reasonably affluent middle-class families. The erection of a window still constituted the appropriation of a portion of the church, and an assertion of

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the patron’s position within the parish, but the money was increasingly coming from those lower down the social hierarchy. Alfred Beer’s windows in the later stages of his career are ample proof that he was working with far fewer restrictions than his father. His pattern work starts to free itself from archaeological precedent: at Halse highly stylised foliage forms the canopies instead of architectural work, signalling a design more interested in ornament than archaeology. The intensely leaded and exuberant canopy work at South Molton is nothing more than an idiosyncratic essay in ornamental design. In the late 1850s Alfred Beer painted a series of historical wall paintings for Sir George Stucley in Hartland Abbey; the historical sources and designs for the paintings have been described as a project of ‘collaborative research’ between Stucley and Beer.41 Stucley was fascinated by the genealogy of his family, and several large volumes of his research remain at Hartland Abbey in manuscript. One letter survives from Beer to Stucley, which suggests that Beer was helping Stucley with the research: ‘I forwarded yesterday the shields and badges for the Chimney piece which I hope will meet with your approval … I leave tomorrow for London. If Sir George you should think of anything that I can do while there as to information for the remaining frescoes if you could kindly send me a line it will be forwarded to me.’42 The word ‘frescoes’ suggests that the project was perceived more as a decorative art than a fine art project, but is it still remarkable that a glass-painter was selected for this commission. It is also important to notice that Stucley wanted Beer’s advice on heraldry and architectural detail. In this case, and in others, Alfred Beer is far more than the ‘mere artisan’ and instead seems to be approaching Warrington’s ideal of the polymath glass-painter. St Nectan’s Church, adjacent to Hartland Abbey contains glass by both Robert and Alfred Beer. The window by Alfred is very similar in manner to his work at Filleigh, and so must date from the early 1850s. Stucley, therefore, must have originally known Alfred as a glass-painter, which makes his selection of him for a series of ‘frescoes’ all the more interesting. This strikes me as a good example of how the opportunities for glass-painters had changed from the mid-1840s to the late 1850s. Alfred Beer was a remarkable glass-painter, but his work at Hartland Abbey highlights the fact that he was working in a context where he had ample opportunities to realise his potential. The work of Robert and Alfred Beer illustrates the complex relationship between ecclesiology and the revival of stained glass. The active role played by Medley and Fulford offered Robert Beer opportunities but simultaneously placed limits on his artistic freedom. This glazier-patron relationship allowed Robert and Alfred Beer to gain familiarity with an important group of patrons and learn much about what was necessary to operate a successful

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Glass-painters: the Beer family of Exeter

stained-glass business for an ecclesiological market. As the influence of strict ecclesiological aesthetics waned and the market for stained glass moved towards a broader middle-class socio-economic group, the gap between Alfred Beer’s status and that of his patrons narrowed and he became an established artist in stained glass capable of endorsing his own cultural products. Alfred Beer’s windows derived their status as much from art as from archaeology, and the historicism of some of his later windows dissolved into pure visual effect. Antique glass gave him further possibilities, though the new material modified his style rather than completely transforming it. As the centre of ecclesiastical power for the whole of Devon and Cornwall, Exeter was an ideal location from which to operate an ecclesiastical art business and the EDAS offered a point of entry into this network of potential patrons. The market for stained glass in Devon and Cornwall was far from exhausted at the time of Alfred’s early death in 1866 and it would be fascinating to know how his output would have changed had he continued producing glass into the 1870s. The continued success of the Beer family, and especially of Frederick Drake, show that the stainedglass market in the Exeter area continued to be lucrative into the late nineteenth century. John Toms was not as well placed, the market being dominated by the Beers on one side and by Joseph Bell on the other, leaving him limited potential for commissions. Toms’s relationship with the EDAS was probably distant at best; he did not enjoy the connections with architects and ecclesiologists that the Beers profited from. This distance from ecclesiologists also meant that Toms’s use of archaeological precedent was gained from published sources while Robert Beer could use details traced directly from medieval glass in Exeter Cathedral. Toms probably gained much technical information from Winston’s An Inquiry, but Robert Beer was producing accomplished windows several years before this was published. Though the stained-glass practice of John Toms might never have come into being without an initial impetus from ecclesiology, his products illustrate what was possible with very limited access to ecclesiological patrons and sources. The case of Robert and Alfred Beer shows the effect of a close relationship between an active and partisan ecclesiological group and a local glazier. Alfred’s later glass suggests that the power to influence the appearance of stained glass was eventually taken away from the ecclesiologists by the wider and more cosmopolitan market that they had created.

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Notes

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1 2

3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15

16 17

See Ecclesiologist, 2 (1843), 23. A memorandum exists, dated 1820, stating: ‘Memorandum of Mr. Russell’s window to Mr. Collins Order to Charles Muss’ and is signed by Robert Beer. This probably refers to the well known glass-painter and dealer William Collins and the glasspainter Charles Muss. Beer’s role in this commission is unclear and may well have been to install the glass. For published information on the Beer family see D. Drake, ‘Robert Beer, Devonshire glass-painter 1799–1850’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, 17:1 (1980–1), 69–77. This article by a descendant of the Beer family contains many errors. The other published article is M. Hall, ‘Hartland Abbey, Devon’, Country Life (December 1993), 96–99. I am indebted to Joy Daniels for correction of genealogical details concerning the Beer family and much other information. Ecclesiologist, 2 (1843), 23. Exeter Flying Post, 8 August 1850. Exeter Flying Post, 4 December 1856. Exeter Flying Post, 27 October 1853. The description in the paper is slightly confusing in that it states that the recent window executed by Alfred was the seventh by ‘Mr. Beer’. This could mean that Alfred had executed seven windows in addition to the two definitely executed by Robert, but I have interpreted it as meaning that seven windows had been executed in total. R. Newton, Victorian Exeter: 1837–1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1968), p. 343. S. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1997), p. 65. Exeter Flying Post, 17 January 1850. It is likely that from the mid-nineteenth century, photographs of patrons were used as sources for portraits incorporated into stained-glass windows. It is fascinating to notice that Claudet and Houghton, who later became well known as photographers, exhibited stained glass at the Great Exhibition and so seem to have switched directly from stained glass to photography. See Gentleman’s Magazine, 29:1 (1848), 299 and Exeter Flying Post, 3 February 1848. Exeter Flying Post, 3 February 1848. O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 2 vols (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966), p. 25. For analysis of Philpott’s theological position in the context of the Goreham Judgement see p. B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 228– 235. For a discussion of Medley’s relationship with John Hayward and the EDAS see M. Cherry, ‘Patronage, the Anglican Church and the local architect in Victorian England’, in C. Brooks and A. Saint (eds), The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 173–191. Ecclesiologist, 2 (1843), 23. Fulford later became a controversial Ritualist while vicar of Woodbury in Devon. For

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18 19

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20 21

22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33

34 35 36 37

38 39 40

a description of his conflict with his parish see J. S. Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), p. 37. TEDAS, 2 (1847), 133. Exeter Flying Post, 11 December 1845. Colonel Fulford was the major local landowner and whether he was related to J. L. Fulford is unclear. A link exists between Fulford’s tracings and the Dunsford glass anyway, due to Stephens. See for example review of a window installed in Lympstone, Exeter Flying Post, 20 November 1845 (window no longer extant). B. Haward, Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass: Gazetteer, Directory, an Account of Suffolk Stained Glass Painters (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 286 and 311. I strongly suspect that women saw amateur activity as a way of participating in a religion that in many areas restricted their activities. My current research is pursuing this subject. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 436. The church in question was St Mary Magdalene, Chiswick, and the patrons referred to are subsequently revealed as J. C. Sharpe Esq. and his sister Mrs Smart; see Ecclesiologist, 11 (1850), 157. Builder, 4 (1846), 533. TEDAS, 2 (1847), 138. Builder, 4 (1846), 393. See H. Fulford Williams, ‘Notes from Recollections of J. L. Fulford’, manuscript in Oldridge Chapel. Ecclesiologist, 8 (1848), 362. See Exeter Flying Post, 23 July 1846 and Builder, 4 (1846), 393. See TEDAS report of the annual meeting on 31 May 1849, which mentions a completed memorial window at Thorverton; this must be the south aisle east window. See TEDAS, 3 (1849), 174. The south aisle east window at South Molton was being made in 1865. An attractive colour sketch of the window design is in the possession of the Beers’ descendants and is signed ‘AB 11/3/65’. Winston, An inquiry, p. 255. For Oliphant see Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, p. 19; for Wailes see J. Knowles, ‘Glass-Painters 1750–1850’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, 13:3 (1962), 520. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1850), 81–97. Exeter Flying Post, 27 October 1853. Exeter Flying Post, 30 December 1858. At Poughill Beer also executed the south aisle west window and although the window is quite pictorial, the absence of Perpendicular canopies makes the archaeological reference less definite. Exeter Flying Post, 30 December 1858. Shepherd, ‘The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin’, p. 66. See J. A. Homewood (ed.), The Stained Glass of the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene South Molton’, pp. 2 and 19. This is the church guide, with original

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research by Chris Brooks and Jo Cox. M. Hall, ‘Hartland Abbey, Devon’, Country Life, 187 (December 1993), 96–99. I am grateful to the present owner of Hartland Abbey for allowing me to photograph and examine these paintings and the connected archival material. Hartland Abbey Archive, letter from Alfred Beer to Sir George Stucley, 3 July 1860. This is the only surviving correspondence between Beer and Stucley. The other documentation relevant to this project consists of large bound manuscripts describing the genealogy of the Stucley family, and a letter to the Exeter herald George Oliver.

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5 ✧ Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

T

HE STAINED-GLASS STUDIO established by Joseph Bell in Bristol presents an ideal case study for this book: many of Bell’s windows survive intact and rare archival information about the firm survives. Joseph Bell’s jobs book covers the period between March 1843 and January 1856 and documents the vast majority of Bell’s output.1 In addition to the jobs book Joseph Bell’s notebooks have survived, allowing a unique insight into how a glass-painter educated himself in the early Victorian period. Bell’s career is also documented through the publications of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society (BWEAS) – a group that accepted Bell as a member, and through which he met Charles Winston. A series of letters from Winston to Bell survive in the archive and provide another unique perspective on Winston and his impact on a group of glass-painters whose business interests were not dominated by strict ecclesiologists.2

Joseph Bell: education and background Joseph Bell’s background immediately points to how the pre-Victorian market for painted porcelain laid the foundations for new forms of cultural production in the early nineteenth century. Joseph Bell was born in Stoke on Trent in 1810, and has been described as starting life as a pottery painter.3 Further evidence of Bell’s connection to the ceramics trade exists in the form of two designs for porcelain, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum.4 Bell trained in Dublin and London before establishing his business in Bristol in 1840. By 1843 he was a highly skilled glass-painter, as can be seen from the east window of the south aisle at Rattery Church in Devon (Plate 6). Some idea of Bell’s activities before 1843 can be recovered from his notebooks. These are somewhat disorderly and entries are not always dated. Two of them provide significant information concerning the period prior to 1843: one containing entries dated in 1836 and 1837, and the other containing entries from 1835 to 1842. The book covering 1836–37 contains sketches, business bills and receipts, notes on the ingredients of glass-

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painting materials, and notes on heraldry and drawing technique. The sketches show Bell’s interest in the appearance and categorisation of gothic ornament: fairly basic sketches of arch types are accompanied by labels such as ‘lancet’ and ‘ogee’. Other sketches consist of details of gothic ornament such as crockets. This shows just how early Bell was starting to acquire the vocabulary of the emerging Gothic Revival – these notebooks were started before the publication of Pugin’s Contrasts. What appears to be an order from ‘Mess. O’Brian’ to Bell, dated 31 December 1836, itemises several packets of coloured enamel and three panes of glass for which Bell charged for ‘sketching’ and ‘burning’. This shows that even before the official founding of the stained-glass business Bell was producing some description of stained glass, and significantly producing materials for glass-painting. At the other end of the book there are pages of notes and transcriptions from a book cited as ‘Hayter’s Introduction to Perspective, Drawing and Painting’, though there is no evidence to fix these notes to the 1830s.5 This is a firm indication that that Bell was self-taught in many aspects of drawing and composition.

Sources of technical information The other notebook containing entries from the 1830s and early 1840s consists entirely of recipes for various fluxes and enamels and shows Bell accumulating technical expertise. I have identified the source of several of these recipes as Porter’s A Treatise on the Progressive Improvement and Present State of the Manufacture of Porcelain and Glass, which Winston cites as a source, but which Bell was clearly using many years before Winston’s work was published.6 Bell’s recipes for ‘Orange Stain’, ‘Red Stain’ and ‘Lemon Yellow’ correspond exactly to Porter’s in quantity, and process, where this is noted. Porter’s work is fascinating for several reasons. The first of these is stated in the title: here is another clear instance of the close relationship between the working practices of enamel painting on porcelain and glass. Since Porter’s treatise was published eight years before Bell officially founded his studio, it is tempting to speculate that Bell might have discovered Porter’s treatise via the porcelain trade and that it was a factor in his decision to become a glass-painter. Porter points out the technical similarity between the two processes several times: ‘The art is, indeed, in most particulars, so extremely analogous to the methods employed for painting porcelain, and which have already been treated in this volume, that it will not be necessary to occupy much space in its description.’7 Porter’s brief history of stainedglass production shows a dated attitude towards stained glass. The mosaic method is considered archaic and inferior to the modern method of painting in opaque enamels, which is pronounced ‘far more beautiful, admitting of

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

greater variety of tints, as well as of those delicate shadings which were manifestly unattainable by even the most laborious composition in mosaic work.’8 Porter goes on to say that glass-painting has never reached as consistently high levels of excellence in England as it has in other European countries. He explains this deficiency by suggesting that great artists had little incentive to work in stained glass: ‘The artist is even without the gratification of witnessing the satisfactory progress of his own work, the appearance of which is comparatively dull and uninteresting until after it has passed from his own hands into those of “red Lemnos” artisan.’9 This is an interesting perspective: the implication is that the painting itself is not transformed into art until the glass is fired, and this part of the process had to be executed by the artisan. Winston offered a solution to this problem when he urged artists to familiarise themselves with the technical processes of glass-painting. In fact Winston’s attitude makes much more sense when Porter’s treatise is taken into account; Winston seems to have been writing with Porter’s arguments in mind. From the above evidence it seems that Porter’s treatise was a very important source – initially for the acquisition of technical glass-painting knowledge, and later for contributing to the discourse concerning stained glass that circulated outside ecclesiology. The influence of Porter on Joseph Bell was probably both technical and, in a less positive sense, stylistic. The detailed account of the processes for making enamels clearly enhanced Bell’s technical knowledge, and Porter’s stylistic comments endorsed the tradition of glass-painting that Bell was initially working in. The soft faces of Bell’s early windows come close to the Georgian painterly tradition and the finesse he achieved in this technique also enhanced his later manner (Plate 6). Porter is not the only technical source evident in Bell’s 1835–42 notebook. It lists over fifty recipes for enamels and fluxes, together with notes on which fluxes combine best with which colouring agents. Only three of these appear to be taken directly from Porter. Some are very close, suggesting that Bell used Porter extensively but experimented with and adjusted the original recipes. Some of them refer to individual sources for enamels such as ‘Mr. Glovers gold recipes’ and ‘Mr. Haselworth’s Red Stain’. This suggests that Bell contacted other individuals in order to broaden his range of enamels, and that among the right circles considerable knowledge was available. Lardner makes some interesting comments respecting the possibilities of acquiring this kind of information. He comments that published knowledge concerning the technical side of enamelling was almost universally inaccurate previous to the publications of M. Brongniart.10 Porter hints that this may have been due to the wishes of many authors to keep the secrets of their business intact, and that what were possibly deliberate inaccuracies were no longer possible now that chemical knowledge was widespread and not confined to a few select

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students.11 Fromberg stated explicitly that some writers deliberately published inaccurate information.12 Porter’s comments show how a change in the ways that knowledge was propagated could undermine the structure of the way a craft was practised. In the absence of accurate published sources concerning enamelling, the only method of acquiring the requisite knowledge would have been by serving a long apprenticeship to someone who possessed this knowledge. This is one good reason for organising glasspainting around the family unit, as was often the case in the post-medieval period. Restricting the size of the glass-painting profession by keeping technical information secret was impossible once publications such as Porter’s and Winston’s became available. Providing that the potential for the circulation of these publications was sufficiently widespread all sorts of people previously unconnected with enamelling could start attempting glasspainting, and artisans such as John Toms succeeded admirably. In this sense the developing material possibilities of the early Victorian period were liberating for the likes of loseph Bell. Here again the economies of the early Victorian publishing industry were crucial: relatively cheap books meant that artisans might afford them. Even armed with the requisite knowledge and technical skill the early Victorian glass-painter’s success was not assured: expertise in negotiating the complex demands of various groups of patron was also essential.

Joseph Bell’s early commissions The importance of Bell’s technical knowledge in the early 1840s is underlined by the type of commissions he received during this period. The majority of the early entries in the jobs book are commissions from other glaziers for patterned panes, rosettes or borders. In other words what Bell had over and above other local glaziers was the ability to fire enamel into glass in a variety of colours and patterns. This produced a multitude of small commissions in which other glaziers employed Bell to make the painted panels in their windows. This was advantageous for Bell in two ways: firstly, he was able to work entirely as a highly skilled artisan and therefore command a corresponding income; and secondly, the glaziers subcontracting work out to him were gaining commissions for him – others glaziers were creating his market. Figure 29 shows the average price per commission over the period covered by the jobs book. The marked upward trend represents the move away from small commissions from within the trade to commissions for entire windows commissioned directly by the patron. The role of small commissions from within the glazing trade is well illustrated by the

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29

Joseph Bell, average price per commission, 1844–55

commissions from a Bristol company: Hall and Sons, including Hall and Peddar. Hall was responsible for a total of 205 commissions in the jobs book, making him Bell’s most frequent customer. The total Bell charged for these commissions was nearly 1364, which makes the average commission price about £1 15s 0d. This was by no means insignificant business for Bell, and its importance is underlined when the distribution of these commissions is considered. Of the 205 commissions, 190 fall between 1843 and 1847, forming a significant proportion of Bell’s early business. These small commissions performed a similar role for Bell as plumbing and decorating did for Toms: they provided him with an income relatively independent of the fickle ecclesiological market. By the late 1840s Bell had successfully negotiated his way into an extremely strong position in the local ecclesiastical market, but it is crucial to recognise that he established his business independent of the ecclesiological influence that proved so important to John Toms and Robert Beer. Although it has been suggested that Bell launched his business independently of high-church ecclesiastical patronage, this account must be qualified, because money from this quarter did reach him indirectly from an early stage. The first two entire windows listed in the jobs book were commissions gained by Dixes and Williams and subcontracted to Bell.13 The first of these survives in good condition in the south chapel of St Mary’s Church at Rattery in Devon, and allows a detailed analysis of the nature of this commission (Figure 30, Plate 6). The first thing to notice is the fact that the money came from the Carews, a landowning high-church family, so even though Bell gained the commission indirectly, high-church money still found its way to him through Dixes and Williams. The down side of this arrangement for Bell becomes apparent on inspection of the window, which

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Joseph Bell, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Rattery, Devon, south chapel east window, 1842

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reveals the signature ‘Dixes and Williams Pinxit Bristol 1843’. Dixes and Williams here were attempting to accumulate the cultural prestige from the product for themselves, and they succeeded: the window is listed in the 1989 edition of Pevsner as being by ‘Dix [sic] and Williams’.14 The barrier to Bell’s reputation here is serious, but these types of commission soon died out and the strategy of Dixes and Williams was not really sustainable. Bell may have been aware of this ploy, for in a subcontract from Merrick for the east window of Sandford in Devon, he took the step of signing one of the scenes himself, though this attribution too has gone down in Pevsner as Merrick.15 Exactly who made which glass at Rattery is unclear: an order dated 23 December 1843 from Dixes and Williams itemises ‘Drawing to South Window for Lady Carew’, almost certainly referring to the south window of the south chapel at Rattery, which contains a figure of St Peter set in pattern glass (Plate 14). The entry in the jobs book implies that Dixes and Williams produced the rest of the glass themselves, though this would be strange because they ordered many borders, pattern panes and rosettes from Bell. It is possible that Dixes and Williams had rudimentary glass-painting skills and could have made some portions of the window themselves. It is more likely, however, that they kept stocks of pattern glass purchased from Bell, but would order extra panels to be incorporated in specific commissions. Retaining stocks of pattern glass was an established practice for glass-painters and has been recorded elsewhere.16 It may have been the case that Dixes and Williams could produce their own glass, but it was cheaper for them to buy from Bell, whose entire operation was orientated to producing painted glass. The pattern and architectural glass in the Rattery window shows a deliberate attempt to refer to the fourteenth century (Figure 30, Plate 6). The background grisaille is decidedly naturalistic in character, the canopy arch is an ogee and the crockets and ballflower ornament point to the Decorated Gothic period. The manner of execution, however, is definitely not medieval: pot metal was used, but the depth of shadow and relief in the architectural work is very painterly and is really closer to a series of Regency panels than a genuine mosaic window. The lead lines were used to form many of the essential strong outlines of the window and so the technical manner cannot really be called either Georgian or medieval so much as early Victorian. The face of St John was painted in a very ‘soft’ manner and is nothing like English fourteenth-century stained glass. It is, however, a highly accomplished piece of enamel painting, in which Bell, like some eighteenth-century glass-painters, was able to produce a picture approaching the appearance of an oil painting. Although this stylistic mixture might seem incongruous now, Bell’s stylistic quotation has all the right credentials for the early 1840s. Plate 14 illustrates the thinness of the

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glass Bell was using at this early stage: the exterior grid to the window can be clearly seen through the green background to the figure. The Rattery commission is a fine example of the emergence of archaeological reference, the continued preference for painterly figures and glass-painting techniques and material inherited from the eighteenth-century tradition. The result is very attractive, but it was not long before a discerning viewer might have considered it rather dated. Although the subcontracting practices of Dixes and Williams presented a temporary problem to Joseph Bell, it was not long before he started to gain commissions directly from ecclesiastical patrons. In the years following 1844, Bell transformed his position in the emerging market for stained glass. In 1844 he was a skilled artisan working mainly within the trade but by 1847 he had been publicly acknowledged as a highly skilled glass-painter by Charles Winston. These crucial years may be regarded as the second phase in Bell’s development as a glass-painter: the technical knowledge and business base had already been established; what he needed now was a good working knowledge of his future patrons.

Joseph Bell and the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society Bell’s connection to the BWEAS set him in the middle of a group of patrons keen to build, restore and decorate their churches. In contrast to both Toms and the Beers, Bell actually managed to become a member of the BWEAS. Exactly how this happened is unclear, but he was involved early, and appears on the membership list for 1845. The BWEAS was founded in 1841 partly due to the influence of the archdeacon of Bristol, Thomas Thorpe. Thorpe had been the first patron of the CCS, the tutor of both J. M. Neale and Benjamin Webb, and he restored his church at Kemerton in Gloucestershire in a true ecclesiological manner.17 Despite Thorpe’s Cambridge connections, the BWEAS was affiliated more to the Oxford Architectural Society than the CCS and was concerned more with archaeological investigation than confrontational ecclesiology. The secretary, Eccles J. Carter, may have been Bell’s first point of contact. This is suggested by his personal interest in stained glass and his connections to Charles Winston.18 Three orders appear in the jobs book under Carter’s name, one on behalf of another patron.19 Carter expressed an attitude close to Winston’s in emphasising the importance of producing glass suitable for painting on, and seems to have made active attempts to procure this glass for Bell. In 1845 Joseph Bell gained a key commission, probably through BWEAS connections. The windows installed in the chancel of Coalpit Heath Church

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

near Bristol were paid for by the Rev. Mr Woodford, who was an active ecclesiologist and ‘a protégé of Archdeacon Thorpe’.20 Coalpit Heath was William Butterfield’s first church for ecclesiological patrons and signals the start of his rise in the ranks of ecclesiastical architects. The importance of this church as an ecclesiological project makes Bell’s involvement all the more interesting. The chancel glass has been attributed to Thomas Willement on the basis of a local newspaper, but documentary evidence stating that the glass was designed by Butterfield and made by Bell survives in two separate sources.21 Additional evidence against Willement’s involvement is the absence of any mention of the commission in Willement’s own lists of his work held at the Victoria and Albert museum. The jobs book reveals that Butterfield drew the cartoons and so the fact that this glass is different from Bell’s other windows of the 1840s is easily explained. Although Bell was prevented from designing these windows, his involvement in this key high-church project must have been beneficial to him. The glass was described in the BWEAS report for 1845, and so Bell’s name was publicly linked to the project. Analysis of the figures in the jobs book confirms the significance of the BWEAS for Bell’s business. The total value of all the commissions in the jobs book is £9,858, and 84 per cent of this total is made up of commissions over £10. The majority of commissions under this value were from within the trade. Of the commissions over £10, 30 per cent are from BWEAS members, totalling £2,544. As it is not possible to establish a complete list of those who were members of BWEAS, the real figure is probably higher than this.22 If commissions for people known to have had some connection to BWEAS members is added, the total becomes £3,567, which represents 43 per cent of the value of commissions over £10. The BWEAS gave Bell access to several areas that proved particularly lucrative. Possibly the most important of these was the confidence of the dean and chapter of Bristol Cathedral. Winning the commission to restore the east window of Bristol Cathedral was a crucial step up for Bell, and although he was never named as such, he fulfilled the role of cathedral glazier. Unfortunately the payment respecting Bell’s restoration of the east window is not recorded in the jobs book, but several sources confirm that this was carried out in 1847.23 The links between the BWEAS and the dean and chapter of Bristol were clearly very strong: the bishop of Gloucester and Bristol was a patron, and five canons appear in the 1847 report as vice-patrons. The scale of the work in the cathedral generated a lot of work for Bell; commissions from the dean and chapter in the jobs book total nearly £900. The bishop of Bath and Wells was another patron of the BWEAS, and valuable commissions were also forthcoming from this quarter: in 1848 Bishop Bagot commissioned seven windows for the Bishop’s Chapel at

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Wells.24 This may well have been the point at which George Anthony Denison first heard of Bell. At this date, Denison was Bagot’s examining chaplain and clearly knew about the commission: a letter from Bagot to Denison dated 11 November 1848 states, ‘My windows are being put up in the chapel and look very well’.25 Denison also joined the BWEAS at about this time; his name appears in the membership list in 1848. Denison was an active and confrontational high churchman, a ‘leading light’ in the Bristol Church Union (formed to protect Church of England schools from state interference) and was prepared to create a show trial over theological definitions of the ‘real presence’ in the eucharist in the early 1850s. Denison can hardly have been more active in terms of church politics and was publicly aligned with the Tractarians, but was never a member of the CCS. He used Bell extensively: three commissions between 1849 and 1852 total £165. There is little doubt that Denison was interested in ecclesiology and probably stained glass in particular, but he seems to have avoided confrontational ecclesiological groups. It is significant that Denison spoke against A. J. B. Hope in support of an anti-Roman Catholic declaration in 1850, at a large meeting of the Bristol Church Union.26 This suggests that despite his aggressive stance on theological issues he saw theology and not architecture as the ground over which church politics should be fought. Other crucial commissions came to Bell from Dennison’s friends the Miles family, linking Bell to the money generated by the ‘West Indian Trade’ in the eighteenth century. William Miles arrived in Bristol with virtually nothing, but after travelling to Jamaica, where he ran ‘slavemanned sugar plantations and acted as a shipping agent’, he returned to Bristol and set up as a sugar importer and refiner.27 He died as an alderman, leaving £100,000 to his son Philip John Miles. p. J. Miles worked primarily as a banker and a financier of sugar-importing ventures, and in 1833 was handsomely compensated for the slaves remaining in his possession.28 When he died in 1848 he left £150,000 to his eldest son William, and £100,000 each to his remaining seven sons. Three of these sons became prominent high-church Anglicans: William Miles of Leigh Court, Philip William Skinner Miles of Kingweston, and the Reverend Robert Miles. William Miles, the eldest, inherited his father’s estate at Abbotsleigh just outside Bristol, and when the parish church was burnt down in 1848, Bell provided ten stained-glass windows for the new church.29 p. W. S. Miles was a member of parliament for Bristol from 1837 to 1847, a member of the BWEAS and an active high churchman. Robert Miles was a prodigious ecclesiastical patron who built and endowed a church and almshouses in Bristol, which subsequently became a centre for Ritualism.30 His wife Mary Miles was an amateur glass-painter: eight commissions in the jobs book between 1848 and 1855, totalling £129, show that Joseph Bell was supplying

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

31 Detail of window painted by Mary Miles and fired by Joseph Bell, St Mary the Virgin, East Brent, Somerset, 1849

her with materials, and firing and leading up her windows.31 To this day six complete windows painted by Mary Miles and fired by Joseph Bell survive in Bingham Church in Nottinghamshire, where Robert Miles was rector. Denison knew the Miles family well and his biographer describes Reverend Robert Miles as Denison’s ‘old friend and supporter’.32 Mary Miles painted a window for Denison’s church at East Brent, which survives to this day (Figure 31).33 This brief description of just some of Bell’s patrons shows how quickly he managed to gain access to patrons at the very top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Almost all of these connections were made through the BWEAS and the effect of that society on his career was far more dramatic than the effects of the SANHS and the EDAS on Toms and Beer. This was almost certainly because Bell managed to become a member, and consequently met many of the members face to face. The type of preferential treatment Bell received from the BWEAS was unusual. Both Willement and Warrington were

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members of the CCS in the early 1840s, but it is very clear that for them membership of the CCS did not necessarily translate into good reviews.34

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Archaeology and the BWEAS Some time in 1845 or 1846 Bell moved premises from Wilson or Norfolk Street in St Paul’s to a site adjacent to the cathedral in Trinity Street.35 This may have been on Bell’s own initiative, but it is possible that he did have some sort of arrangement with the dean and chapter to act as cathedral glazier. This move also meant that Bell was moving closer to the BWEAS library, located in College Green, where he had easy access to an ever increasing stock of books about gothic architecture and design. The BWEAS book lists show that copies of Winston’s and Ballantine’s works on stained glass would have been available to Bell, as well as the Builder, the

32 Joseph Bell, St Michael and All Angels, Buckland Dinham, Somerset, detail from east window, 1849

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

Ecclesiologist and Weale’s Quarterly Papers and a range of other antiquarian and ecclesiological works. Here were all the resources that Bell needed to acquire the stylistic vocabulary of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Bell’s notebook dated 1847–51 confirms that this is exactly what he did: extracts were copied out concerning the history of stained glass from Ballantine’s Treatise on Painted Glass, and one concerning colour symbolism from Mrs Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art. The greater part of this notebook is filled with sketches of figures and foliage patterns, some of which seem to have been made for specific windows. The availability and proximity of this archaeological information seems to have had a dramatic effect on Bell’s glass. In 1846 Bell’s archaeological reference was still quite fanciful, as can be seen at Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon, where the upper canopies of the east window are passable as Perpendicular but the lower ones are further removed from archaeological sources. The glass Bell produced for the Reverend Mr Clutterbuck at Buckland Dinham in 1849 is a different story. Figure 32 shows a detail from the east window; the grisaille foliage is here clearly identifiable as stiff leaf, and the window is painted in a flat medieval manner. So between 1846 and 1849 Bell’s glass developed considerably and this rapid progress was greatly facilitated by his contact with Charles Winston, his membership of the BWEAS and his access to their library.

Restorations Bell’s commissions from the dean and chapter of Bristol Cathedral were financially important to him, but the status he gained through the restoration work may have been even more valuable in the long term. In 1847 Charles Winston attended the BWEAS annual general meeting and the society reported his measured praise of Bell’s restoration work: In speaking of the restoration of the East window by the Dean and Chapter, this gentleman, who is, we believe, the best living authority on the subject, expressed his firm conviction that only one artist could have executed the window in better style, and that no one would have done it as well as our townsman, Mr. Bell.36

A letter dated 22 August 1847 shows that quite an extensive consultation process was going on between Bell and Winston before work on the window was begun.37 Special glass was used in the restoration, obtained from Messrs Stock and Sharpe of Cannon Street, Birmingham and procured by members of the BWEAS committee.38 E. J. Carter was almost certainly one of these. This special glass was sold as ‘Ancient glass for painting on’, which shows that Winston was not the first person to think

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about the production of glass specially for stained-glass windows. Winston’s glass may well have been used in the restoration of the glass in the choir: he was corresponding with Bell frequently by this time, as well as asking Bell for fragments of medieval glass to analyse. In 1851 he sent Bell two samples of his new antique glass which still exist. E. J. Carter was clearly involved in the restoration of the east window, and as a member of the dean and chapter may have been instrumental in the genesis of the project. This type of relationship between artist, patron and critic is different from any yet dealt with in this study. Carter fulfilled the role of active ecclesiologist, and was probably involved in the decisionmaking process, but opted to call in an acknowledged authority rather than control the commission himself. As the passage quoted above shows, by this date Winston was considered the greatest antiquarian authority on stained glass in the country; his archaeological knowledge was probably unparalleled and was admitted even by the otherwise hostile Ecclesiologist.39 Winston’s status as a critic was acknowledged (and generated) by the BWEAS report cited above and therefore created status for the restored window, and for the restorer. Given that Winston was actually involved in the restoration of the window, he was bound to praise it, so Carter’s involvement of him was a wise move that virtually guaranteed the success of the project. This commission must have been very important to Bell: he was publicly acknowledged as a competent glass-painter by an established authority, and became a regular correspondent with Winston.

First-hand archaeological research Winston’s advice to Bell about restoring the other medieval windows in Bristol Cathedral is full of detailed observations about medieval stained glass. Winston’s knowledge was based on first-hand observation of medieval glass, and in the 1840s it became easier for glass-painters like Joseph Bell to acquire this kind of experience for themselves. Restoring medieval stained glass must have given Bell a unique insight into specific windows, but to acquire a much broader knowledge of medieval glass he needed to travel and see medieval glass in situ. This type of antiquarian activity relied not on the Victorian publishing industry, but on the existence of the railways. The physical possibilities opened up by the railways were exploited by many leading lights of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Pugin’s notebooks testify to this, and it was the new railway network that enabled architects to work simultaneously at many different sites. Archaeological tourism for antiquarians, ecclesiologists and artists was instrumental in forming the taxonomies of the Victorian Gothic Revival; fast and relatively cheap travel meant that even artisans like Joseph Bell could afford to visit sites of historic interest. In the early 1850s Bell exploited this potential fully: a notebook

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survives describing a tour he made in London, Paris, Brussels and Cologne.40 His studies were facilitated by a letter from Winston, which suggested sites of interest along with Winston’s attributions and opinions about the glass. Bell’s first-hand studies of stained glass mark an important development in the process of glass-painters taking control of the study of their own craft. We have seen how John Toms copied sources from published material, and how Robert Beer used tracings taken from medieval glass. Thanks to the railways, and his friendship with Winston, Bell actually had the chance to become something of an antiquarian scholar in his own right. It is tempting to see this as the beginning of a trend that allowed glass-painters to become the historians of their own craft, as suggested by publications such as Westlake’s A History of Design in Painted Glass and Christopher Whall’s Stained Glass Work.41

Joseph Bell’s business The dramatic rise in Bell’s fortunes in the late 1840s is clearly illustrated by detailed analysis of the jobs book. Figure 33 shows Bell’s turnover per year; despite marked fluctuations due to certain major commissions, the general trend of the graph clearly illustrates how Bell’s business grew.42 Figure 34 shows a more detailed analysis of Bell’s income: the turnover from trade and non-trade customers. This graph shows that by 1848 commissions within

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Joseph Bell, turnover, 1844–55

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34

Joseph Bell, turnover, trade and non-trade clients, 1844–55

the glazing trade constituted a small proportion of Bell’s turnover. The value of trade commissions was initially boosted by glaziers like Dixes and Williams subcontracting commissions out to Bell, but this arrangement died out as Bell increasingly came directly into contact with his patrons. Bell’s new connections enabled him to expand his turnover and transform the nature of his business. In 1840 Bell was a specialist artisan with particular expertise in the technical aspects of glass-painting and his customers were mainly other artisans working in the glazing and building trades. Ten years later, Bell was corresponding with middle-class lawyers and clergymen, was a celebrated member of the BWEAS, and had acquired the specialist knowledge required to advise private clients in the fields of archaeology, heraldry, drawing and restoration of medieval stained glass. Here we can see a glass-painter becoming an ‘artist in stained glass’. This process was not just about becoming a better glass-painter, but was a transformation that involved aesthetic and technical development, the acquisition of antiquarian credentials and social mobility. The relationship between class and artistic status was symbiotic: rise in class facilitated a rise in artistic credibility and vice versa. Winston must have been a great ally for Bell; his antiquarian credentials and his social status would have added to Bell’s status in the eyes of his fellow BWEAS members. Bell’s real break was becoming a member of the BWEAS, and although it is unclear exactly how he became a member, it is likely that ecclesiology was the root cause. A practising glass-painter was a figure of unusual interest to an

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

ecclesiologist in the 1840s and in Bell’s case this interest seems to have led to a certain weakening of the usual class barriers. Bell’s correspondence with Winston continued until at least 1860. Winston’s letters exhibit a deep knowledge of the processes of glass-painting and medieval precedent. His attitude lacks the moral dogmatism of the ecclesiologists, and has far more awareness of the difficulties involved in the production of stained glass with poor materials. For example, in the letter advising on the restoration of the east window of Bristol Cathedral he wrote, ‘Of course you must dirt the glass with enamel brown’. He believed that this kind of practice was excusable in the case of a restoration where the production of a window was imitation and not art: ‘but in a case, like this, of mere imitation any trickery is allowable’.43 Bell continued to ask for advice from Winston referring to specific commissions. For instance, a letter dated 6 November 1850 shows Winston advised Bell extensively on the design for a window for Mr Poynder. The relationship was not one sided: through Bell, Winston acquired fragments of medieval glass that he used in his famous experiments at Powell’s in London. Winston also benefited in the antiquarian sense: Bell sent him tracings of medieval glass, and Winston sometimes seems to have participated directly in the production of windows. A tracing of a knight’s head almost certainly formed part of the cartoon for the restoration of the chancel glass at Bristol Cathedral.

Joseph Bell’s stylistic development The painterly manner and Renaissance style of Bell’s figures can be clearly seen in the window at Rattery already discussed. Good examples of Bell’s early pictorial glass survive at Frenchay near Bristol, and Tuckingmill near Camborne in Cornwall. The Frenchay window does not appear in the jobs book, but is listed as in situ by the BWEAS report for 1848. It is possible that this window was executed before the jobs book starts in March 1843, but the canopy work is sophisticated, both technically and archaeologically, making a date of 1846 or 1847 seem much more likely. Interestingly the Frenchay window is described in the BWEAS reports as ‘in the latest third pointed style of painting’ which suggests a high level of archaeological sophistication.44 The architectural work of the window supports this precise reference: the perspective created by the foreground pendants and the deep shadow behind places the canopies firmly in the late medieval period. The sources for the pictures themselves were even later. The Descent from the Cross at Tuckingmill, executed in 1847, was based on Rubens’s picture in Antwerp Cathedral from the early seventeenth century.45 Bell came into contact with Winston at about the same time as this window was made and the manner in which the scenes were executed follows much of

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Winston’s advice. Particularly noticeable is the dramatic chiaroscuro: glass ranging from virtually unshaded to almost totally obscured is evident in all of the scenes. Bell’s windows of the late 1840s are similar in technique to the early windows of Alfred Beer, for example at Filleigh (Plate 9), but by 1860 Bell had stopped using dramatic chiaroscuro, in contrast to Beer who continued to use it in a modified manner. The figure groups are remarkably competent for this early date. The Ascension scene at Frenchay contains all twelve apostles and an angel without seeming crowded or awkward, as was often the case with inexperienced glass-painters (Figure 35). Bell was clearly using a mixture of the enamel and mosaic techniques: the sky above the figure group at Frenchay is made from clear glass treated with silver stain and blue enamel.

35 Joseph Bell, St John the Baptist, Frenchay, Bristol, west window, c. 1847

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

In a panel executed for W. H. Turner at Trent in Dorset in 1850 (Plate 15), a similar manner was still being used by Bell though the face of Christ is not nearly so soft, or painterly, as that of St John at Rattery (Plate 6). A panel executed in 1859 for Starcross Church (Figure 36) shows Bell still using this manner in the sky, but the figure of Christ has now reached the form that Bell continued using for some years.46 By 1860 Bell had arrived at an elegant manner that avoided the deep shading of previous windows. Plate 16 shows a window from about 1861, at Cheddon Fitzpaine in Somerset. The background here is dulled by using matted ground with highlights taken out, rather than a shaded sky, but the manner of the figures remains Renaissance rather than medieval, and the expressive nature of the faces points towards pictorial realism rather than a

36 Joseph Bell, St Paul, Starcross, Devon, north aisle east window, 1859

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37

Joseph Bell, design for the east window of All Saints, Wrington, Somerset, 1860

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

formalised medieval style. The canopies here are very flat and the architectural work in the window seems to be performing a decorative, rather than an archaeological function, as is suggested by the lily flowers replacing the usual crockets on top of the canopy. The borders show an interesting technical innovation, with green and yellow on the same piece of glass; this was probably achieved by abrading flashed green glass, and then treating this with silver stain. The manner of Bell’s windows around 1860 does vary considerably. Figure 37 shows the design for the east window of Wrington, near Bristol, which shows Bell’s refined and professional manner, not dissimilar to that of many of the larger national studios at the time. Figure 38, another window from the same church, shows a far more pictorial window, which relies on more perspective and shading.

38 Joseph Bell, All Saints, Wrington, Somerset, detail of window, c. 1860

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Joseph Bell and high-church activity in Bristol Bell’s stylistic development can be closely related to patrons, showing that Bell, like Robert Beer, sometimes adapted his style to suit the wishes of his client. Although the BWEAS adopted a milder stance than organisations such as the EDAS, they were equally zealous restorers and builders of churches. Major building and restoration projects in the Bristol area accounted for a significant proportion of Bell’s early business. Bell’s first commissions for complete windows directly from an ecclesiologist were for ‘Clifton New Church’, commissioned by Rev. Young.47 This refers to Christ Church Clifton, consecrated in 1844 and ‘principally designed’ by Young, presumably with the help of the original architect Charles Dyer, who was also a member of the BWEAS.48 Just who first contacted Bell from the BWEAS is unclear, but Young’s commissions are the first documentary evidence of this connection. High-church projects continued to be important to Bell, and in fact he was involved in every one of significance in the Bristol area in the 1840s. Despite this, Bell’s work in these projects suggests that he was not a first-choice glass-painter for ecclesiologists and it is worth looking at the role he played in more detail. At Coalpit Heath, where Bell made windows to Butterfield’s designs, he was clearly subservient in status to the architect. The next major highchurch project, also carried out by Butterfield, took place at Holy Trinity Horfield, under the direction of Henry Richards, a BWEAS member and leading high churchman.49 Bell executed four windows for this restoration, all ordered by Richards, but the glass in the chancel was executed by Michael O’Connor.50 This suggests that Bell’s glass was considered inferior to O’Connor’s: the chancel as the key liturgical site would typically be glazed by the richest glass. The tendency to treat Bell as a secondary glasspainter is also evident in the way that Bell was used to assist amateur glasspainters. Several notable high-church patrons used Bell in this way. The activities of Mrs Miles have been discussed, but she was not the only amateur on Bell’s books. George Henry Eland, cited by Cobb as a major figure in the Oxford Movement in Bristol, was clearly engaged in a similar activity.51 A commission from Eland in 1855 itemises brown enamel and brushes to be supplied to J. L. Eland, and twenty-four clerestory windows to be designed, fired and leaded by Bell, but presumably painted by a member of the Eland family.52 From these examples it can be seen that Bell received significant amounts of work from zealous ecclesiologists, but often not as the major artist. This is important, because it meant that there was little real incentive for Bell to develop a truly ecclesiological manner: even if he had attempted this, it was still quite likely that an ecclesiological favourite would be preferred to him. In this sense, Bell’s best chance of gaining authority as a glass-painter was to cultivate his relationship with Winston,

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

and to develop the corresponding aesthetic of pictorial glass executed within the limits of the mosaic method. In a way this was an advantage to Bell: the hard face painting and limited pictorialism favoured by ecclesiologists was only really likely to appeal to devotees of medieval drawing; the expanding middle-class market was more likely to favour the type of window that he made. Another notable high-church figure, the confrontational Tractarian George Anthony Denison, seems to have valued Bell for his antiquarian expertise. The first commission connected to Denison was the complete glazing of the Bishop’s Chapel at Wells. This appears in the jobs book under Bagot’s name, but a subsequent commission for the Bishop’s Palace appears under Denison’s name.53 This shows that Denison, as Bagot’s examining chaplain, was involved in the commissions, but whether Denison or Bagot first decided upon Bell is unclear. The first work commissioned by Denison for his own church at East Brent consisted of restoring the existing medieval stained glass. First the easternmost window in the north wall of the north

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Joseph Bell, tracing of medieval glass at East Brent, Somerset, c. 1852

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40 St Mary the Virgin, East Brent, Somerset, detail of window originally made 1450–75, restored by Joseph Bell, c. 1852

aisle, containing three fifteenth-century figures, was restored in 1849, and then the important east window of the north aisle from a similar date was restored in 1852.54 Although the identity of the restorer was previously unknown, the highly respected stained-glass scholar Christopher Woodforde has noted the skill of the restoration.55 These drawings are probably traced, but their refined appearance underlines Bell’s skill in working in a medieval manner (Figures 39, 40). Subsequently the other windows of the north aisle were glazed in the manner of the fifteenth century by Bell. These windows were executed after the period covered by the jobs book but are clearly identifiable as Bell’s work on stylistic grounds. In 1851 Denison commissioned an east window by Bell, but this was replaced with a window by O’Connor in 1858 and removed to the west window. The figure window in the north aisle is in a distinctive late-medieval style: only silver stain and

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

brown enamel were used to paint it. Bell worked in the same manner for the other windows in the north aisle, clearly upon orders to harmonize his glass with the existing medieval glass. These windows must have been executed some time after 1855, and so it seems quite likely that at this date O’Connor was preferred for a contemporary style window, while Bell was entrusted with restorations and windows in an archaic manner. So Denison valued Bell as a glass-painter but possibly not as an artist. Although this could be considered a problem, Bell still carried out more work at East Brent than any other glass-painter, so whatever his artistic status may have been, his reputation was effective in bringing in work. The way Bell was used by Young, Richards and Denison shows how a glass-painter not favoured by the Ecclesiologist still profited considerably from ecclesiological patronage. Denison’s use of Bell hints at a source of authority that was not art or ecclesiological correctness, but technical knowledge and skill in restoring medieval glass. These patterns in Bell’s commissions illustrate the variety of cultural contexts that surrounded stained-glass commissions. These contexts rarely exhibit the exact characteristics of ecclesiology, but were often influenced by it in some respect. This shows why it was not just the glass-painters producing specifically for the ecclesiological market that prospered within the historical context of the early Victorian period. Strict ecclesiology was merely the tip of the iceberg and a whole range of cultural practices clustered around it.

Pricing and processes In Chapter 3 I started to discuss the details of pricing Victorian stained glass on the evidence offered by John Toms’s estimates book. Bell’s jobs book provides an opportunity to develop a good picture of the mechanics of an early Victorian stained-glass business and the commercial practices that arose from the demand for stained glass. Before going into the jobs book in detail it is worth defining some of the standard processes carried out by Victorian glass-painters. Most of these definitions have been taken from a catalogue published by the St Elelens Crown Glass Company in 1850; interestingly the aim of this was to educate potential patrons so that they could place more accurate orders.56 Unlike John Toms, Joseph Bell worked entirely within the glazing trade. Some of the jobs he executed involved no painting at all – for example, flocking, bending and cutting glass. Cutting is self-explanatory. Bending probably referred to a variety of jobs involving heating glass and bending it to a specified shape while malleable. Flocking meant grinding the reverse side of the glass in order to obscure it almost totally, producing glass that admitted a dim light but could not be seen through. ‘Single matt’ and

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‘double matt’ refers to one or two layers of enamel applied evenly in a wash to the glass, and double matt normally meant one layer of enamel on each side of the glass. Bell seems to use the term ‘obscured’ to cover matting glass. Glass could also be partially obscured with a ‘diaper’, a repeated ornamental pattern, and diapers could be applied in several different ways. They could be ‘transparent’, when the ground was obscured and the pattern left clear, or ‘in relief’, when the ground was left clear and the pattern applied in enamel. A diaper could be single or double matt, or even double matt with highlights, when the pattern is taken out of one layer of enamel and highlights are taken out of the other. These constitute the basic processes carried out by glass benders and stainers, and an intermediate stage in the aristocracy of labour between the skills of plain-glazing and pictorial glass-painting. It was these skills that initially formed the basis of Bell’s business and generated crucial income while he acquired and learnt to promote more elaborate skills. These basic glass-painting skills commanded a variety of prices depending on the process and the materials used, and in Bell’s case were commissioned almost entirely within the trade. Exactly how Bell priced these jobs is difficult to establish, because a range of sums was quoted for apparently similar processes. For example, in 1843 Bell charged Dixes and Williams Is per foot for ‘worked diaper’ and a few months later charged Hall and Peddar 3s 6d per foot for glass described in the same way.57 Common commissions early in the jobs book consist of various diapers and stains for borders, ‘rosettes’ and ‘circles’. Cutting glass into circles was presumably quite a specialised skill, but Bell also executed other simpler shapes such as triangles.58 The pattern depicted on diapers is sometimes specified, for example as ‘fleur de llys’ or ‘fleur de llys and mullets’, and sometimes specified as ‘to pattern’, which presumably means that the design had been previously agreed with the patron, or was actually supplied by the patron. Marked differences in price sometimes occurred when a superior grade or thickness of glass was used; for example, Bell charged 7s 6d per foot to White and Rouse for borders painted on ‘Extra thick’.59 Several entries suggest that by the early 1840s Bell had an extensive range of diaper patterns: in one entry he describes the pattern as ‘no. 72 sheet pattern’.60 The other process fundamental to Bell’s business was colouring glass. ‘Amber stain’ is common early in the jobs book, but frequent orders occur for other colours.61 Most of these orders probably describe clear glass painted with enamel colours; the recipes in Bell’s notebooks point towards this, and it is extremely unlikely that he had the capability to produce his own pot metal. One order does specify green pot metal, but this probably just means that Bell was selling on pot metal that he had obtained directly from a glass manufacturer.62 As a result it is sometimes difficult to establish whether Bell is actually colouring glass himself or acting as a supplier of pot metal,

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

but in most cases he was either colouring clear glass with stains and enamel colours, or diapering pot metal. Orders often involved a combination of staining and diapering – for example, ‘Pink Grd [ground] and diaper to pattern’.63 Bell’s role in supplying glass to other glaziers has already been described, and in one example it is possible to see how this worked financially. The commission charged by Merrick for the east window of Sandford in Devon is itemised as ‘Per estimate £90, 25 £22 10s 0d’ and the final price charged to Merrick is minus this 25 per cent: £67 10s 0d. This 25 per cent represents the cost of installing and transporting the window, plus Merrick’s commission. It is unclear what Merrick charged for the window, but it seems that Bell estimated the window at £90 and then allowed Merrick a discount to allow for his labour in installing the window and his profit. While an arrangement like this clearly reduced Bell’s profits it did not turn out to be crucial as this type of subcontract died out after Bell’s own reputation spread. While it is clear that Bell had superior glass-painting skills to his fellow Bristol glaziers, it is unlikely that none of them had the capability to carry out the simpler processes such as diapering and obscuring glass. If this was true it is unclear why they still ordered this kind of glass from Bell. It may have been that Bell could produce these types of glass more cheaply than his competitors due to the volume of work passing through his studio: he may have been able to introduce economies of scale impossible for the smaller glaziers. Early in his career Bell made a lot of glass for secular locations. Frequent commissions for fan lights suggest that Bell was supplying glass to Georgian town houses in Bristol, and many of the bent panels may have been destined for similar sources. Another significant market for Bell came from small businesses in the Bristol area. He produced panels for shop windows and lamp panes that advertised the name of the trader. This normally involved lettering the glass, in stain or enamel; the first order in the jobs book specifies ‘3 lamp panes lettered post office in Black on white, yellow stained’.64 This type of order is quite common and covers a range of small businesses. The majority of the glass ordered within the trade, however, was for unspecified destinations and so it is not possible to establish what proportion of this glass went into ecclesiastical buildings. As discussed in Chapter 2, compared to the prices quoted by the Ecclesiologist, Bell was cheap.65 The jobs book seldom prices pictorial windows by area, but when it does Bell’s prices were low. In 1846 Bell charged 20s per foot for the figure and canopy glass in the east window of Cheriton Fitzpaine.66 This was a subcontract to Merrick, however, and so the price he charged may have been lower than he would have charged

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directly to a private patron. Even if 25 per cent is added to this figure, Bell’s price still falls below the range of 30s to £2 per foot suggested by the Ecclesiologist. In the same article the Ecclesiologist claims good quarry glass costs about 10s per foot, which is similar to the price charged by Bell for his most expensive Cologne pattern. This too suggests that Bell’s pattern glass was cheap, as quarry windows would typically be cheaper than other pattern work. All this evidence suggests that Bell charged considerably less than the Ecclesiologist represented as normal. This means either that Bell could make the windows more cheaply, or that he demanded less profit for his work. Information from the jobs book suggests that transportation and labour costs constituted a small proportion of the cost of a major window. A memorial window commissioned by General Ellacombe for Worthing in Sussex cost £126 for the window and £18 15s 3d for ‘Copper lattice, bars, fixing, Including expenses to and fro’.67 As it stands the expenses amounted to less than 15 per cent of the cost of the window, and if the cost of the lattice, bars and fixing were deducted the figure would probably be considerably smaller. It is unclear whether Bell priced his glass differently for trade and private customers, though he does make a distinction between these two groups in the jobs book. Commissions within the trade are normally itemised and priced per foot, while commissions for private patrons are just entered ‘per estimate’. Although this may seem a small detail, I suspect that it points towards a highly significant development in the market for stained glass. A window priced by area suggests that the client has a good knowledge of the production process: different prices were charged for different types of glass, the difference depending on the cost of the materials and the labour expended upon them. A window priced as a complete object suggests an attitude much further removed from the production process. While many ecclesiologists were keenly aware of the process of making stained glass, less knowledgeable patrons more typical of the expanding market knew far less about what went into making a window. The process of commissioning a window came to reflect this change. Surviving sketches from the Bell archive show that attractive coloured designs were made for the patron, and approval of this image constituted the final stage of the commissioning process (Figure 37). Here the patron was presented with an image of the entire window: it was offered as a complete entity with a fixed price, not as the result of skilled work combining several media, priced by the amount of labour time expended on it. This was convenient for the ‘artist in stained glass’ as the details of all the labour processes involved in making a window would tend to detract from, rather than enhance, the artistic status of stained glass. Although it was perhaps convenient for glasspainters to distance themselves from the manual side of their work, the

Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

invisibility of the production process increasingly turned stained glass into a mainstream commodity.

