Glass ‘richly peint’

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 15

Glass ‘richly peint’

The fourth article, and photograph, by

FIONA LITTLE in

a series on stained-glass windows.

The recess in the south nave wall of Christ’s College Chapel contains an arresting and rare treasure. It is one of only two stained glass windows designed by John Piper and made by Patrick Reyntiens to .be found outside Britain. The other, carried out over 1973-4, is in the Episcopalian Cathedral, Washington D.C.

Reyntiens is the sole executor of Piper’s designs, although be does fabricate his own works and those of a few other artists. They are justly considered to be the best modern, English exponents of stained glass.

Demonstrating the usefulness of the collaboration between a designer and an excellent craftsman, some of the most successful glass of recent years has been the result of such partnerships.

The above work, dating 1968, commemorates Canon Ernest Courtenay Crosse, headmaster and chaplain at Christ’s College from 1921 to 1930. He was also for some time rector of a church in Henley-on-Thames, England, near Piper’s home. Depicting the Tree and River of Life, the window displays a careful balance of turquoise, scarlet, purple, and azure hues. Although this is a unique piece it represents a favourite theme of Piper’s and he has drafted other quite different designs of the same subject. The background portions have been matted with paint (later fired on in a kiln), while the bodies of the tree and ■ river left clear and untouched, create areas of flickering intensity.

Both had extensive art training and are distinguished in a variety of fields. Piper, an official war artist during the Second World War, is a poet and painter and has made designs for opera with Benjamin Britten. Reyntiens is author of the definitive book "The Technique of Stained Glass,” and a painter as well. They are theoreticians on the function of stained glass in architecture and as an art form, strongly criticising the conservative tastes of ecclesiastical patronage which they argue has held back modern developments. Although having worked together since 1950 — their first commission came in

1954 for the Oundle School Chapel, Northamptonshire. One art historian and glass critic has described this work as among the first English endeavours to “produce stained glass which looked as though it actually belonged to the twentieth century.” To a large extent windows had been tradition-bound in concept and execution, or the products of a concern with craftmanship for its own sake. It would take strong designs coupled with a new outlook on the special requirements of the medium to make the skilful transition to modernism achieved far earlier in other art forms.

Piper has revolutionised stained glass design, and combined with Reyntien’s painterly approach, raised it from an element of church decoration to an integral part of architecture displaying colour in bold abstraction, without formlessness. Well known Piper—Reyntiens projects include examples in Windsor Castle, Eton College, the Great Baptistry Window in Coventry Cathedral and the Corona in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool.