Exhibition ‘Inspired by William Morris’
Online gallery
We invite all Members to create a 30cm square exhibition panel in response to the theme Inspired by William Morris. Your panel can be made with traditional stained glass techniques or with contemporary and experimental methods. We look forward to seeing your work, whether you are a professional, an enthusiast or a novice. If you are not already a Member you can join here to enter.
All work should be new and can interpreted the theme in any way you choose. We are hoping for a wide range of work that reflects William Morris’ varied creative, social and intellectual achievements. You can watch a free webinar that launched the project here.
Stained glass is an art form that takes time and thought to create. By studying the past we can look at the craft afresh and communicate it to a modern audience. We would like this exhibition to help inspire a new generation of people to work with stained glass and commission it for public buildings and homes as William Morris succeed in doing.
Entry to the online exhibition is free and work can be added until December 2025. You can submit up to three panels for the online exhibition by sending a high-resolution image to portfolio@bsmgp.org.uk. You must include your name, title, medium/techniques and up to 60 words about your piece.
We have commissioned a new display stand sponsored by Morris & Co to showcase 24 exhibits. A panel of experts from the Master Glass Painters, Sanderson and the The Stained Glass Museum made an initial selection of panels for the touring exhibition.
All panels for the tour MUST fit within an aluminium opening exactly 30cm square and 15mm deep. We recommend all panels, including fused glass, are made with a 12mm edge lead that can be trimmed to 297mm x 297mm if necessary. All work on tour is for sale and should be priced to include a 40% commission fee. We will change the panels on display periodically and sold work will leave the exhibition so there will be an opportunity for other panels to be displayed. There is a £30 selection fee to enter the tour. Please email portfolio@bsmgp.org.uk if you would like your panel to be considered for venues.
The exhibition launched at the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge 23-26 August 2024 and then moved to the Stained Glass Museum in Ely. It is currently on display at the stunning Rochdale Town Hall where it will be open to the public until mid February 2025. More venues may be announced later.
Enjoy the online exhibition. Just click on the image to scroll through the panels. We will add more as they are submitted.
Fused frit and glass painted with Reusche paint. "This interpretation of 'The Forest' depicts the hare, a sacred and mystical animal to Celts. 'When our green fields and clear waters, nay the very air we breathe are turned... to dirt... let us eat and drink for we die - choked by filth.' William Morris was a visionary on the environment foretelling the crisis we are in."
Lamberts Antique and recycled float glass: etched, painted, stained, laminated and assembled with lead came. "Through observation of nature and my working process I am constructing my own tree of knowledge. Branching into so many areas of exploration and discovery makes me aware of nature’s awesomely creative, destructive and regenerative powers. As with Morris, Art for me is also a way of celebrating life in its myriad forms but in our contemporary world it is also a way of communicating, connecting and coping with new challenges."
Stained glass panel, relief printed images, sandblasting, engraving and copper foil. “William Morris’ skilful use of the repetition of motifs from nature is the inspiration for this panel. The rhythmic cycles of nature are echoed by the recurrence of the principal image of parrots, mirrored and reflected, creating a sense of continuity and harmony; the later qualities, once taken for granted, now thrown into doubt by industrial practices and climate change.”
Traditionally painted and leaded glass. “My aim for this panel was to depict the ‘artist manifesting design’. A moment though sometimes fleeting, often navigates an entire project of work. Inspired by candid photos taken of Morris relaxing with friends and one of his most recognisable flora prints.”
Kiln fired paints on English Antique, Lamberts and Tatra glass. "My red listed starlings in the red listed craft of stained glass using some near extinct English antique glass. The abstract paint marks echoing a murmuration and the graphic lead line and pattern repeat echoing the flowing lines of a Morris ethos. I think he would have more than a murmur to say on the current state of our planet. Morris: The disruptor."
St.Just red on green flash glass, hand drawn, sand carved, etched & painted, leaded and copper foiled, gilded. "Weaving together a pattern from the Great Mosque in Isfahan with a William Morris design. East meets West harmoniously. As William Morris himself said in 1882 'To us pattern designers, Persia has become a holy land, for there in the process of time our art was perfected, and thence above all places it spread to cover for a while the world, East and West.' The edge is inspired from a medieval book of hours."
Leaded glass panel using Oceanside seedy and Spectrum coloured glass, glass paint and enamels, silver stain and sandblasting. "Morris as a teenager rides through Epping Forest. The image centres around inspiration from the Pre-Raphaelite vision of medieval chivalry, and nature, and their place in the Arts and Crafts movement. References to 'Trellis, and Morris' love of woven garden fences are included. I was aware of the importance of the William Morris Gallery during my time living in Walthamstow."