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Stylistic labels Some of the early stylistic labels that Bell attached to his products had nothing to do with the Gothic Revival. In May 1843 Bell executed an order for Dixes and Williams described as ‘Enamel pane 26½ × 25 frame work Style Louis 14th’.68 Within a year, however, Bell fust describes a pattern as gothic, and this soon became the dominant stylistic category.69 Stylistic labels and the specificity of archaeological references became increasingly precise. In March 1848 Bell executed pattern glass in a style he called ‘Cologne Pattern’ for a clergyman.70 This pattern was almost certainly taken from the medieval glass in Cologne Cathedral, though quite how Bell obtained the pattern is unclear. It may well have its origins in Winston’s multiple tracings and sketches, and Winston knew of the pattern, as he mentions in a letter from 1850.71 Bell’s notebooks show that he visited Cologne Cathedral on his European tour in the early 1850s and his notes reveal that he was impressed with what he saw: ‘The Cathedral of Cologne too grand and great for any powers that I possess to describe.’ Cologne Cathedral was the most celebrated and long-running ecclesiological project in continental Europe and so it is quite possible that illustrations of the medieval glass in the choir had been published by the 1840s. To add to its attraction, the surviving medieval glass dated from the beginning of the fourteenth century and so was just right for ecclesiological taste.72 The increasing precision of Bell’s stylistic labels shows that he was adapting his products to a new type of patron. The vague and eclectic stylistic demands from within the glazing trade had to be replaced with products that derived their authority partially by quoting medieval sources. As antiquarians and ecclesiologists acquired a more sophisticated understanding of medieval precedents they demanded more specific quotations in their furnishings. Briefly stated, glass-painters had to keep up with the latest developments in archaeological scholarship in order to satisfy their patrons, lust how much archaeological authenticity was required varied from patron to patron. For example, an ecclesiologist might demand medieval style face painting as well as pattern work, while a patron more interested in the artistic value of stained glass might consider medieval-style figure work too archaic and would probably favour the glasspainter’s own drawing style. Though his figure drawing never assumed a medieval manner, Bell had to meet the demand for products appealing to archaeological authority. The vast majority of Bell’s pictorial windows were described as ‘design to pattern’, and so it is difficult to establish how closely Bell marketed these

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windows as archaeological products. Good evidence about the nature of Bell’s pattern glass exists in a letter from Winston, and illustrates how styles based on archaeological sources became the norm, even to Winston: Next as to the window for Mr. Poynder. He has, I know, a great objection to figures, – and indeed the price named excludes all idea of them. So there is nothing for it but a pattern. And as the window is Perpendicular, I see no reason, myself, why you should not indulge him with a pattern to match.73

Because the window in question was not representational, imitation of medieval style did not matter: a pattern window had few pretensions to artistic status and copying a medieval design was perfectly acceptable. Archaeology and ‘art’ could be combined, as long as the archaeology was restricted to the canopies and did not infringe on the manner of the scenes they framed. An example of this is the west window of Tuckingmill: scenes based on seventeenth-century models are framed by architectural detail based on late-medieval stained glass. The letter above implies that Mr Poynder had named the price he was prepared to pay for a window and the discussion between Bell and Winston proceeds from this point. It seems that they got it right, as Poynder subsequently used Bell to make several further windows, but it is clear in this example that the amount of money available for a window often determined the parameters within which it was made.74 The story of Joseph Bell’s business shows how an artist in stained glass emerged from the glazing trade. First Bell made his business work within the trade and then he managed to transform both his products and the way that he related to his patrons. These patrons were initially local ecclesiologists but his market became increasingly less specialised. The size of the glazing trade in Bristol meant that Bell could work almost exclusively with glass, and his impressive enamel-painting skills allowed him to operate as a specialist. Some time in the early years of the 1840s Bell became a member of the BWEAS and started to sell entire windows directly to patrons. Simultaneously he produced larger commissions for other glaziers who had started to tap into a similar patron base. These subcontracts soon died out as patrons began to discover how to commission windows directly from the glass-painters. The year 1847 proved crucial for Bell: he gained the commission to restore the east window of Bristol Cathedral and as a consequence met Charles Winston, with whom he corresponded for over ten years. From this point Bell was firmly established into the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies of Bristol, and functioned in many different ways for different customers. He often fulfilled a subservient role to a national glasspainter in projects dominated by ecclesiologists, but he still gained

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Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

considerable business from this group. He was, in effect, Bristol’s cathedral glazier, and carried out two major restoration projects at the cathedral in the period covered by the jobs book. The steady increase in the size of his business testifies to his success, and his market spread geographically into Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and South Wales. Bell’s education suggests that sources such as Sacred and Legendary Art were widespread in the 1840s, and more obscure sources such as Porter seem to have been important for technical knowledge, fust as crucial was the knowledge acquired in the ceramics industry, probably as a porcelain painter, which must have helped Bell become the highly skilled enamelpainter he was by 1843. The technical information necessary to make enamels and fluxes was available in the 1840s, but how readily available is not clear. Bell managed to assemble the required information from a variety of sources, and it was this information combined with his glass-painting skills that gave him commercial potential at the start of his career. Education in iconography, heraldry and drawing seem to have come initially from popular books, and later through the specialised library of BWEAS. By the late 1840s Bell was educating himself from direct observation of medieval stained glass, and by the mid-1850s was travelling to Europe to examine glass in situ. Tracings from the north aisle east window of East Brent show that Bell’s knowledge of medieval drawing was intimate and detailed, and the restored window testifies to his ability to work in a medieval manner. Despite this Bell never adopted a medieval manner of drawing in his own windows, and produced increasingly refined glass that combined mosaic windows with a pictorial manner. By about 1860 Bell’s windows are indistinguishable in quality from the products of the larger national companies. Two windows in the south aisle of Gloucester Cathedral compare favourably with their neighbours by Clayton and Bell, which shows the extent of Bell’s expertise, and his ability to adapt to a constantly shifting market.

Notes 1

2

Archive of Art and Design (hereafter AAD), London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856. I am indebted to Geoffrey Robinson for allowing me extensive access to the archives of Joseph Bell and Sons. In 1996 most of this archive was donated by Geoffrey Robinson to the Victoria and Albert Museum and is currently in the Archive of Art and Design (part of the National Art Library) under the group reference AAD/1996/9. All my research was conducted prior to the closing of the firm and the removal of the archive to London. To date I know of two commissions executed by Bell during this period that are not recorded in the jobs book. A selection of these letters has been published; see Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, 11:4 (1954–5), 221–223.

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3 4

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5

6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19

J. Knowles, ‘Glass-painters 1750–1850’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, 13:3 (1962), 525. The designs are held in the prints, drawings and paintings department, museum numbers E. 1627–1935 and E. 1628–1935. They are both described as studies for porcelain decoration and are signed and dated 1829. C. Hayter, An Introduction to Perspective, Adapted to the Capacities of Youth in a Series of… Dialogues … to which is added a Compendium of Genuine Instruction in the art of Drawing and Painting etc. (London, 1813). The book was in its fifth edition by 1845 and so was clearly a successful and widely circulating publication. G. R. Porter, A Treatise on the Progressive Improvement and Present State of the Manufacture of Porcelain and Glass (London, 1832). Porter’s treatise is described by Winston as a ‘small but clever popular work’, though he assumes the series editor, Dionysius Lardner, is the author. See C. Winston, An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings Especially in England with Hints on Glass Painting (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847), 13 note a. Porter, A Treatise, p. 292. Porter, A Treatise, p. 290. Porter, A Treatise, p. 291. “[R]ed Lemnos” artisan’ is a reference to Hephaestus. M. Brongniart was the director of the porcelain factory at Sevres from 1800; see K. Bezut, ‘The stained-glass and painting-on-glass workshop at Sevres, 1827–1854’, in D. E. Ostergard (ed.), The Sevres Porcelain Manufactuary: Alexandre Brogniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry 1800–1847 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 97–111. Porter, A Treatise, pp. 80–81. ‘An introductory essay on the art of painting on glass, by Emanuel Otto Fromberg’, trans. H. J. Clarke, Quarterly Papers on Architecture, 4:8 (1845), 13. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 2 November 1843 and 23 December 1843. B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, Devon, Buildings of England series (London: Penguin, 1989), p. 699. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 4 June 1847. Cherry and Pevsner, Devon, p. 718. C. Brooks and D. Evans, The Great East Window of Exeter Cathedral: A Glazing History (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988), pp. 42 and 46–47. Brooks and Evans show that the dean and chapter of Exeter Cathedral purchased large amounts of pattern glass from William Peckitt, which was subsequently installed by the cathedral glaziers. For a detailed account of Thorpe’s rebuilding of Kemerton Church see N. M. Herbert, ‘Archdeacon Thorpe and the rebuilding of Kemerton Church’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 90 (1971), 192–215. See Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1847, 23, for Carter’s personal interest and AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, dated Michaelmas Day 1850 for evidence that Winston knew Carter. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 1 June 1848, 27 October 1848, 3 October 1853.

Glass-painters: Joseph Bell of Bristol

20 21

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22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29

30

31

32 33 34

P. G. Cobb, The Oxford Movement in Nineteenth-Century Bristol (Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1988), p. 8. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 21 October 1845 and Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1845, 11. Only the membership lists for 1845–46 and 1848–49 seem to have survived. Builder, 5 (1847), 277; Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1847, 24. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 23 December 1848. J. Coombs, George Anthony Denison the Firebrand 1805–1896 (London: Church Literature Association and Society of St Peter and St Paul, 1984), p. 90. Cobb, The Oxford Movement in Nineteenth-Century Bristol, p. 16. For information on the Miles family see W. Evans, Abbots Leigh: A Village History (Bristol: Abbots Leigh Civic Society, 2002), pp. 41–55 and E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (New York: Russell and Russell, 1961), p. 74. Williams and Evans disagree over the amount of compensation paid to Miles. Evans claims that Miles and his partner Kington claimed £36,000 for 1,457 slaves in Jamaica and Trinidad, of which Miles received £9,076, while Williams suggests that Miles owned 663 slaves and that he was compensated £17,850. See Evans, Abbotsleigh, p. 53 and Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 74–75. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 12 December 1848; H. G. Mowat, The Church of the Holy Trinity Abbots Leigh’, church guide. Not all the Bell glass survives, but ten windows were originally erected; see Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1848, 28. The church (with attached almshouses) was St Raphael, Cumberland Road. It was demolished after damage in the Second World War. See A. Gomme, M. Jenner and B. Little, Bristol: An Architectural History (London: Lund Humphries, 1979), pp. 300– 303 and J. Eliott and J. Pritchard (eds), Henry Woodyer: Gentleman Architect (Reading: University of Reading, 2002), p. 150. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 6 July 1848; 19 April 1849; 21 July 1849; 16 April 1850; 12 April 1851; 2 February 1852; 18 October 1853; 15 May 1855. Robert Miles also commissioned glass painted by Bell apparently independently of Mrs Miles’s activities; see AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 11 September 1851 and 22 August 1854. Coombs, George Anthony Denison, p. 213. See entries under Denison’s and Miles’s names, AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 12 April 1851. For details of the CCS membership see G. Brandwood, ‘Appendix: a Camdenian rollcall’, in C. Webster and J. Elliot (eds), ‘A Church as it Should Be’: The Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 359–454. Thomas Willement was an honorary member from 1840 and William Warrington was elected in 1843. After this Henri Gérente was elected (in 1847) and received generous treatment, but died only two years later. Frederick Preedy and Arthur O’Connor (son of Michael) were elected in 1852. N. W. Lavers was elected in 1856, followed by J. R. Clayton in 1860 and R. T. Bayne in 1863.

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35

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36 37

38

39 40

41

42

43 44 45 46

47

48 49 50

51

Matthew’s Trade Directory lists Bell as practising from 7 Norfolk Street, though the early notebooks refer to Wilson Street. The streets are very close to each other, and he may have worked at both addresses. Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1847, 16–17. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 22 August 1847. The CCS clearly knew of Winston’s involvement in this commission because they later taunted him with the accusation that the window had been ‘skinned’, which they thought proved their point that the fine tone of medieval glass was due to moss and decomposition. See Ecclesiologist, 10 (1849–50), 95. Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1847, 24. Harrison mistakenly suggests that Bell used Winston’s antique glass in this restoration, but the window had been restored by 1847, before Winston had started his experiments. Ecclesiologist, 10 (1849), 92. Bell’s notes on his European visit occur in a later notebook (1854–62), but Winston’s letter advising Bell about sites of interest is dated 15 September 1852. Winston’s letter is probably the more accurate source and so it seems likely that Bell’s expedition took place in 1852 or 1853. N. H. J. Westlake, A Histoty of Design in Painted Glass, 4 vols (London: James Parker and Co., 1879); C. Whall, Stained Glass Work. A Text-book for Students and Workers in Glass (London, 1905). For example, in 1848 a single commission from the bishop of Bath and Wells amounted to £268, accounting for over a quarter of that year’s total; AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 23 December 1848. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, letter dated 22 August 1847. Report of the Bristol and West of England Architectural Society for 1848, 27. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 30 July 1847. The windows at Starcross have a complicated provenance. One window with two scenes was commissioned in 1852 and these scenes were included with new glass in the east window in 1858, after the church had been rebuilt. Several other windows were then added in the late 1850s and early 1860s. See AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 27 November 1852 and Exeter Flying Post, 3 June 1858. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 16 July 1844. An identical commission followed a month later; see AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 21 August 1844. Quoted in Gomme, Jenner and Little, Bristol: An Architectural History, p. 294. Cobb, The Oxford Movement in Nineteenth-Century Bristol, pp. 7–8. The surviving glass at Horfield has a complicated provenance. Some of the nave windows contain panels by O’Connor and tracery figures by Bell. The west window is all by Bell. For documentation of Bell’s commissions see AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 10 February 1847 and 21 December 1847. The chancel glass by O’Connor has been removed to other parts of the church; for a contemporary report see Builder, 5 (1847), 101. Cobb, The Oxford Movement in Nineteenth-Century Bristol, p. 11.

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52 53 54

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55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74

AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 8 December 1855. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 10 February 1849. Bell archive 9: ‘Jobs book’, 10 October 1849 and 29 May 1852. The fact that Bell was responsible for the restoration of these windows has only become known to the academic world since my research in the Bell archive, where a complete set of fullsize drawings of the original window exist. C. Woodforde, Stained Glass in Somerset 1250–1830 (Bath: Kingsmead Reprints, 1970), p. 161. The St Helens Crown Glass Company’s Trade Book of Patterns for Ornamental Window Glass: with Designs for Church, Hall, Staircase, and Memorial Windows, By Frank Howard Esq. (St Helens: St Helens Crown Glass Company, 1850). AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 15 September 1843 and 20 May 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 29 March 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 16 November 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 5 September 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 3 July 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 6 May 1850. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 4 August 1843. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 27 March 1843. Ecclesiologist, 3 (1844), 16–20. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 20 February 1846. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 1 June 1850. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 25 May 1843. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 20 May 1844. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 13 March 1848. Bell made several varieties of ‘Cologne’ pattern. It interesting to note that James Powell and Son also produced a ‘Cologne’ pattern quarry. See J. Gordon-Christian, ‘Source material: the archives of the Whitefriars Studios, London’, Artifex, 1 (1968), 30–46. It is also fascinating to notice that Charlotte Yonge refers to printed versions of the Cologne patterns in a letter of 1869; see Chapter 7. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 6 November 1850. C. H. Sherrill, Stained Glass Tours in Germany, Austria and the Rhinelands (London: Bodley Head, 1927), pp. 103–110. AAD, London, 1996/9, Letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 6 November 1850. AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 21 December 1851.

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6 ✧ Glazing projects: St Michael and All Angels, Sowton and St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary

T

HIS CHAPTER will explore how windows were used in two specific ecclesiastical interiors and what aspirations patrons and architects had for the stained glass in these churches. The preceding case studies have examined how glass-painters made and promoted their windows and it is now necessary to look at stained glass from the patron’s perspective. The two glazing projects described in this chapter provide examples of how stained glass was consciously used to create meaning within ecclesiastical interiors. These two examples are not meant to be typical, since every glazing project is in some way unique, but they do illustrate some of the issues that occurred in other projects across the country.

St Michael’s Sowton: an early ecclesiological interior St Michael’s Church at Sowton, near Exeter in Devon, is a rare survival: a remarkably complete ecclesiological interior. The funds to rebuild the church came from a family that had recently moved to Devon: John Garratt, a successful London merchant, had purchased the local estate in 1830 and retired to Devon to lead the life of a country landowner.1 The manor house, ‘Bishops Court’, is located on the site of the medieval episcopal palace and so infused with medieval pedigree. Garratt was a devout churchman from an evangelical Anglican background, but his son (John Garratt junior) was of a different persuasion, having been influenced by the Tractarians at Oxford in the 1830s. When Garratt senior funded the rebuilding of the parish church Garratt junior seems to have exerted a strong ecclesiological influence. John Hayward was selected as architect and when the church was reopened in 1845 it had acquired a deep chancel, had a selection of fourteenth-century details and boasted a rich decorative scheme. The stained glass is an integral part of this scheme and underlines the importance of glass for ecclesiologists even at this early date. Garratt commissioned an entire set of windows from Thomas Willement, a good upmarket option for patrons with ample resources.

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

Willement’s glass both intensifies the decorative effect and provides a vehicle for carrying the iconographical scheme around the church. Equally significant is the fact that the glass functions to demarcate several key areas within the church, and so helps to define the space within the interior. The Crucifixion in the east window is unusually prominent: it covers three lights, and the figure of the crucified Christ occupies the dominant position.2 The symbols above refer to the Passion and the Trinity, but not explicitly to the eucharist, and the quotation is from the litany not the communion. Fortunately the other furnishings survive remarkably intact, and the altar immediately below links the crucifixion with the communion (Plate 17). Lettering on the altar quotes ‘My Flesh is Meat indeed My Blood is Drink indeed’ from St John’s gospel.3 This passage occurs just after the feeding of the five thousand when the people ask Christ what sign they shall have, as their fathers had manna in the desert, and Christ equates this event in Exodus to his presence before them: ‘the bread which I will give is my flesh’.4 Thus Christ anticipates his own crucifixion, creates a typological link to the Old Testament and anticipates the eucharist. The typological link is underlined by the side sanctuary windows, which depict figures of Moses and Aaron, who led the Israelites while they were being sustained by manna. Moses is represented carrying the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments; commandment boards flank the east window on either side and so another continuity between the Old Testament and contemporary religion is stated. Both the commandment boards and the depiction of Moses (the law giver) and Aaron (the type of the priest) refer back to the pre-ecclesiological high-church tradition. All these furnishings are physically located within the sanctuary and so this complex, crossreferential iconographical scheme all takes place at the site of sacramental transformation. The chancel is demarcated by a step up from the nave, and the sanctuary is a further three steps up from the chancel. Combined with a prominent chancel arch, these features make the sanctuary the architectural focus of the building, underlining the importance of the ritual practised there. There is no sense of narrative in this scheme; the connections made refer to eternal truths which were necessarily going to take place from the beginning of the world and the perpetuation of these truths through the sacramental mysteries of the Church of England. The intensity of both the decoration and the iconography decreases in the nave, creating an aesthetic and theological demarcation between the accommodation for the laity and the clergy. The stained glass of the nave windows takes a representational step backwards: patterned quarries and bands of text run around the windows surrounding the congregation. The creed runs clockwise from the easternmost nave south window round into the north aisle. The change in tone, from colourful pictorial glass in the

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chancel to comparatively plain and non-pictorial glass in the nave, is obvious and a contrast that works whether the iconography is understood or not. There is also a contrast in the quality of the light: the coloured glass in the chancel both restricts the light and changes its tone. The comparative transparency of the nave windows adds to this effect. The congregation therefore look towards a dim and mystical sanctuary from a comparatively well-lit nave: they inhabit a separate area and this separation is achieved with architectural features, decoration and light. All these features contribute to the experience of space within the interior, and the content of the iconography explicitly reinforces these meanings. In the nave there are two further areas that are set apart by a combination of the furnishings and the architecture. The first of these areas, the east end of the north aisle, contains the Garratt family pews. These seats are surrounded to the east by a three-light figure and canopy window and to the north by two windows containing evangelist symbols and sacred texts. All these windows are memorials to members of the Garratt family and they are more ornate than the other nave windows. The evangelist symbols represent an oblique allusion to Garratt’s evangelical activities through his reconstruction of the church. Poppy heads on the bench ends further demarcate this area, reinforcing its separation from the rest of the nave. This is an clear example of the way in which the social structure of the parish was literally built into the layout of the church. Stained glass played a major part in this coordination of religious and secular power: the relative richness of the glass signals the special status of the family pews, and the inscriptions on the windows make it clear that this status is the property of the Garratt family. At the west end of the nave the glass again becomes richer. The placement of the font towards the west end of the north aisle is signalled by the west window of the north aisle, which was made by Ward and Nixon and preserved from the old church. This window focuses on baptism: the Baptism of Christ is the central scene, flanked by two further scenes from the Life of Christ. Below small scenes depict Old Testament types of baptism and a New Testament baptism scene. The relevant quotation from the litany underlines the high-church emphasis on this sacrament: ‘By thy Baptism Good Lord deliver us.’ The west window, placed directly above the door, depicts three archangels with text referring to the Last Judgment. The quotations, however, are not from Revelation, but from Matthew’s gospel and describe the two possible fates of the souls on Judgment Day. The iconography of this window conflates the physical exit from the building with the exit of souls from earth to heaven. It relies heavily on biblical quotations, the blessed being urged to ‘inherit the kingdom prepared for you’ while the damned are commanded, ‘Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire’.

