Preface

David Caron

The original 1988 edition of this Gazetteer was the brainchild of the late Nicola Gordon Bowe, who also wrote the introduction and biographical notes on the artists,1 and she, the late Michael Wynne and I compiled the 800 or so entries. We set out to document all stained glass works known to us, excluding those in private collections, by Harry Clarke2 and the nine artists of An Túr Gloine (Sarah Purser, Alfred Ernest Child, Michael Healy, Catherine O’Brien, Ethel Rhind, Beatrice Elvery, Wilhelmina Geddes, Hubert McGoldrick and Evie Hone). The time frame of the study was essentially determined by the founding of An Túr Gloine in 1903 and the deaths of both Hone and Geddes in 1955, though the last surviving An Túr Gloine artist, Catherine O’Brien, continued to produce windows into the early 1960s. The original Gazetteer also included a number of works made in opus sectile mosaic, which was a side speciality at An Túr Gloine, and we have retained them in this new edition.3

The twin ambitions of this new edition of the Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass were: firstly, to update the original information; and secondly, to include windows by significant artists who were contemporaries of Clarke and those of An Túr Gloine, and in particular to highlight work by those distinguished artists who followed, bringing it up to the present day. By casting a wider net than the original Gazetteer, one has to acknowledge an unavoidable element of subjectivity in the selection and to counter this I have greatly valued the advice of the key contributors and others in the field: historians, researchers and practitioners. Artistic merit, individual voice and excellence

Left: Evie Hone, The Cock and Pot, Vulgo The Betrayal (1945), National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin. Collection NGI. © The artist’s Estate. Photograph © National Gallery of Ireland

in the craft have been key criteria, though as Nicola Gordon Bowe made clear in the original introduction, ‘By no means all the windows listed in this Gazetteer can be regarded as masterpieces.’ The total number of entries in this edition has increased to well over 2,500.

The Gazetteer includes work by those who are generally recognised (and selfidentified) as Irish artists, though not all were necessarily Irish-born, such as Patrick Pye and Patrick Pollen. All the stained glass listed was made on the island with a few exceptions, such as the windows made by Clarke and Geddes in London and those made by Pollen after he moved to North Carolina. We have included the windows made by Kathleen Quigly while in Ireland, but not the large number, over 100, made after she emigrated to South Africa in the mid-1930s. We have not included work by international artists made for Irish churches, but we have included some windows by the Scottish artist John Blyth, created by him during the eight years he worked at Clokey and Company, Belfast.4

Recent investigations have discovered nine new verifiable windows by the artists of An Túr Gloine, including in locations as far away as New York5 and India,6 and we have been able to include eleven missing or previously unrecorded small panels by Evie Hone.7 Through additional research, we have been able to state with certainty which specific artist from this studio was responsible for nearly seventy windows that in the first edition we had only been able to attribute to various artists based on stylistic grounds.

We have included a few new additions by Harry Clarke,8 though in respect of Clarke we have taken a particularly cautious approach. As scholars and enthusiasts of Clarke know, he had a cohort of highly skilled fellow artists trained to execute windows in his distinctive style. Additionally, in his final years he was seriously ill, spending protracted periods convalescing abroad, and there was increasing pressure on others in the studio to create ‘a Harry Clarke’ in order to meet the demand of eager patrons. Without clear documentary evidence determining his precise involvement, one is navigating a minefield of supposition and conjecture.

Nicola Gordon Bowe, in the concluding paragraph of her introduction to the original edition wrote: ‘It is hoped that this study will encourage an appreciation and interest in a little documented area to which Irish artists contributed so much earlier this century.’ This has undoubtedly come to pass and though the considerable loss of both Nicola and Michael’s knowledge and scholarship has made this task more challenging, I have been greatly assisted by a dedicated team of highly knowledgeable researchers and compilers. The specific contribution of these compilers can be found in the acknowledgements and biographical notes on the key artists. Due to their diligence and expertise we are in a position to include complete lists of work – or, in some cases, as near complete as it

has been possible to ascertain – by many ‘new’ artists, including Richard King, Patrick Pye, Patrick Pollen, Helen Moloney, Johnny Murphy, Róisín Dowd Murphy, Phyllis Burke, George W. Walsh and Lua Breen, together with accompanying biographical notes. This has possibly been the most rewarding aspect of compiling this new edition of the Gazetteer, as it has provided an opportunity to highlight the significant artists who followed on after Clarke and those of An Túr Gloine whose work has been largely eclipsed or, in many instances, totally forgotten.

