XLVIII (2024) The Journal of Stained Glass Centenary Issue

A very special issue celebrating a hundred years of stained glass publishing. Much-expanded, this Centenary Issue features facsimile articles from the very first volume, revealing founding purposes and continuing goals and with content spanning stained glass enterprise from its historical origins to work by contemporary artists. Editor Sandra Coley looks back on twenty-five years of editing The Journal of Stained Glass.

Medieval stained glass is examined in the reprint of Noel Heaton’s ‘Materials of the Medieaval Glass Painter’ with new commentary by Steve Clare, and an analysis of Winchester College Chapel’s remarkable glazing scheme and its radical ‘restoration’ by David Evans in 1821-28. The scientific and experimental development of Victorian pot-metal glass by James Powell & Sons and Charles Winston is put sharply into cultural context with new research into Winston’s family connections to the Caribbean slave economy. Late Victorian studio practice is uncovered in a documentary analysis of the archives of John Hardman & Co. in Birmingham. Twentieth-century stained glass design is explored in Peter Cormack’s study of Charles Connick’s poetic Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost panels for Newtonville Library in the Boston suburbs. A supplementary list of work by influential artist Martin Travers and a pioneering review of Pilgrim Wetton’s Post-War windows both build on research first published in our Glass House Special Issue (2017).

An impressive cornucopia of Contemporary Glass has full coverage of the BSMGP’s Inspired by William Morris travelling exhibition, plus engaging articles by Sarah Knighton on preparing all aspects of a competition entry and by Julia Gonyou on studying etching techniques with Judith Schaechter thanks to an American Glass Guild scholarship. Current teaching at the City & Guilds of London Art School emphasises its interdisciplinary focus on fine arts, craft and design. A rich portfolio of commissions and exhibition pieces by fifteen of the BSMGP’s Fellows and Associates is accompanied by the Glaziers Company’s report on recent prizes and awards.

A superbly illustrated account of new conservation work on the two Connick panels discussed earlier opens a dialogue on the function and artistry of lead and the importance of preserving an artist’s original intentions. In-depth reviews follow, along with obituaries for our first Editor, Maurice Drake, and for our late Fellows Paul San Casciani and Jane Gray, as well as for Australian historian and contributor Karla Whitmore, and long-time BSMGP member and eminent NADFAS Church Recorder Angela Goedicke.