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

The dramatic contrast between these options is echoed by the striking design. A deep-blue ground with no architectural work foregrounds the archangels and again contrasts with the relative lightness of the nave. The interior of Sowton combines what is clear sacramental emphasis with other elements that cannot be identified as the doctrine of the high church alone. The link between paternalism, gothic and church patronage is physically built into the layout of the church and signalled by the interior fittings. The concerted effect of the stained glass, tiles, metalwork and woodwork leaves the congregation in no doubt as to which are the key areas in the building. The stained glass in particular varies the tone and atmosphere of the interior by controlling the light. The coherence of this interior is impressive; it was facilitated by the fact that all the funding for the project came from one person.5 The next example shows the difficulties in creating a coherent glazing scheme when the funding came from a variety of sources.

A complicated restoration: St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary The restoration of St Mary’s Church at Ottery St Mary presented a series of difficulties to its coordinator, John Duke Coleridge. Coleridge was a lawyer but was more extreme than most Tractarian clergymen in his theological position, as can be seen from the following extract from a letter to his father: The whole Catholic feeling of the English Episcopate is centred in Exeter and Bangor (the latter too mild to move) and Exeter’s feeling is confined to one or two isolated points. What English Bishop would dare to advocate Sacramental Confession, the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, due honour to the Blessed Virgin … Modern Romanism will never do, it is a lying system and does not elevate.6

This is the definitive ecclesiological position: the contemporary Roman Catholic church was corrupt and the Church of England must rediscover its Catholic roots and preserve the nature of Catholic worship. In Coleridge’s mind this Anglo-Catholic zeal translated into strong opinions about the exact style and appearance of ecclesiastical art. He seems to have been particularly interested in stained glass, and his account of the restoration highlights the difficulties of transforming a medieval building with nineteenth-century stained glass. At the time of the restoration Coleridge was only thirty years old – not yet the powerful figure he would become as Baron Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England. In addition Ottery St Mary was a lively market town and not an isolated rural parish like Buckland St Mary. Coleridge had considerable difficulty in turning financial contributions from a variety of sources into a unified decorative scheme. Few shared his detailed and partisan opinions about ecclesiastical design

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and even members of his own family commissioned stained glass that he considered substandard. The restoration at Ottery St Mary involved several leading architects and glass-painters. Windows designed or made by Butterfield, Pugin, Wailes, Warrington, O’Connor, Hardman and Frederick Preedy survive in the church to this day. J. D. Coleridge’s description of the restoration was initially published in TEDAS and then reprinted in the Ecclesiologist.7 His report seems to have enhanced the reputations of Hardman, Wailes and O’Connor and sealed Warrington’s doom in ecclesiological circles. This restoration is different in several ways from the projects at Sowton and that undertaken by J. E. Lance at Buckland St Mary, which was described in Chapter 1. Both of these projects involved completely rebuilding the church, while St Mary’s Ottery St Mary is a medieval building of considerable status – a status recognised by the EDAS, which was keen to preserve the medieval fabric. This fabric itself presented difficulties: the fenestration of the church is dominated by groups of particularly thin lancets and these proved to be quite a challenge for the stained-glass designers. Victorian restorations of churches, as is widely acknowledged, were more than just repairs and embellishments.8 A restoration like the project at Ottery St Mary could transform the meaning of the building, and stained glass had the potential to both rewrite the iconographical scheme and demarcate architectural space. For Coleridge, however, stained glass had another central role; it was a crucial means of unifying the meaning of the church: ‘we have too much neglected the important principle, that there should be a unity of design and effect in the whole building, an appearance of connection and relation between its various parts … A Church should be one; like the Faith it enshrines, and the God who dwells there.’9 It was probably Coleridge’s difficulty in achieving this kind of unity at Ottery St Mary that led him to raise this subject. He conceded that commemorative windows were an appropriate gesture, but the iconography had to be subordinated to the general scheme of the church, a feature he saw as absent in some contemporary windows: ‘there has been a tendency to individualize such offerings far too much’.10 Coleridge was a perceptive commentator for, as already discussed, personalising windows was a marked trend in stainedglass design. Coleridge was asserting an opinion about the nature of Anglican churches, and to him a church was for worshipping God through the performance of the sacraments. Patrons needed reminding that the meaning of a church should be in harmony with this purpose and that secular concerns should not interfere. Coleridge had his eye on the glass-painters as well as the patrons. In line with ecclesiological thinking, he believed that glass-painters should be kept in order by architects. The architect understood the effects glass could have

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

on the architectural space, whereas the glass-painter ‘deals with a window as a window only, and, as a fact, seldom or never goes near the church beforehand; and afterwards only for the sake of seeing how his own particular window looks’.11 As this comment suggests, Coleridge’s opinion on contemporary glass-painters was generally low: ‘Only one or two of our present glass-painters can be at all trusted’. One of the problems was that ‘commissions have been given to them in such numbers, that they have had no time for thought or study’.12 Again Coleridge understood that the enormous demand for stained glass meant that it was hard for people like him to dictate taste: too much demand meant that the appearance of windows was left up to glass-painters themselves. He conceded that glasspainters were under pressure but suggested that many had ‘shrunk from the labour necessary … and remained content with constant repetitions of a few designs’. The worst cases had led to ‘contemptible affectation, and actual irreverence’.13 The tone of Coleridge’s account of the restoration is bitter at times, probably because he detested several of the windows that had been erected right under his nose. He had attempted to assert his own control over the glazing scheme by placing it under the supervision of his chosen architect, William Butterfield. Butterfield managed to intervene in many of the window designs: O’Connor’s windows were ‘overseen’ by Butterfield and he even gave advice to Pugin on the windows made by Hardman. He failed, however, to prevent powerful patrons such as Lady Rolle and F. G. Coleridge (‘Uncle Frank’ to J. D. Coleridge) from commissioning Warrington to make their windows. The glass in the Lady Chapel illustrates Coleridge’s frustration well. Three of the four windows were made by Michael O’Connor with Butterfield’s supervision and the last was designed and made by William Warrington. The two O’Connor windows on the south side depict the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter and three figures: St John the Baptist and his parents St Zacharias and St Elizabeth. Coleridge praised the former window for effective use of awkward narrow lights, its colouring and canopy design. Most of the praise here seems to have been directed towards Butterfield rather than O’Connor. The latter window is condoned, though the figures are described as ‘a little theatrical’ (Figure 41). It is worth considering the figures in question. By normal standards describing them as ‘theatrical’ would be an exaggeration, but this criticism does give some idea of the hieratic and formal style demanded by ecclesiological aesthetics. On the north side of the Lady Chapel O’Connor’s window after Overbeck, depicting Christ blessing children, was praised in its execution but worried Coleridge on the grounds of ‘individualizing too much’ (Plate 18). The window commemorated three deceased children and this evidently determined the iconography.

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41 Michael O’Connor, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, south Lady Chapel window, c. 1850

Warrington’s window was described as ‘with one exception … as deficient in beauty, refinement, and dignity, as any window I ever saw’. It is worth asking ourselves why. If O’Connor’s figures were ‘theatrical’ it is clear that Warrington’s are more so: they show too much expression, drama and movement (Figure 42). The second problem must have been the palette. O’Connor’s palette is narrow but intense; he shaded the windows quite heavily and the overall impression is of strong deep colour. Warrington’s window is very different in tone, having an almost pastel palette of pink, orange, blue and lime green (Plate 18). Warrington’s window therefore destroys the unity Coleridge sought on two counts: tone and drawing. The ‘one exception’ Coleridge referred to, i.e. the only window that was even worse, was Warrington’s other contribution in the north aisle. This window confirms the source of Coleridge’s disgust: the scene depicts saints reacting in an almost Baroque manner to the transfigured Christ – the antithesis to the static, formal and symbolic figures that Coleridge wanted.

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

42

William Warrrington, St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, detail from north Lady Chapel window, c. 1850

Despite his demolition of Warrington’s windows, Coleridge waxed lyrical on the talents of Pugin and Hardman. Pugin’s designs were ‘conscientious, thoughtful’, his familiarity with ancient examples was ‘really astonishing’ and he possessed the ‘genius’ of an artist. The characteristics so praiseworthy in the glass were the face painting, which was delicate and extremely refined, the drapery, which was ‘severe’ and ‘masculine’, and the transparency and ‘luminousness’ of the windows. Coleridge was particularly pleased with the window he had commissioned: the east window of the north aisle. Quite a correspondence surrounded this commission: Butterfield made suggestions to Pugin; Pugin sent designs for approval to Coleridge, and Coleridge then suggested alterations. Surviving documentary evidence creates a fascinating picture of the relationships between the patron, designer and manufacturer. Pugin wrote in a frank manner to Hardman about the commission: ‘The heads for Mr. Coleridge’s

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window have been done 3 times & after we changed them the last time he writes today that he would keep my original arrangement in preference to anything else!!!’ The tone of Pugin’s letter is in marked contrast to the way he addressed Coleridge: ‘But of course I have no other desire than to meet your wishes & I will willingly prepare fresh cartoons of the heads.’14 Although by 1849 Pugin was becoming increasingly well known, it is revealing to see how deferential he was to Coleridge; social difference between architect and patron is easily forgotten. Although this deference was necessary, Pugin was probably aware of the importance of the commission and particularly eager to please. With Coleridge’s praise for his windows in mind his efforts were almost certainly worthwhile. Unfortunately the window in question is badly faded, as are all the Hardman windows at Ottery St Mary (Figure 43). Coleridge described the

43 John Hardman and Co., St Mary the Virgin, Ottery St Mary, Devon, detail from north transept east window, 1850

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

window in detail, however, and so it is possible to recover the iconographical scheme. The window consists of five lancets and as a whole the iconography depicts the Worship of the Spotless Lamb as described in Revelation 14, the Epistle for Holy Innocents’ Day. The entire window, in manner and conception, is medieval in a way that most early Victorian glass is not. Pugin’s designs are formal, in the sense that they do not contain dramatic facial expression or gesture, and the tableau effect of the spiritual hierarchy creates a convincing medieval appearance. The biblical scene includes the entire church worshipping the Lamb and so Coleridge could choose any saint he wanted for inclusion. He decided to select from the English saints as far as possible: saints Agnes and Catherine represent virgins, Mildred and Ethelreda represent queens and abbesses, Edward the Confessor is included as founder of Ottery St Mary and Edmund is present for kings, martyrs and confessors. In addition saints Benedict and Bernard represent religious orders and Peter and Paul represent the apostles. A Tractarian theme runs through this iconography: the figures representing the entire church are largely English, which points towards the claim of the Church of England to be part of the universal Catholic church: the authority of the Church of England was descended not from its establishment or from the Reformation but from the early church through the apostles. Three windows were eventually executed in a similar manner: the Lady Chapel east in 1855 and the south transept east much later in 1878. The most coherent sequence of windows executed as part of this scheme was installed in the lancets of the choir aisles. The north choir aisle contains a narrative of the genesis of Christianity among the gentiles. From the east, the first two scenes depict incidents from the life of St Paul. Paul was the great missionary to the gentiles, and this status is the link to the next two scenes: Cornelius’s visitation and St Peter’s dream. Cornelius was the first gentile to be baptised and the vision of St Peter was God’s sign that Christianity was to be spread to all people, not just the Jews. The next five lancets depict figures associated with this narrative: St James major, St Paul, St Barnabus, St Timothy and St Titus. Barnabus defended Paul when the disciples did not believe in his conversion, Paul wrote epistles to Timothy and Titus, and James met his death just before Herod imprisoned Peter. The south choir aisle depicts further scenes from the Acts of the Apostles. The first two from the east depict Paul and Silas at Philippi and their baptism of the gaoler and his family. The next window shows Paul entering Phillip’s house and is followed by a scene showing Phillip baptising the Ethiopian eunuch. The sequence is then broken by a simple window depicting an angel, probably erected before the others, which may explain why it does not fit in with the sequence.15 The last four windows depict the incredulity and martyrdom of St Thomas, and St Andrew bringing Peter to

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Jesus, followed by his martyrdom. Despite the interruption, the choir aisles present a coherent collection of scenes and figures depicting the spread of Christianity, via the apostles, with special reference to Paul’s mission to the gentiles. This sequence picks up one of the themes in the Hardman window, where St Peter and St Paul represented the apostles, and was probably planned by Butterfield or Coleridge. The strong sense of narrative contrasts with the scheme at Sowton and suggests a move away from an interior based purely on symbolism towards the narrative cycles which became a prominent feature of Victorian churches in the 1850s.16 Coleridge was relatively pleased with this sequence. Although the windows were executed by two different glass-painters. Wailes and Warrington, the tone is relatively uniform and the windows read well as a sequence. When J. D. Coleridge wrote his account of the restored church in 1851, only two of the chancel clerestory windows had been filled, and the collection at the reopening service went towards the completion of this scheme.17 Coleridge lays out the plan for this scheme in his account: ‘It is hoped that, in time, the whole of these clerestory windows will be filled with subjects relating solely to our Blessed Lord. Those on the north side, with subjects from His life in suffering; those on the south, from His life in glory. At present there is a Crucifixion on the north side, and a Majesty on the south’18 In this case Coleridge successfully asserted himself: the scheme was completed by 1855 and all the windows both followed the iconographical plan and were made by Hardman. This scheme seems to have been conceived using the direction of light as an integral part of the effect. Ballantine’s Treatise in 1845 had suggested that the aspect of the window ought to be taken into account when selecting the colours; for example, the dark tones of blue, green and purple were suitable for dulling in the sun in a south-facing window.19 Significantly Joseph Bell copied out this extract into his notebooks. It seems likely that the designer of the choir clerestory scheme had planned that the scenes from Christ’s life in glory would shine brightly with their southern aspect, while Christ’s sufferings, facing north, would be visible but less prominent. So in this final element of the glazing scheme Coleridge did manage to bring his contributors into line and achieve iconographical coherence and aesthetic harmony. The two examples discussed in this chapter show the potential that stained glass offered to a patron and highlight some of the practical difficulties of coordinating a glazing scheme. A project funded from one source was clearly easier to control than one that drew on multiple sources because diverse ideas, aesthetic sensibilities and purposes inevitably detracted from the coherence of the scheme. Coherence was important to patrons because the physical and spiritual environment provided by a building to some extent

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Glazing projects: Sowton and Ottery St Mary

determined what type of liturgical and religious activity could be practised there. In a time when many competing factions both within the Church of England and beyond it were promoting a range of religious models, the chance to permanently establish a particular version of religious practice within the fabric of a church became very important. Garratt’s project at Sowton achieved coherence but he had all the advantages of sole financial control, a local architect sympathetic to his aims and the wealth to completely rebuild the church and glaze all the windows himself. The choice of Willement was safe: he was the most experienced and upmarket glass-painter operating in 1844. The result is a balanced interior but it is also has a feudal feel to it, the Garratt family pews emphasising the social hierarchy that underlay the structure of the parish. Coleridge had more difficulty with his far more complex project. The existing church was and is a complex building with a number of semidiscrete spaces: the Lady Chapel, choir, transepts, choir aisles and fanvaulted Dorset Aisle. It would have been a challenge for one glass-painter with a single patron to give these disparate spaces coherence but with five glass-painters working for multiple patrons the result was never going to be uniform. Stained glass from different ateliers will almost always vary in tone, whether the design has come from the same hand or not, because the glass itself and the glass-painter’s shading technique will always vary. So when several glass-painters worked in the same church there was limited potential for controlling the architectural space through the glazing scheme.20 The choir clerestory is really the only area in the church where Coleridge managed to preserve uniformity. Some coherence was created through narrative, particularly in the choir aisles, where the series of small lancets present a narrative of early Christian missionary activity; the meanings of the iconography are cumulative and coherent. The presence of the patron is less obvious here, as Coleridge clearly wanted, and a sense of the diversity of the funding is apparent. Coleridge continued his campaign in 1878 when he commissioned Butterfield to decorate the south transept with tile mosaics. It is difficult to evaluate the sense of coherence of the restoration as a whole because the Victorian work other than the stained glass has suffered from successive assaults: in 1919 plaster was removed from the walls and in 1977 the nave vaulting decoration was painted over.21 As a result it is difficult to know to what extent Coleridge succeeded in unifying the building. He certainly learnt through his experience and his account of the restoration reads like a manual of things to avoid for those contemplating similar activity.

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Notes

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1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20

21

See C. Brooks, ‘Bishops Court, Devon’, Countiy Life, 19 February 1990, pp. 54–58. The pot metal used in this window is unusually high quality for the early 1840s and surprisingly similar to ‘antique’ glass. Given that Garratt took particular interest in the glass it is possible that Willement obtained special glass for this commission. John 6:55. John 6:51. In addition to the Ward and Nixon window mentioned above, two later windows were installed in the chancel in the 1850s. A. Coleridge, Reminiscences, ed. J. A. Fuller Maitland, 2 vols (London: Constable, 1921), pp. 193–194. J. D. Coleridge, ‘On the restoration of the Church of S. Mary the Virgin at Ottery S. Mary’, TEDAS, 4 (1853), 204–210. This paper was read on 11 September 1851; for the subsequent reprint see Ecclesiologist, 13 (1852), 79. See for example C. Miele, ‘Re-presenting the Church Militant: the Camden Society, church restoration, and the Gothic sign’, in C. Webster and J. Elliot (eds), ‘A Church as it Should Be’: Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 257–294. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 204. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 205. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 206. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 206. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 206. The contrast in the tone of this correspondence is pointed out by Stanley Shepherd; see S. Shepherd, The stained glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1997), p. 202. This was the only window by Wailes described by J. D. Coleridge in 1851; see Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 204–210. For an interesting recent discussion of the cultural influences on architecture and iconographic schemes in the Victorian period see M. Hall, ‘What do Victorian churches mean?’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59:1 (2000), 78–95. Exeter Flying Post, 23 May 1850. Coleridge, ‘Ottery S. Mary’, 208. J. Ballantine, A Treatise on Painted Glass Shewing its Applicability to Every Style of Architecture (London: Chapman and Hall, 1845), pp. 24–26. One solution to this problem was to use different glass-painters in discrete areas – for example, one glass-painter for the chancel and another in the nave. This arrangement turns any difference in manner and tone into an advantage, as the difference helps to demarcate areas within the interior. Lance employed this tactic at Buckland St Mary: O’Connor glass surrounds the chancel, while Clayton and Bell’s windows enclose the baptistery, though it is unclear whether this was deliberate. B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, Devon, Buildings of England series (London: Penguin, 1989), p. 619.