In keeping with the approach of the original Gazetteer, we have generally constrained ourselves to include only those artists who designed and made their own windows (with the assistance of glaziers, etc.) and we did not set out to survey all work by the larger, more commercial firms, where many hands may have been involved in the production process and the role of attribution can become very fraught, if not impossible. Additionally it would have been a vast undertaking. So, with regret, the many hundreds of windows produced by the Harry Clarke Studios, Earley Studios and Abbey Stained Glass Studios, among others, will not be listed here, but we are delighted to note that doctoral-level research into Clarkes and Earleys is underway and will in time shed more light and clarity. We have, however, included a selection of the finest windows created at these and other studios where the attribution of artist/designer is unambiguous.9

It is with sadness that we acknowledge the undeniable trend which has emerged in recent years, that of the high number of places built for religious worship which have shut their doors for a final time. Convent chapels in particular, of which there were hundreds throughout the island, have been quietly closing with increasing regularity; sometimes the stained glass windows have been relocated, sometimes put into longterm storage, sometimes buildings have found a new function, sometimes purchased by developers and left to languish, and sometimes simply abandoned to a very uncertain future. We note that one of Geddes’s finest windows, her Psalm 100, for the former Egremont United Reformed Church, Wallasey, was severely damaged in 2017 when vandals smashed through it in order to enter the church;10 a clear indicator of what can and does happen to stained glass left in abandoned buildings.

A major challenge now and in the coming years will be to see how religious buildings can be appropriately and sensitively repurposed, perhaps ideally for community use. It is generally acknowledged that in most instances relocating a stained glass window should be a last resort as it was made for a specific window opening, taking into account the building’s architecture, the viewing height and its orientation.

One factor which may be contributing to the lack of value placed on windows created by artists is the fact that often the religious custodians themselves and/or the local communities have no record or knowledge of who the artists are, nor an awareness of the merit of the pieces. It is hoped that this new edition of the Gazetteer may go

some way towards highlighting forgotten windows, some now requiring attention due to age and neglect.11 This Gazetteer never set out to be an inventory of all stained glass in Ireland, though this would be a wonderful legacy for future generations were it to happen. We would like to salute the magisterial research undertaken by Dr David Lawrence over a twenty-six-year period on behalf of the Church of Ireland for their website, which documents the majority of stained glass in their churches throughout the island.12

It is worth noting that when the original Gazetteer was published, the only stained glass-related archive in Ireland was in the National Gallery, preliminary designs and order books, etc., from An Túr Gloine, which had been generously gifted by Patrick Pollen and catalogued by Michael Wynne. Since then the National Irish Visual Arts Library has acquired original material by among others: Lua Breen, Phyllis Burke, Earley & Company, Helen Moloney, Murphy-Devitt Studios, Patrick Pollen and Patrick Pye, as well as Evie Hone’s papers; Trinity College Dublin acquired and digitised the hugely significant Clarke’s Stained Glass Studios Collection; the National Library acquired the Harry Clarke Papers; the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, acquired the Watson Archive; and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency acquired the Clokey Stained Glass Collection. As with the original Gazetteer, where there is a preliminary design or cartoon in a public collection for a window/panel we have noted it in the entry.

From time to time I and the other compilers have encountered works of merit, but due to lack of signatures, plaques or easily accessible records, we have been unable to identify the artist or studio and have therefore not listed these ‘anonymous’ windows. As with the first edition of the Gazetteer, one hopes that this publication may act as a spur for fresh research, whether by professional art historians, students, or individuals living in local communities, which will shed further light on Ireland’s rich and precious holding of stained glass.