Antique and slab glass painted and fired including blue enamel. "I’ve had a fabulous ruby slab that I thought looked like a magical strawberry for more than 30 years. I’ve had a superb green slab that I couldn’t bear to cut for a similar time. I had a small amount of lovely but obsolete transparent blue enamel. I loved the accounts of Morris having permanently blue- stained hands from obsessive experimentation with Indigo. All these things came together. The image can simply be seen as a colour study, or other things may be read into it."
Mouthblown glass, paint, enamels, stain and appliqued in resin to a backing sheet. "The original inspiration came from the 'Woodpecker Tapestry' c 1885 at the William Morris Gallery in London. A further inspiration came from two of Turners most significant works – Shade and Darkness and Light and Colour – Goethe’s Theory and Moses writing the Book of Genesis. The result is positive and negative. After darkness there is light."
Fused glass appliqued to a backing sheet. "An explosion of colour."
Flashed glass, glass paint with dip-pen, enamels, sandblasting, Dremel etching. "I was inspired by Morris' words 'There is no square mile of earth's inhabitable surface that is not beautiful in it's own way, if we men will only abstain from Wilfully destroying that beauty'. My concept represents the constant beauty of nature battling against man's selfish destruction of it."
Leaded panel with traditional paint, silver stain, fusing, copper foil inlay, sterling silver arm and antique roundel. "A depiction of William Morris' famous poem. For me this represents a journey of two lovers from the white house to the sea. The path through the bright greens and flowers of nature with the lonely greys near the sun gods home to the close embrace and the precious reaching of human hands. The beautiful and enticing boundary of the seashore. The antique sun reaching from the past and onward."
Mouth-blown glass, sandblasted, painted and fired with traditional glass paints and enamels. "Inspired by Morris’s iconic patterns and his environmentalism, my design draws on our climate crisis and the dramatic extinction rates of wildlife in Hawaii. Focusing on beautiful Hawaiian honeycreeper birds, intertwined with their habitat to form a pattern."
Stained glass, painted, fired and leaded with gold embellishments. "Continuously inspired by nature around me and by William Morris’s floral designs, this piece started from taking a small element from ‘Tulip and Willow Printed for Textile’ (1873) and making it the focal point of this leaded panel. Considering his ethos of simplicity of design, colour and form I then added lavish elements of sweeping gold to the leaves and more intricate gold detail to the flower head. Celebrating the unique qualities of stained glass, the features of this panel dramatically change depending on the light source; subtle and muted colours become hidden or highlighted along with the painted details and gold embellishments. Both simple and intricate."
Stained glass, vitreous paint & enamel, silver stain. "Chadron is the Cajun word for Thistle. Inspired by Morris’ thistle patterns, I wanted to illustrate a childhood memory of hunting for bull thistles in the fields in Louisiana, sharing the seeds and fluff with the goldfinches, and playing hide and seek before bringing stalks home for supper."
Painted, stained and leaded panel, made using English Antique and Lamberts mouth-blown glass. "This panel pays tribute to William Morris as a maker. It is inspired by Morris' belief in human occupations and his wide range of talents. I was always struck by Morris' fascination with, and obsessive attention to the processes of the creation of the various crafts he and Morris & Co. produced. A small selection of occupations are represented, set within an organic form denoted by the lead line. All have been represented by nature and wildlife, sometimes with a humourous twist. Representing these jobs with processes in nature and wildlife is something which I hope Morris would have appreciated!"
Antique Glass painted and fired. "Inspired by William Morris’ reverence for the beauty and spiritual power of Medieval Art whose eloquence was also used as a vehicle for antiSemitic propaganda. My ‘Guardian Spirit’ is clothed in the heavenly blue of the Wilton Diptych in the London National Gallery. Her angelic wings shelter those incarcerated in darkness, and shield innocents from the never-ending rain of missiles. Her golden aura is fractured by jagged coils of barbed wire and destruction. This panel is a prayer for Justice and true Peace - an end to the eternal cycle of Hatred and Violence now gripping the world."
Design for painted and leaded panel, hand made glass with a bit of silver stain. "William Morris championed the arts and crafts in reaction to industrialisation and mass production. Today’s artists face a similarly hostile environment and stained glass is on the Endangered Red List. The hand of the artist offers up beauty to architecture designed, on purpose, to be bland and slick. The flowers in the bouquet are all ones that inspired William Morris."
Engraved, painted and stained mouth-blown glass. "A portrait of William Morris as a Green Man, drawn at an angle to capture his long and imposing face within the confines of the square panel, and surrounded by foliage inspired by his wallpaper and fabric designs. Colours have been chosen for their vibrancy as well as natural tones."