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7 ✧ The revival of stained glass: how and why the market spread

W

ITH all the preceding information in mind, why did the market for stained glass increase so dramatically between 1840 and 1860? Several explanations have already been offered. The underlying cause was that the Church of England recognised the need for internal revival and building more churches was seen as a way of achieving this. The form that many of these churches took was determined by the increasing credibility of the gothic style, fuelled by theorists, designers and architects. New churches were built in the gothic style and thousands of existing medieval churches were restored and redecorated. So Victorian churchbuilding and the form it took provided the necessary preconditions for the revival of stained-glass production. Stained glass was thought of by many as a lost art, ripe for revival, and a range of artisans, craftsmen and artists arose to meet this challenge. Ecclesiology provided an early and enthusiastic client group. However, although ecclesiology was crucial in establishing the market for stained glass it was too exclusive in its aims and membership to sustain this demand for long. The real breakthrough came when stained glass started to appeal to a broader section of the population. This chapter will examine how the enthusiasm for stained glass spread from clerical circles into more secular territory.

Stained glass and the Victorian public When studying ecclesiastical design in the early Victorian period it is difficult to get away from the influence of ecclesiology. A valuable opportunity presents itself, however, in the form of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in 1851.1 There is little evidence to suggest that the Great Exhibition made the reputation of any glasspainter, or that stained glass took the exhibition by storm, yet the fact that this famous event was beyond the control of the church makes it particularly significant. Despite the quasi-religious terminology applied to the Crystal Palace (which had a ‘nave’ and ‘transepts’) and despite the

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blessing offered by the archbishop of Canterbury at the opening ceremony, the Great Exhibition was a profoundly secular affair with a strong commercial flavour. Companies that made ecclesiastical furnishings exhibited extensively, but it was often their secular products that received the most attention. Herbert Minton was awarded the prestigious council medal, but the items singled out by the jury were a ‘dessert service’ and vases and garden pots modelled in imitation of the ‘old Majolica ware’.2 Minton’s encaustic tiles, so admired in ecclesiological circles, made far less impact. To make matters worse for the ecclesiologists, their arch rival and critic, Charles Winston, proved to be an important influence on those judging the stained glass.3 In the Crystal Palace stained glass had to compete with thousands of other exhibits for the attention of the numerous visitors. Stained glass did not warrant its own category, being part of Class 24, ‘Glass’, which included window glass, glass for scientific apparatus, ‘painted and other types of ornamental window glass’ and table glass. The Crystal Palace could hardly have been better designed to display stained glass. The glass walls admitted ample natural light and it is no coincidence that the stained-glass gallery forms the subject of one of the most evocative chromolithographs of the exhibition (Plate 19). Most of the stained glass was situated in the North Gallery and so although part of Class 24, stained glass had its own discrete display area. In an encouraging development for glass-painters, stained glass was not judged by the jury for Class 24 but was handed over to the jury for Class 30 – ‘Fine Art’.4 While it is clear from the jury reports that stained glass was not seen as fine art – it was under the subheading of ‘Architectural Decorations’ – stained glass was clearly seen as more akin to architecture than domestic glass. So despite having to compete with a huge variety of other goods, stained glass was displayed to advantage in its own area and raised above ornamental domestic glass in the taxonomies of the judging system. It is important to recognise that stained glass had never been exhibited on this scale and in this type of situation before. Exhibitions were held quite regularly before the Victorian period but they were normally small-scale shows designed to promote the work of one glass-painter. The only place where this quantity of stained glass could have been seen before was a large church or cathedral. To see a display of the work of over thirty different stained-glass studios in a secular context was unprecedented, and has important implications for the relationship between stained glass and Victorian culture. In a somewhat hyperbolic but nevertheless interesting study, Thomas Richards has suggested that the Great Exhibition marks a key moment in the ‘commodity culture’ of Victorian England.5 Richards emphasises the commercial nature of the Great Exhibition and suggests that it transformed

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the status of the commodity in Victorian culture. Whereas street sellers had relied on vocal advertisements, in the Crystal Palace products were experienced primarily visually, as a series of spectacles. Richards seeks to show that the Great Exhibition was the first time that the commodity became central to Victorian culture. (Commodity in this sense means a manufactured object that works primarily through representation rather than use: an object that is more important for its symbolic qualities than its function.) Although Richards’s arguments are exaggerated and his lack of attention to the objects themselves is a serious omission, his approach does provide an interesting context for thinking about the stained-glass gallery at the Great Exhibition. Historians of stained glass have argued that in the preVictorian period visual spectacle was the key attraction of the medium.6 Stained glass is also a product that works primarily through representation rather than function; after all, a window does not have to be painted to keep out the elements and let in light. In this sense, and particularly in the way it was displayed at the Great Exhibition, stained glass advertised its arrival into the world of Victorian commodities. In a more measured historical account of consumer culture, Don Slater accepts Richards’s ideas about the importance of the ‘production of public spectacle’ but balances his account by suggesting that consumerism was ‘made respectable … by connecting it to the construction of private bourgeois domesticity’.7 Although stained glass was not often commissioned for domestic interiors in the early Victorian period, it was a commodity that spanned the public and private spheres. The fact that stained glass could be personalised through inscriptions and iconography meant that even when erected in a public space, the window still functioned as a marker of a private patron’s social status. In fact it could be argued that this was a far more effective statement of social status than anything that was possible in a domestic interior. In this sense we need to class stained glass broadly in the category of commodities that conferred status. In addition, the status of stained glass as public art, and crucially as ecclesiastical art, drained it of all the negative connotations of conspicuous consumption: commissioning stained glass for churches was not associated with greed, vanity or opulence, but with piety and self-sacrifice. In Chapter 5 I suggested that as Joseph Bell’s market broadened beyond ecclesiological circles he sold windows in a way that distanced his patrons from the process of production. The same trend was evident at the Great Exhibition: a whole series of finished windows were presented as objects, with little sense of how a patron could intervene in the design, or the complex series of processes that went into making a window. As the gap between the client and the window’s production widened, patrons turned into consumers. Perhaps the logical end to this process was the inclusion of

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stained glass in department-store catalogues. A Silber and Flemming catalogue from the 1880s includes two pages of stained-glass windows. ‘Gothic’, ‘Early Gothic’, ‘Perpendicular’ and ‘Decorated Gothic’ windows are offered alongside panels designed for ‘Hotel or Tavern’ and domestic items that could serve as window blinds and fire screens.8 Although this catalogue was printed some thirty years after the Great Exhibition, emerging trends in the commissioning and display of stained glass already pointed in this direction. The display at the Great Exhibition was at least symptomatic of, and probably instrumental in, establishing stained glass as a commodity in Victorian England, and it was at this point that stained glass started to break away from the church and into the secular middleclass market. Of the glass-painters who competed for the attention of the visitors, some were well established, while others were virtually unknown. This followed the pattern in other classes: some exhibitors were trying to consolidate an existing reputation, while others were attempting to launch their careers. Twenty-five English glass-painters exhibited and ten of these were rarely heard of again, though one team, Claudet and Houghton, later became famous for making photographic equipment. One of the littleknown glass-painters was John Toms, who exhibited one of his Mary Magdalene windows. Toms is an interesting example: here was an enterprising but unknown artisan from rural Somerset who was suddenly presented with the opportunity of showing his windows to huge numbers of people. Despite this opportunity the Great Exhibition did little for him. It may have boosted his credibility on a local level, but it failed to find him patrons beyond his immediate geographical area. While minor glass-painters like Toms were present, some major names were conspicuous by their absence: Willement preserved his policy of not entering any type of competition and Warrington and Ward also chose not to exhibit.9 As it turned out the juries had little positive to say about English glasspainting. The jury for Class 30 was a high-powered collection of major figures in the European art and design world, including Pugin, Richard Redgrave, Dr C. Waagen and C. R. Cockerell. The awards for stained glass were preceded by a lengthy extract from a report written by Charles Winston, which underlines his influence on the judging process. Winston’s report set out the criteria for judging the glass: if a window was entered as a reproduction of a historical style it must be judged on this basis. Winston saw transparency as paramount – even more important than drawing – and he reiterated his opinion that no modern glass had yet successfully imitated a style earlier than 1380. He then included extensive praise for Bertini’s window depicting ‘Dante and his thoughts’, the window which won a prize medal for Austria.

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Very few council medals (the highest honour) were awarded in Class 30, and none was awarded for stained glass.10 Five prize medals were awarded for stained glass: two to France and one each to Bavaria, Austria and England. ‘Honourable Mention’ was allowed to a further five English glasspainters in addition to an Austrian and a Frenchman. The two French prizewinners, A. Gérente and Maréchal and Guynon, went on to direct major stained-glass operations in France.11 The jury basically following Winston’s advice, reserved the highest praise for quite pictorial windows, many in a sixteenth-century manner. A lot of the English entrants were at a disadvantage here as the market in England was focused on more medieval styles. The Ecclesiologist thought that the windows by Pugin and Hardman were in a class of their own but otherwise even they generally preferred the French to the English exhibits.12 John Hardman and Co. was the only English stained-glass operation to emerge from the Great Exhibition with real credibility. Hardman did not exhibit at all in the stained-glass gallery; all his glass was in Pugin’s Medieval Court. In a sense Hardman had an unfair advantage: his glass was in a carefully curated space and did not have to compete with other windows. The consistent gothic style in the Medieval Court must have provided just the context that many of the other English glass-painters needed, though the glass was not as well lit as that in the stained-glass gallery. It seems slightly strange that Hardman was eligible for an award given that Pugin was a member of the jury for Class 30, and this did not go unnoticed: Edward Bailie sent a letter of protest to the Builder, though what it described as the ‘personal portion’ of the letter was not printed.13 Although the Great Exhibition did not make the career of any one glasspainter, Hardman had a very busy year in 1851 and his success could be attributed partially to his performance at the Exhibition. Whatever the jury thought of the windows in the Crystal Palace other evidence suggests that the public understanding of stained glass was becoming far more sophisticated. In 1849 a series of letters printed in the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury shows that the debate about the design of stained glass was spreading beyond ecclesiological circles. A letter to the editor signed ‘A’ reports a visit to the recently restored church at Trent, in Dorset, and suggests that the chancel windows were ‘the richest in colour, and best in design’.14 A week later a letter signed ‘A Lover of the Church’ attacked the opinions of ‘A’ and his competence to evaluate the windows. The nave glass, in his opinion, was clearly superior. William Wailes made most of the glass at Trent: the chancel windows that ‘A’ referred to in 1842, and the nave windows in 1849 (Plate 20, Figure 44). The seven-year gap makes all the difference to ‘A Lover of the Church’ and the distinction between the windows was interpreted as evidence of the progress of stained glass: Those in the side windows of the chancel are poor in design and

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William Wailes, St Andrew, Trent, Dorset, nave window, 1849

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execution’ but ‘are pretty fair specimens considering they were placed there some years since when the art was not so well understood as at present’.15 Later in the same year a letter to the editor signed ‘Vindex’ reports a rumour that the west window of Sherborne Abbey was to be plain glazed; this was a ‘false economy’ and the effect of the restoration could ‘entirely depend’ on filling the window with stained glass.16 A week later ‘M’ wrote to support ‘Vindex’, stating that the repairs would not deserve the name of restoration unless stained glass was installed.17 When the west window was finally glazed by John Hardman’s studio the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury described it as ‘the most prominent and beautiful feature in the nave’.18 The correspondence in the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury is symptomatic of a change in the public perception of ecclesiastical architecture and design. Increasingly the parish church was seen as an aesthetic object and the presence of the railways facilitated the activities of a new breed of church tourists strongly keyed into both church art and the criteria by which it should be evaluated. The description of the restored church at Ottery St Mary in the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury sees the stained glass not as a vehicle for enhancing spirituality and biblical truth in the local congregation, but as a gallery for church tourists: There are many painted windows of great merit, by some of the most distinguished artists in that department, and strangers have the opportunity of comparing the productions of Wailes, O’Connor, Hardman and Warrington who have all executed their respective parts with great success.19

Notice that the reviewer shows great enthusiasm for the windows without any of the stinging criticism of Warrington’s glass dealt out by J. D. Coleridge in TEDAS. This sort of publicity is good for everyone, and shows that as the enthusiasm for ecclesiastical art spread nationwide, the published review’s of windows became less partisan and generally more positive. Most high-profile new churches or church restorations could expect extensive coverage in their respective regional newspapers and so the opportunity to become a church tourist was open to almost anyone. The literary version of church tourism had an early ecclesiological model in the form of J. M. Neale’s Hierologus: or, the Church Tourists.20 Neale’s book depicts the exploits of several characters touring rural churches. They reflect on the Romantic beauty of medieval churches and the relationship of these churches to various regional landscapes. The book is full of picturesque descriptions of medieval architecture but is essentially quite an exclusive publication: it aims to stimulate the activity of ecclesiology and justify it as an occupation. This is not really tourism so much as a call to those who are prepared to restore or build churches in the prescribed manner. Hierologus is typical of early ecclesiology in its

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complete inability to engage with urban areas in a meaningful way: the best Neale can suggest is that the restoration of Kirkstall Abbey would give the ‘Church principle’ some momentum in ‘a place like Leeds’.21 Despite the exclusive nature of Neale’s publication the genre did gain wider currency, as a fascinating series originally published in the Bristol Times suggests. The ‘Church-Goer’ presented a series of church-visiting stories on a weekly basis, written by the journalist and newspaper proprietor Joseph Leech, and was popular enough to be republished afterwards as a collection.22 Leech frequently evoked a brand of Romantic church tourism that had considerable popular appeal: I can well recollect the first time (now several years since) I visited Henbury Church on a fine summer’s evening … The ‘dim religious light’ through the painted glass, fell with its varied but subdued hues on the little chancel, sculptured altar screen, carpet, and communion cloth, while a parting ray or two from the setting sun, glancing obliquely through the more western windows, lingered on one or two of the many white marble tablets that around recorded the worth of those who had gone, and the affectionate recollection of those who remained behind.23

Leech’s tone is often more humorous, an example being his description of Rev. H. Ellacombe, a strident high churchman and patron of Joseph Bell: ‘The Vicar of Bitton … is one of the most indefatigable men in the world. He is one of those men, who, if you placed him in the desert of Arabia, would I believe have half-a-dozen Churches up about him in little more than that number of years.’24 He goes on to characterise Ellacombe as ‘high and dry’, meaning an old-school high churchman rather than an ecclesiologist, and suggests that he was occupied with ‘erecting altars, while others are fighting about turning their faces towards to [sic] or from them’, this being a reference to a contemporary Ritualist conflict about which way the priest faced while celebrating the eucharist. This type of humour relied on quite a sophisticated understanding of religious politics; otherwise Leech’s popularity is difficult to explain. His tone is often humorous but rarely mocking. He admired faith, integrity and some innovation but characterised much ecclesiological and Ritualist activity as faddish: ‘There was no nonsense that I could see – no Camdenian extravagance to frighten nervous people. I confess I have no sympathy with those outré gentlemen.’25 In one fascinating passage he seems genuinely impressed with Joseph Bell’s new stained glass at Coalpit Heath and its relative cheapness: I believe the expense of the ‘storied windows’ was principally raised by the present Incumbent, since his appointment; and I wish this beautiful and suitable mode of ornament were as generally introduced into new Churches as possible or practicable. It cannot be very difficult to do so from the

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present price of painted glass; it is so moderate that 1 am told you can have the 12 apostles at 16 shillings the square foot, and any number of Minor Prophets on the same terms; local saints, shields, and patrons, Bishops, and blazonry, can also be purchased to any amount, and there is doubtless discount for cash included. The archangels with censors, in the head of the East window of Coalpit Heath, cost no more.26

A description like this coming from a journalist unconnected with the ecclesiological movement, and at times even hostile to it, suggests that the general public as a whole may well have been pleasantly surprised at the price and appearance of contemporary stained glass. It is to this subject that I would now like to turn.

Stained glass becomes affordable Chapter 2 described how the high price of stained glass in the Georgian period was perpetuated in the early nineteenth century by glass-painters such as Thomas Willement. In 1841, when Pugin claimed to have saved 60 per cent by switching from Thomas Willement to William Wailes (or ‘this northern man’ as he called him), he was referring to the dramatic fall in prices initiated by the new glass-painters.27 This drop was partly the result of the new style endorsed by the Victorian Gothic Revival. The average Victorian window was less labour intensive than its Regency counterpart because mosaic windows generally required a smaller area of detailed enamel painting. It appears that Willement, although he switched to a more mosaic style, failed to lower his prices, and so when new operations were established in the 1830s and 1840s they charged much less for the same type of window. Another factor that may have facilitated these lower production costs was the repeal of excise duty on glass in 1845. Most early Victorian glasspainters probably relied on a coloured variety of ‘sheet glass’ for their pot metal.28 The repeal of excise duty on glass meant that the price of glass fell substantially, and in this context it seems logical to assume that the price of coloured pot metal would fall, but this is difficult to substantiate.29 The demand for coloured pot metal must have been expanding quite rapidly and with this in mind it does not necessarily follow that glass manufacturers were forced to reduce their prices. It seems likely that the general profitability of the glazing trade would have increased as a consequence of the tax repeal but the effects of this legislation on the revival of stained glass remain unclear. Even if the price of coloured pot metal did fall as dramatically as that of clear glass, the fact that the expense of stained glass was generated chiefly by the labour expended on it meant that the change in style mentioned above was probably more significant.

