he 1850s saw a major revival in the manufacture of stained glass, largely due to the collaboration between Charles Winston and James Powell & Sons. Charles Winston (1814-1865) was a barrister who had spent years devoted to the study of medieval, Renaissance, and modern stained glass. In 1847 his book An Inquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Painting, by an Amateur was published in Oxford. In the late 1840s, early 1850s, Winston had collected medieval stained glass and had a series of physical and chemical investigations made of it so this type of glass could be reproduced. Dr. Henry Medlock from the Royal College of Chemistry aided him in his investigations. Winston then worked successfully with Edward Green, the chemist of James Powell & Sons, to make this new glass with the same rich pure colour and brilliant translucency of medieval glass.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s James Powell & Sons turned to progressive artists, such as Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, E. J. Poynter, and Albert Moore, to provide them with designs for stained glass. In 1862, with the formation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Burne-Jones began to design exclusively for them. Powell's initially asked Moore to be Burne-Jones successor as its principal designer, but Moore was unwilling to do this and instead suggested his friend Henry Holiday/a>. In December 1862 Mr. Moberly, the head of James Powell & Sons stained-glass works, approached Holiday and asked him to produce some designs for them. Holiday, who had never done anything of this kind before, accepted the commission. Holiday began work at the office of his friend, the architect William Burges. Burges gave him valuable assistance with technical points, and allowed Holiday to consult his books on stained glass.
Holiday and other designers created a Victorian style of stained glass. The tiny Gothic figure scenes set in a vast quarry background were replaced by large and clearly read figures in cool tones clad in classical draperies. As the Hadleys have remarked:
Windows of the 1860's are to modern eyes particularly enjoyable, as artists and craftsmen revelled in the quality and colour range of the glass which was newly available, and commercial pressures had not yet built up enough to remove the sense of freshness and enthusiasm. The best designs are clear and direct, composed in a limited number of planes, with perspective implied rather than directly stated. In Holiday's own words 'the limitations of decorative art ought to be a source of inspiration, not hindrance.' Today we may disagree with the opinion of Holiday in old age, who preferred his later and more complex designs. [55-56]
Bibliography
Cormack, Peter. Henry Holiday 1839–1927. London: William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, 1989, 1-2.
Hadley, Dennis and Joan Hadley. “Henry Holiday, 1839-1927.” The Journal of Stained Glass XIX (1989-90): 48-69.
Holiday, Henry. “Modernism in Art.” The Builder LVIII (March 22, 1890): 212-15.
“The Decorative Work of Mr. Henry Holiday.” The Studio XLVI (1909): 106-15.
Waters, William and Alastair Carew-Cox. Angels & Icons. Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1850-1870. Abbots Morton, Worcester: Seraphim Press, 2012.
Created 21 January 2023