News and events

After many years working almost exclusively on stained glass in Wales, a new project will start work cataloguing stained glass in the North West of England. Beginning in the area around Chester, the Wirral, and Liverpool, I will be recording stained glass from all kinds of buildings. Complementing this work, I will also be adding many more windows to the Stained Glass in Wales catalogue, particularly across the border in Flintshire and Denbighshire, and in and around Cardiff. This will be the foundation for comparative studies between Liverpool and Cardiff, and across the border from North Wales into Cheshire.

A new website cataloguing work associated with the teaching and making of stained glass in Swansea is now available. Addition of work to the website for the Swansea Stained Glass Archive was funded by the Colwinston Trust, building on pilot work funded by the University of Wales Trinity St David. It includes hundreds of panels, mainly student work, in the archive of Swansea College of Art, as well as cartoons from Glantawe Studios.

I was invited to speak at the Biblical Landscapes event in Bangor on 10 June, and gave a talk on the connections between the Welsh Landscape and the Bible. I will be returning to Bangor to speak at a symposium at the cathedral on 13 September.

I will also be speaking at conferences in Münster and Aberystwyth in September. The Gorwelion (Horizons) conference in Aberystwyth will celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, where I have been based for most of the last twenty-six years.

A second edition of Jonathan Cooke's guide for glass painting, Time and Temperature, is being published in August by Sulien Books, with copies available from the artist's website.

 

New publications by Sulien Books

Two new books on stained glass were published by Sulien Books in the spring of 2025. One describes the stained glass at the Church of St John the Evangelist at Porthmadog, and the other is the first publication by Sulien Books on a church outside Wales – on the stained glass at Holy Trinity Church, Ashford-in-the-Water, in Derbyshire. It was researched and written by Ian Pykett, with photography by Martin Crampin. This is the first publication by Sulien Books for a church outside of Wales, hopefully the first of many! The six windows at Ashford-in-the Water are all by different makers, including a west window by Morris & Co, with figures designed by Edward Burne-Jones, one of which is featured on the cover. At Porthmadog, about half of the windows can be attributed to Lavers & Westlake, and a couple of windows commemorate managers of the Ffestiniog Railway.

 

More work for the Curious Travellers Project

In April 2024 I designed a book with colleagues at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies for the Curious Travellers project. This accompanies an exhibition, which I also designed the information panels for, at Greenfield Valley Heritage Park near Holywell.

Around the same time I set up a website for Whitford church as part of a strategy to make it into a Heritage Hub for the area, and am writing a booklet on the church with my colleague Mary-Ann Constantine. I also designed explanatory panels and a booklet for a further project exhibition at Gilbert White's House in Selborne, Hampshire, in spring 2025, working with colleagues from the Natural History Museum and the University of Cambridge.

 

Capturing the Moment Symposium, Swansea

A day symposium at Swansea College of Art was held on 25 November 2023 to reflect on the stained glass archives in Swansea College of Art and elsewhere in Wales. Speakers included Dr Jasmine Allen (Stained Glass Museum, Ely), Dr Reinhard Köpf (Heritage Department, Mönchengladbach) and some of the major figures in British architectural stained glass artists who trained or taught on the Stained Glass course in Swansea.

Alexander Beleschenko, Amber Hiscott and Rodney Bender recalled their time in Swansea College of Art in a panel discussion, as well as the German artists who were invited over to Swansea by Tim Lewis, head of the stained glass course from 1972 until 1995.

A visit to see the stained glass at Coychurch Crematorium took place on the following day, when Roger Hayman, Rodney Bender, Alex Beleschenko and Christian Ryan spoke about their work for the crematorium. I have been working on a book about the stained glass at Coychurch Crematorium that I hope wil be published in 2025.

 

 

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