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All the evidence suggests that the going rate for the best pictorial glass in the 1840s was about 25–30s per foot. So how affordable did this make stained glass? The situation can be summarised by stating that to commission a large pictorial window was only feasible to the upper echelons of the middle class, but most members of this social group could either buy or contribute towards a more modest window. This needs further elaboration. A medium-sized pictorial or figure window in a parish church would probably cost at least £30. Take Figure 45: Joseph Bell charged a little under £35 to Mr Clutterbuck for this window, erected in 1849.30 Big windows were obviously expensive to fill and a number of commissions in Bell’s jobs book come to over £100. On the other hand, the rate for pattern windows was about one quarter of that charged for pictorial glass, so an average-sized window in a parish church, maybe even with some small figures, might cost as little as £10. For instance Figure 8 shows a detail from a figurative panel in the central light of a three-light window, the rest of which was made up of quarries and borders. John Toms charged £12 for this window in 1856. The patron was not even obliged to fill an entire window; Plate 15 shows a panel painted by Joseph Bell, which William Hamilton Turner inserted in a window initially painted by William Wailes. This was Bell’s most expensive type of glass, however, and so the panel measuring just over 3 square feet still cost Turner £5.31 So stained glass was an expensive product, but it is crucial to recognise that it was also quite accommodating: there were many varieties of glass commanding a corresponding variety of prices and the lower end of this price range brought stained glass within the reach of a large proportion of the middle classes. The Victorian ‘middle class’ is a broad category that described something like 20 per cent of the non-agricultural population.32 A family income of at least £150 a year was needed to support a middle-class lifestyle and even this was only barely sufficient. At the other end of the spectrum a well-known professional could earn £1,000 or more a year.33 While only the most affluent members of the middle class could commission large pictorial windows, those of lesser means could still contribute towards subscription lists. These lists provided an alternative form of collective funding: an organiser would gather a number of small donations, the sum of which would provide enough money for a window. This was a common practice; a window at Ottery St Mary, described in the last chapter, was funded by a subscription raised by the tradesmen of the town. A revealing letter from the popular high-church novelist Charlotte M. Yonge to a friend gives an impression of how this kind of process was organised: My Dear Caroline – I shall like very much to send a pound towards your window; shall I send it to you at once by post-office order? I hope your

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45

Joseph Bell, St Michael and All Angels, Buckland Dinham, Somerset, east window, 1849

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diaper will be as beautiful as some of those patterns of the Cologne windows of which we used to have a great sheet, and I always longed to see in glass, thinking that they would be better than bad figures.34

It is clear from her letter that she is responding to the request of a friend who was coordinating the subscription list. The fact that Yonge refers to the proposed window as ‘your window’ suggests that the coordinator of the subscription list had a patron-like status. The subscription list was important as it offered even those of modest means a way of participating in ornamenting churches. Yonge’s contribution of £1 was quite substantial and reflects her status as a successful writer. Many contributors to subscription lists would give much less. So although church-building and ecclesiology can explain the initial impetus for the revival of stained glass, these two influences alone cannot account for the scale and longevity of Victorian stained-glass production. Somehow commissioning a stained-glass window became a relatively ordinary thing to do. Explaining this in positive terms is difficult but some influences are apparent. First, despite the fact that ecclesiology and Tractarianism were both quite exclusive movements they did influence more mainstream culture. As the nineteenth century progressed, people who did not consider themselves either high church or aligned to ecclesiology became interested in ecclesiastical design as ornate churches were gradually considered less ‘popish’. Secondly, stained glass became more affordable. This was the result of two processes: the price dropped and Victorian England became richer. The net result was that the size of the potential market expanded enormously. The range of glass available, and funding structures such as subscription lists, meant that even those from a quite modest background could at least participate in paying for windows. Finally, stained glass was a product that was ideally suited to the emerging consumer culture of Victorian England. It was a prestigious product, being expensive, not strictly necessary and historically associated with the aristocracy. Unlike a silver tea service, or a Louis XV-style suite of furniture, however, it was usually installed in a church and so carried the status of its donor into the public sphere. In addition the potential of stained glass was enormously enhanced by the meanings it could carry in its iconography. The last chapter outlined the conflict over who should determine the iconographical content of the window: should the scenes or figures depicted refer to the role of the church or should the patron be allowed to direct the iconography towards their own private concerns? The battle over who controlled the iconography was never settled but the increasing popularity of memorial windows meant that the iconography of many windows was personalised. A logical development in this trend was the incorporation of portraits into windows. In what appears

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to have been quite a frequent practice, patrons supplied glass-painters with photographic portraits that were then used as models for figures in the window. A striking example is the east window of Lympsham in Somerset, made by Michael O’Connor in 1863 (Figure 46).35 The bald male figure in the left-hand light (with suspiciously Victorian facial hair) is a portrait of Joseph Henry Stephenson, rector of the parish between 1844 and 1901. Most of the other figures surrounding Christ are portraits of his family members.

46 Michael and Arthur O’Connor, St Christopher, Lympsham, Somerset, east window, 1863

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Here the personalisation of the window has become quite unsettling, the potential of photography and the technical skill of the glass-painter having combined to produce a seamless conflation of religious imagery and secular power. It is difficult to image what effect this had on the parishioners who stared up at it week after week.

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How the market spread The fact that the market for stained glass grew enormously in the 1840s and 1850s is not in dispute, but the ways in which it spread need clarification. Generalising about a process as complex and diverse as this is problematic but some trends are discernible and some generalisations possible. Certain networks within the social structure of Victorian society acted as conduits down which the reputations of glass-painters and that of the medium as a whole could travel rapidly. These networks comprised people linked through a variety of relationships, most commonly through kinship or common membership of an institution. Kinship was clearly crucial: enough examples have been cited in the preceding case studies to show that several members of the same family were likely to purchase windows from the same glass-painter – links to blood relations, via marriage and across

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John Toms and the Beer family, geographical distribution of windows up to 1860

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generations were common. People not linked by kinship were often connected through institutions. The Church of England was the single most important institution here, being an international network that allowed English stained glass, and for that matter English Gothic Revival architecture, to be exported all over the British Empire.36 The previous chapters have shown in detail how ecclesiological societies enabled glasspainters to find groups of patrons. This was true of the CCS but the local groups were equally influential. My own recording of stained glass in the archdeaconries of Taunton and Exeter has shown that the demand for windows was evident earlier in Exeter and that even the early commissions in the Taunton area were connected to the Exeter group. This seems to be a direct result of the fact that the EDAS was founded in 1841, while the SANHS was founded in 1849. The effects of local ecclesiological groups definitely declined with geographical distance: face-to-face meetings and personal inspections of new windows seem to have generated business for local glass-painters. In this sense a local glass-painter had a significant advantage: a potential patron could visit existing windows and had more chance of intervening in the design, as was discussed in Chapter 3 with reference to the windows Beer made for Robert Medley.

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John Toms and the Beer family, geographical distribution of windows up to 1860

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Regional glass-painters and the spread of the market My research shows that the role of provincial glass-painters has been underestimated. Not only did provincial glass-painters make a large numbers of windows, but they also played a key role in the revival as a whole. Figures 47 and 48 show the distribution of stained-glass windows installed by John Toms, the Beer family and William Wailes in South West England.37 Toms’s output is clearly centred on the location of his studio in Wellington: he was remarkably successful in his immediate locality. This fact supports the thesis that local glass-painters to some extent generated their own market, a market that may well not have been there at all without their presence. Robert and Alfred Beer’s output shows a large number of commissions in Devon, particularly west of Dartmoor and south of Exmoor, though a significant patch of commissions is evident in the Torrington area north of Dartmoor. The Beers’ commissions cease on reaching the Somerset border, where Toms’s influence became dominant. Exeter is roughly in the centre of these commissions and this supports the thesis that the Beers had a good chance of gaining commissions from those who used Exeter as a provincial centre. The fact that the Beers’ commissions virtually cease when they reach Toms’s area suggests that to a large extent the Beers and Toms were competing for the same market. The windows erected by William Wailes, who was based in Newcastle, show a different pattern. Wailes’s commissions are distributed across the areas served by both Toms and Beer. This shows that he was able to gain commissions even in areas already served by Beer and Toms. It is true that Toms had barely started painting glass when Wailes installed windows at locations at Taunton and nearby Hatch Beauchamp, but he was painting glass in the late 1840s when Wailes installed a number of windows near the county border at Culmstock, Clayhidon and Churchstanton. The interaction of these three glass-painters serves as a useful model for the interaction of local and national producers. It shows that to some extent local and national producers were competing for different markets. John Toms and Robert Beer were local glass-painters in the sense that the spread of demand for their glass took place through modes of circulation that operated on a local level. Other glass-painters based further afield relied on different means for spreading their reputation. This partly means the nationally distributed periodicals, but also the high-status commissions likely to attract attention beyond the local geographical area. The fact that provincial glass-painters were to some extent working for different clients does not diminish their role in the revival of Victorian glass-painting; indeed it would appear that the opposite is true. The sheer numbers of windows installed by Toms and Beer in my sample area prove this point. The South West was not unique: stained glass was produced in

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regional centres all over the country from the start of the Victorian period. A glance at the glass-painters and the locations of their commissions compiled from architectural periodicals allows a tentative evaluation of the scale of regional stained-glass production from 1840 to 1860. East of Taunton from mid-Somerset into Gloucestershire and South Wales Joseph Bell starts to become the dominant regional producer. Going north from Bristol into the Midlands George Rogers produced many windows in Hereford and Worcestershire from the mid-1840s, partnered by the architect and glass-painter Frederick Preedy from the early 1850s.38 Apart from John Hardman’s studio, Birmingham was the base for Chance and Co., and north west of Birmingham John Betton had produced stained glass from 1806, taking David Evans into partnership in 1815. They were based at Shrewsbury and installed many windows in Mid and North Wales. South west of Birmingham Holland of Warwick presided over a successful and productive studio from the late 1840s and produced windows similar in manner to Joseph Bell. Forrest, who later traded as Forrest and Bromley, and the Pilkington stained-glass company at St Helens, served Merseyside. Manchester had a resident glass-painter in the form of Edmundson, and various members of the Barnett family practised from York, Carlisle and Edinburgh, particularly serving the Roman Catholic community. Also working from Carlisle were John Scott and Son, who carried out ecclesiastical commissions from the mid-1840s. Back down in the South East J. & J. King and Samuel Yarrington were based in Norwich and Charles Clutterbuck in Stratford in Essex. When looking at London we must remember that not all glass-painters in this area were large-scale producers. Several of the major operations were described in Chapter 2, but we must also remember the smaller outfits, which included George Hedgeland, Thomas Wilmshurst (later partner to Francis Oliphant), Benjamin Bailie and his sons Edward and Thomas, and Charles and Alexander Gibbs, who really came into their own in the 1860s. The precise scale of most of these operations is not presently clear due to a lack of research, but in areas where Victorian stained glass has been systematically recorded striking evidence supports the thesis that locally orientated glass-painters constituted a significant force in stained-glass production. Birkin Hayward’s valuable studies of Norfolk and Suffolk between 1800 and 1900 describe a host of local and small-scale glasspainters. Two Norwich operations, J. & J. King and Samuel Yarrington, installed more windows than any of the national operations apart from Ward and Hughes and William Wailes. Leslie Smith’s survey of Victorian stained glass shows that Scott of Carlisle was the third most productive glass-painter in that area.39 This evidence shows that the South West was far from unusual in having successful and productive local operations.

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All the glass-painters mentioned above made significant numbers of windows. Below them there was almost certainly a whole army of small producers who never achieved this kind of publicity. My research in the South West alone has uncovered four such small-scale operations, and this figure does not include amateurs. William Ray of East Street Taunton was a glass-painter who had been working since the 1820s and tried unsuccessfully to break into the new markets of the 1840s.40 William Dare in Bridgwater produced a design for the east window of Holy Trinity Church in 1852, but none of his glass is known to have survived.41 A certain Phillip Palmer produced in 1859 a competent window, which survives in Chaffcombe Church in Somerset, and Thomas Wells produced a dramatic and impressive set of windows for Dowlish Wake in Somerset in 1862.42 Birkin Haward’s research has produced similar results for Norfolk and Suffolk: eight local operations are recorded in Norfolk, in addition to those mentioned above, and eight more existed in Suffolk. With firm evidence of this local activity in two areas, it seems to me that Victorian stained glass should be considered remarkable for its diversity rather than its homogeneity. Although Martin Harrison was perhaps sensible to highlight the work of the biggest studios in his pioneering work Victorian Stained Glass, there is a danger that this might lead to a simplistic attitude to the revival of stained-glass production and a devaluing of the products of regional glasspainters. The revival of glass-painting as a whole cannot be adequately understood just by studying the large studios: in many ways it was the combined activity of the smaller glass-painters that established the market. Their pioneering work meant that when operations like Clayton and Bell, Heaton Butler and Bayne, and Lavers Barraud and Westlake appeared in the late 1850s there was an existing market that they could tap into. It is ironic that many authors attribute the revival of Victorian stained glass to Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. while in fact this struggling business relied heavily on the existing market in the early 1860s.43

The new studios The presence of four new stained-glass exhibitors at the International Exhibition of 1862 signalled a profound shift in the structure of the stainedglass market. Lavers and Barraud, Heaton Butler and Bayne, and Morris Marshall Faulkner and Co. all won medals. Clayton and Bell were not eligible because J. R. Clayton was a jury member but the Ecclesiologist described their entry as the ‘best of all’.44 Hardman’s exhibits were again a success but as the Builder suggested, ‘many producers are now fully their equals’. Not all these studios were received well by contemporary critics. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. were particularly poorly reviewed. The

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Ecclesiologist suggested: ‘Of the two firms who exhibit the worst glass here – Messrs. Claudet and Haughton [sic], and Messrs. Morris, Marshall and Co. [sic] – the last is the worst, because the design is pseudo-grotesque.’ The Builder, while praising the figure work, was scarcely less impolite: ‘The window exhibited by Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. puzzles the majority of spectators, to whom it appears irredeemably bad; and yet, to their amazement, they find it honoured with a medal. Much of it is, indeed, very bad.’ General impressions of the English exhibits as a whole were less critical, most sources suggesting that England had overtaken its European rivals, though this was frequently attributed to the availability of Powell’s ‘antique glass’. For example, Apsley Pellatt in his observations on the stained-glass section suggested that: While therefore most of our continental neighbours exhibit windows of inferior material, fully equal or superior in artistic merit to their painted windows of 1851, the English, availing themselves of the superiority of the antique glass, excel their exhibits of 1851. The Exhibition of 1862 may be considered so far as a triumph over that of 1851; the artistic progress has, however, been less than might have been anticipated.45

The number of medals suggests a more even distribution of honours than in the Great Exhibition of 1851 – France won eleven, England eight and Belgium seven – but this could hardly be considered a victory for the English glass-painters. The reception of the English stained glass at the 1862 exhibition was surprisingly unenthusiastic considering the stunning quality of the windows made by some of the competitors. The four studios mentioned above all produced wonderful windows in the early 1860s, increasingly free from archaeological detail and confidently using Powell’s antique glass to its full potential.46 If antique glass was primarily responsible for the improvement in English stained glass we need to re-evaluate who to credit for this development. From the 1840s several manufacturers attempted to develop a variety of antique glass, but it was James Powell and Son who succeeded in producing a consistent high-quality product. Charles Winston was important in initiating this process, and although his influence has sometimes been exaggerated his contribution was profound. What is never mentioned, however, is that Powell would probably not have risked investing capital in the development of this new product if the existing scale of stained-glass production had not convinced him of the demand. Winston clearly sensed this, as a letter he wrote to Bell suggests: If you like any of the glass, you had better send Powell an order. He will not be able to execute it immediately, on account of the size of the new furnace,

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– but an order for your own class of glass would encourage him, and on that account I should be glad if you would give him an order.47

Winston’s letter shows that without the existing demand for stained glass in the early 1850s, it may not have made financial sense for a glass manufacturer to develop antique glass. In this sense it was glass-painters and patrons such as those described in this book who created the conditions that made the production of antique glass possible. Although antique glass allowed glass-painters to produce high-quality windows, it also pushed the price of windows up. In a revealing letter from 1861, the architect William Burges suggests that ‘rich medallion glass’ cost 15s per foot for the cartoon and 25s per foot for the glass.48 So by the early 1860s a rich window using Powell’s glass could cost 40s per foot, and according to Powell, even this price left little profit for the glass-painter. This exchange explains why some glass-painters did not adopt antique glass and suggests that the development of this material had an ambivalent effect on the glass-painting profession. One well-known writer who experienced the Gothic Revival at first hand was Thomas Hardy. Hardy was articled to the Dorset architect John Hicks in 1856.49 Hicks built and restored many gothic churches and was primarily an ecclesiastical architect, so Hardy must have experienced much of the atmosphere this study attempts to understand. A poem he wrote almost fifty years later, entitled ‘The Young Glass-Stainer’, looks back at his experiences and expresses his weariness with what was once a novelty: These Gothic windows, how they wear me out With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square, Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout, And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there! What a vocation! Here do I draw now The abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm; Martha I paint, and dream of Hera’s brow, Mary, and think of Aphrodite’s form.50

The fact that Hardy chose the figure of a young glass-painter to convey his boredom with gothic suggests that, to him, glass-painting was the epitome of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Much of what I have read and seen ties in with this judgement and it is clear that reviving stained-glass production was a key objective for many Victorian enthusiastics of the gothic. While architecture was transformed by the Gothic Revival, glass-painting was completely reinvented and stained-glass windows and glass-painters became standard parts of Victorian culture. Writers tend to be preoccupied with the question of whom to credit with the revival of stained glass, and this tends to disguise the nature of the

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The revival of stained glass

Victorian revival. No individual, whether it be Charles Winston, or A. W. N. Pugin, or William Morris, revived stained glass in the nineteenth century. By its very nature the revival was a vast collective effort taking place in a wide range of places. The market for stained glass was made up of those who wanted to buy it and those who were prepared to try and make it, and everyone who fulfilled one of these roles was part of the revival. Winston, Pugin and Morris influenced the revival but so did people like John Toms, Joseph Bell and Robert Beer.

Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6 7 8

9

10

For recent studies of the Great Exhibition see: J. A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) and J. R. Davis, The Great Exhibition (Stroud: Sutton, 1999). For jury reports see Reports by the juries on the Subjects in the Thirty Classes into which the Exhibition was Divided, 4 vols (London: Spicer Brothers, 1852). For Minton see vol. 3, pp. 1187–1188. Charles Winston was named as an ‘associate’ to the jury of Class 24. The report and prizes for stained glass are recorded in Reports by the Juries. The verdicts on the stained glass in the North Gallery can be found in vol. 4 under Class 30, Division C, Section C2. There is also some detailed commentary on stained glass in the ‘Supplementary Report’, also in vol. 4, pp. 1556, 1557. This includes a commentary on Hardman’s glass in the Medieval Court. T. Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). For a useful summary of scholarship on the Great Exhibition (including comments on Richards) see L. Purbrick, ‘Introduction’, in L. Purbrick (ed.), The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 1–25. S. Baylis, ‘Glass Painting in Britain c. 1760–1840: A Revolution in Taste’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1989. See D. Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), pp. 14–15. See The Silber and Flemming Glass and China Book: The Classic Victorian Illustrated Pattern Catalogue of English and Foreign Ornamental Tableware, Glassware, Chandeliers, Mirrors, Flower Stands, Lamps, Stained Glass, Sterling Silver, and Electroplated Goods, etc. (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1990). This original of this catalogue is held in the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum, precise date uncertain. Pugin stated to Hardman that Willement deliberately declined to enter competitions and in this way preserved his upmarket status; see S. Shepherd, The Stained Glass of A. W. N. Pugin c. 1835–52’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1997), pp. 42–44. Theoretically the council medal was not superior to the prize medal but was awarded for different qualities. In practice the much more sparsely distributed council medal had far more status than the prize medal. See J. R. Davis, The Great Exhibition (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 162–163.

175

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11

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12 13

14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Maréchal seems to have produced a vast quantity of stained glass in the midnineteenth century. For a discussion of his glass stamping and printing innovations see F. Roussel, ‘Impressions sur verre’, Vitrea, 3 (1989), 28–33. Another article in the same issue of the periodical states that Maréchal produced 57,000 square metres of glass between 1837 and 1867 (but gives no source); see V. Costa, ‘Adolphe Didron, parfait exemple d’un art de producteur: le vitrail XIX’, Vitrea, 3 (1989), 16. Ecclesiologist, 12 (1851), 182–183. Builder, 9 (1851), 774. A note appears at the bottom of the page: ‘The following is a portion only of a communication complaining of ill-treatment by Jury XXX in the Great Exhibition (Section, Stained Glass), and objecting that the only medal given to an English firm was awarded to the partner of a member of the jury. The personal portion of the letter, however, we do not publish.’ Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 8 September 1849. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 15 September 1849. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 13 June 1849. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 20 June 1849. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 9 August 1851. It is a sad reflection on our contemporary attitude to Victorian stained glass that that window has now been removed, only to be replaced by a contemporary window of questionable quality. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 28 May 1850. My italics. J. M. Neale, Hierologus: or, the Church Tourists (London, 1843). Neale, Hierologus, p. 27. J. Leech, The Church-Goer: Being a Series of Sunday Visits to the Various Churches of Bristol (Bristol: Light and Ridler, 1845); J. Leech, The Church-Goer. Rural rides; or Calls at Country Churches. To Which are Added, Notices of the Reverends Drs. Pusey, loseph Wolff, Henry Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, and Francis Close, Vicar of Cheltenham (Bristol: John Ridler, 1847); J. Leech, The Bristol Church Goer: His Visits to Bitton, &c. (Bristol: John Ridler, 1849); J. Leech, Supplemental Papers by the Church-Goer. Making the Fourth Collection from the Same Source (Bristol: W. George’s Sons, 1888). A selection from the Church-Goer has been reprinted; see A. Sutton (ed.), Rural Rides of the Bristol Churchgoer Joseph Leech (Gloucester: Sutton, 1982). J. Leech, The Church-Goer (1847), pp. 97–98. J. Leech, The Bristol Church-Goer (1849), p. 7. J. Leech, The Church-Goer (1847), p. 172. J. Leech, The Church-Goer (1850), p. 103. See M. Belcher (ed.), The Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 290. The 1830s was a period of transition for the glass industry. Crown glass was gradually being replaced by ‘sheet’ glass, which was made using an improved version of the ‘muff process’. It is difficult to be precise about exactly which process was used to make coloured pot metal because this is normally just referred to as ‘coloured glass’ rather than ‘crown glass’ or ‘sheet glass’. For details of the glass industry see T. C. Barker, The Glassmakers Pilkington: The Rise of an International Company 1826– 1976 (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1977).

The revival of stained glass

29 30

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31

32 33 34

35 36

37

38 39

40

41 42 43

44

45 46

Added to this is the fact that the glass manufacturers did not pass on all of this saving to their clients; see Barker, The Glassmakers, p. 79. See AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 26 June 1849. The order came to £35, but included a single lancet window filled with quarries, which would probably have cost about £1. See AAD, London, 1996/9, Jobs book 1843–1856, 7 June 1850. The rate for this glass works out at 33s per foot, as much as Bell ever charged for glass in the period covered by the Jobs book. T. Hoppern, The Mid Victorian Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 33. Hoppern, The Mid Victorian Generation, p. 34. Letter C. M. Yonge to Mrs Cooke-Trench (formerly Miss Heathcote), Otterbourne, Winchester, 16 February 1869. Printed in C. R. Coleridge, Charlotte Mary Yonge: Her Life and Letters (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 295. Although the window is signed Michael O’Connor, Michael O’Connor’s eyesight had failed by this stage and the hand is that of his son Arthur O’Connor. See C. Brooks, The Gothic Revival (London: Phaidon, 1999), pp. 282–289. For details of English nineteenth-century stained glass exported to the British Empire see J. Zimmer, Stained Glass in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984) and F. Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand: A Catalogue Raisonée (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998). This diagram shows all the known windows described by architectural guides, Thomas Kendrick’s index and my own surveys of architectural periodicals, which cover the period 1840 to 1860. For a recent and thorough study of Preedy see M. Kemey, The Stained Glass of Frederick Preedy (1820–1898) (London: Ecclesiological Society, 2001). Haward, Nineteenth Century Norfolk Stained Glass, p. 132 and M. Seaborne, Victorian and later stained glass in Flintshire churches’, Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society, 35 (1999), 115–142. Ray executed a window in the South Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, which Pevsner identifies as eighteenth-century. Ray also installed significant amounts of glass in the nave, much of which survives in the tracery lights; see Taunton Courier, 28 June 1843, 19 July 1843, 9 August 1843. The heraldic glass in the south aisle of St James, Taunton is in my opinion (based on stylistic factors) also Ray’s. Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, 22 June 1852. Builder, 17 (1859), 558 and Builder, 20 (1862), 718. For a discussion of the financial problems of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. in the 1860s see C. Harvey and J. Press, William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 51. For reviews of the stained glass in the 1862 Exhibition see Builder, 20 (1862), 577, 578 and Ecclesiologist, 21 (1862), 173. For details of the medals awarded see Reports by the Juries. Stained glass was exhibited in Class 34, ‘Glass’. Reports by the Juries, p. 2. Clayton and Bell exhibited a window at the 1862 exhibition without any archaeological framework. A line drawing of their exhibit is illustrated in The Art

177

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47 48

49 50

Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the 1862 Exhibition, p. 138. Hardman’s entry survives in the east window of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s great church, St George at Doncaster. Bell Archive 10, letter Charles Winston to Joseph Bell, 29 April 1852. See Builder, 19 (1861), 598. This letter includes a long quotation from Powell, who was responding to Burges’s original letter. Initially Burges complained that Powell’s glass was overpriced and that he kept all the best pieces for his own windows. For original letter see Builder, 19 (1861), 529. M. Milgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 54–56. Thomas Hardy, ‘The Young Glass-Stainer,’ Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (London: Macmillan, 1929), 212. This collection was first published in 1917.

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Index

Note: page numbers in italic refer to illustrations. Abbotsham, Devon, St Helen 84 Alfmgton, Devon, St James 44 antique glass 19, 24, 43, 48, 56–7, 96–7, 119– 20, 140n.38, 173–4 Axminster, Devon, St Mary 48 Aylesbeare, Devon, Blessed Virgin Mary 90, 93 Ayshford, Devon, Ayshford Chapel 67 Bagot, Richard 115–16 Bailie, Benjamin 171 Bailie, Edward 159, 171 Ballantine, James 17 Banwell, Somerset, St Andrew 46 Barnett family 171 Bathealton, Somerset, St Bartholomew 68, 70–1, 72, 73 Beer, Alfred style and design 92–101 training 91 Beer, Elizabeth 78, 79, 80, 92 Beer, Robert and amateur glass-painters 87–90 and EDAS 85–7 face painting 81–3 Beer, Susan 80, 92 Beer studio 79–80 Bell, Joseph and BWEAS 114–20, 122–3, 128 early commissions 110–14 education and background 107–8 growth of business 121–3 and high-church patrons 128–31 prices 131–5 sources of technical information 108–10 stylistic development 123–8 Betton, John 171

Bicton, Devon, St Mary 46 Bingham, Nottinghamshire, St Mary and All Saints 117 Bontemps, Georges 22 Bradford-on-Tone, Somerset, St Giles 61, 68, plate 8 Bradninch, Devon, St Disen 67 Brampford Speke, Devon, St Peter 48 Bristol Clifton, Christchurch 128 Frenchay 123–4, 124 Bristol and West of England Architectural Society 9, 15, 114–20, 122–3, 128 Broadhembury, Devon, St Andrew 44 Buckerell, Devon, St Mary and St Giles 46 Buckfastleigh, Devon, Holy Trinity 79, 99 Buckland Dinham, Somerset, St Michael and All Angels 118, 119, 164, 165 Buckland St Mary, Somerset, St Mary 1, 1–2, 3, 4, 9–10, 24–7, 47, 48, 154n.20, plate 1, plate 2, plate 3 Builder, The 16, 118, 172, 173 Burges, William 174 Burlescombe, Devon, St Mary 48, 65, 66, 67 Butterfield, William 14, 115, 128, 146, 147, 149 BWEAS see Bristol and West of England Architectural Society Cambridge Camden Society 9, 10–13, 14–15, 20–1 Carter, E. J. 114, 119–20 CCS see Cambridge Camden Society Chagford, Devon, St Michael 80, 96–7, plate 10 Chance and Co. 171

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180

Index

Cheddon Fitzpaine, Somerset, Blessed Virgin Mary 125, plate 16 Cheriton Bishop, Devon, St Mary 45 Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon, St Matthew 99, 119 Chudleigh, Devon, St Martin and St Mary 84–5, plate 12 church-building state funding 4 and John Toms 73 Church of England 2–3 see also Oxford Movement Church-Goer, The 162–3 Churchstanton, Somerset, St Peter and St Paul 170 church tourism 161–3 Clatworthy, Somerset, St Mary Magdalene 55, 56, 61, 62, 68, 71 Claudet and Houghton 104n. ll, 158, 173 Clayhidon, Devon, St Andrew 170 Clayton, J. R. 139n.34, 172 Clayton and Bell 24–5, 172, 177n.46 closed parish 3–4 Clutterbuck, Charles 171 Clyst St George, Devon, St George 45 Coalpit Heath, Gloucestershire, St Saviour 114–15, 162–3 Cockerell, C. R. 158 Colaton Raleigh, Devon, St John the Baptist 99, 101 Coleridge, J. D. 14, 42, 145–52 Coleridge family 85, 90 Cologne Cathedral, Germany 135 Combe Raleigh, Devon, St Nicholas 90 Combe St Nicholas, Somerset, St Nicholas 61, 62, 63, 68, 72, 73 Corfe, Somerset, St Nicholas 48 Cricket Malherbie, Somerset, St Mary Magdalene 47 Cruwys Morchard, Devon, Holy Cross 82, 90 Culmstock, Devon, All Saints 170 Dare, William 172 Denison, G. A. 8, 65, 116, 129–131 Divett, Edward 101 Dixes and Williams 111–14, 122, 132, 135 Drake, Frederick 79–80, 92, 103 Dulverton, Somerset, All Saints 94, plate 13 Dunkeswell Abbey, Devon 88

Dunsford, Devon, St Mary 80–1, 82, 86–7, plate 11 East Brent, Somerset, St Mary the Virgin 117, 129, 130, 129–31, 137 Ecclesiological Society see Cambridge Camden Society Ecclesiologist, The 10–15, 19, 20–1, 41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 64, 78, 88, 99, 119, 120, 133–4, 146, 159, 172–3 ecclesiology 8–9 see also Bristol and West of England Architectural Society; Cambridge Camden Society; Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society; Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society EDAS see Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society Eland, G. H. 128 Evans, David 171 Exeter Exwick, St Andrew’s Chapel 78, 80–1, 81, 86 Heavitree, St Michael and All Angels 79, 90, 94 Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society 15, 46, 54, 66, 67, 74, 78, 82, 85–91, 103, 146, 169 Exeter Flying Post 79, 84, 87, 90, 99–101 Exminster, Devon, St Martin 97, 98, 99 Exwick see Exeter Filleigh, Devon, St Paul 80, 93, 96–9, plate 9 Forrest and Bromley 171 Franks, A. W. 23–4 Fulford, J. L. 86, 89–90, 102 Garratt family 142, 144, 153 Gérente, Alfred 49, 159 Gérente, Henri 22, 48–9, 139n.34 Gibbs, Alexander and Charles 171 Giles, G. E. 77n.45 glass tax 163 glazing trade 54, 55, 110–14 Great Exhibition 16, 20, 22, 44, 55, 59, 68, 74, 155–9, plate 19 Greinton, Somerset, St Michael 92 Hall and Sons/Hall and Peddar 111, 132 Halse, Somerset, St James 102

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Index

Hardman, John see John Hardman and Co. Hardy, Thomas 174 Harrison, Martin 41, 172 Hartland, Devon, St Nectan 102 Hartland Abbey, Devon 102 Hayward, John 46, 77n.44, 86, 142 Hedgeland, George 171 Hierologus 161–2 Holland, William 171 Hughes, Henry 47, 53n.64 Huntsham, Devon, All Saints 42 iconography 25–6, 70–1, 84, 101, 143–5, 151–2 International Exhibition of 1862 172–3 Jameson, Anna 59–61, 119 James Powell and Sons 19, 24, 43, 48, 123, 173–4 Jervais, Thomas 11, 34 John Hardman and Co. 42–5, 79, 149–51, 152, 159, 161, 171, 172 King, J. & J. 171 Knowstone, Devon, St Peter 58, 64 Lance, Edwin 1–2, 3–4, 8, 9–10, 24–7 Langford Budville, Somerset, St Peter 70, 72, Lardner see Porter, G. R. Lasteyrie du Saillant, Ferdinand Charles de 22, 23 Lavers and Barraud 172 Leech, Joseph 162–3 Lympsham, Somerset, St Christopher 167, 168 Mackintosh, David 84, 90, 92 Mamhead, Devon, St Thomas the Martyr plate 5 Maréchal and Guynon 159 Medley, John 86–90 memorial windows 26–7, 84, 101, 144, 147, 166–8 Merrick of Bristol 113, 133 Miles, Mary 116–17, 117 Miles, Robert 116 Miles family 116 Milverton, Somerset, St Nicholas 61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73 Minton, Herbert 156

181

Morris, Marshall Faulkner and Company 172–3 Moysey, H. G. 70, 72–3 Neale, J. M. 114, 161–2 Nettlecombe, Somereset, St Mary 68 Nixon, James Henry 18, 47 Nonconformists 2 Nynehead, Somerset, All Saints 56, 58, 59, 65, 66, 68, 71, plate 4, plate 7 O’Connor, Arthur 1, 47, 139n.34 O’Connor, Michael 1, 24, 25, 46–7, 128, 130, 131, 146–8, 161, 167–8 Oldridge, Devon, Oldridge Chapel 80, 82, 90 Ottery St Mary, Devon, St Mary the Virgin 14, 42, 44, 46, 47, 145–52, 148, 149, 150, 161, 164, plate 18 Oxford, New College 11 Oxford Movement 7–8, 9–10, 65, 70, 128 Palmer, Phillip 172 Pearse family 101 Peckitt, William 35–7 Philpotts, Henry 85 Pilkington 171 Porter, G. R. 23, 108–10, 137 Poughill, Devon, St Michael and All Angels 99, 100, 101, 105n.37 Powell see James Powell and Sons Powell, Arthur 48 Powell, John Hardman 43–4, 79 Preedy, Frederick 171 pricing 40, 41, 62–4, 101, 131–5, 163–6, 174 see also Bell, Joseph; Toms, John Pugin, A. W. N. 5–7, 42–5, 146, 149–51, 158– 9, 163, 175 Quarterly Papers on Architecture 16, 23, 119 Rattery, Devon, Blessed Virgin Mary 58, 107, 111–14, 112, 125, plate 6, plate 14 Ray, William 172, 177n.40 Redgrave, Richard 158 regional glass-painters 170–2 restoration of medieval stained glass 68, 119– 20, 123, 129–31 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 34 Itichards, Henry 128, 131 Richards, Thomas 156–7

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Rogers, George 171 Rolle, Louisa, Lady 14, 46, 147 Roman Catholic Church 2, 22, 65, 116, 171 Sacred and Legendary Art 60 Sandford, Devon, St Swithun 133 Sanford, E. A. 65 Sanford, John 66–7 Sanford family 55, 60, 65–7, 72–3 SANHS see Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Scott, John and Son 171 shading technique 11–13, 57–8 Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury 8, 159–61 Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 9, 15, 24, 65, 66, 72, 169 Sotheby, T. H. 70, 72 South Molton, Devon, St Mary Magdalene 92, 94, 95, 97, 101, 102 Sowton, Devon, St Michael and All Angels 142–5, 153, plate 17 Splatt, William 79, 80 stained-glass market role of regional glass-painters 170–2 spread of 37–40, 71–2, 101, 168–70 Starcross, Devon, St Paul 125 St Enodoc, Cornwall 73 Stephenson, Henry 167–8 St Helens Crown Glass Company 131 St Minver, Cornwall, St Minnefreda 73 Stock and Sharpe of Birmingham 119 Stoke Cannon, Devon, St Mary Magdalene 44 Street, G. E. 14–15 Tattershall, Lincolnshire, Holy Trinity 11 TEDAS see Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society Thome family 101 Thorpe, Thomas 114–15 Thorverton, Devon, St Thomas of Canterbury 82, 83, 84, 90 Toms, John archive 54–5, 69 design sources 59–62 Great Exhibition 59, 74, 158 iconography 70–1 market 71–2

materials and techniques 55–8 painting technique 57–8 patronage 65–7, 72–3 prices 62–4 Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society 14, 62, 85, 86, 146 Trent, Dorset, St Andrew 27, 31n.83, 125, 159–61, 160, plate 15, plate 20 Troyte, Arthur Acland 42 Tuckingmill, Cornwall, All Saints 123, 136 Turner, W. H. 9, 27, 31n.83, 125, 164 Upton Pyne, Devon, Our Lady 44 Waagen, C 158 Wailes, William 13, 20, 25, 40–2, 96, 146, 152, 159–61, 160, 163, 169, 170, 171 Ward, Thomas 47, 158 Ward and Hughes 45, 47–8, 171 Ward and Nixon 47–8, 144 Warrington, William 14, 17, 20–2, 23, 45–6, 56–7, 117–18, 146, 147–9, 152, 158, 161 Weale, John 24 Webb, Benjamin 114 Wellington, Somerset 54, 65, 71 St John the Baptist 73 Wells, Somerset, Bishops Chapel 115–16, 129 Wells, Thomas 172 West Buckland, Somerset, St Mary 61, 68, 69, 71, 73 West Quantoxhead, Somerset, St Ethelreda 47, 48 Willement, Thomas 37–40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 115, 117–18, 142–5, 153, 158, 163 Wilmshurst, Thomas 171 Winston, Charles correspondence with Joseph Bell 41, 47, 49, 119–23 development of antique glass 173–4 influence at Great Exhibition 156, 158–9 An Inquiry 17–20, 57, 61–2, 63, 96, 109 Woodforde, Christopher 130 Wrington, Somerset, All Saints 126, 127 Yarrington, Samuel 171 Yonge, Charlotte 164–6