1950's Mid-Century Stained Glass

This window had my heart a-flutter on the Stained Glass Museum's website.

The painted, etched and stained glass panel was made in the 1950s,
probably by one of Moira Forsyth's assistants.

Attack of the Zombie Housewives

Is dinner ready yet?

Oh, perhaps not. I can see you've had a tough day.

Isla, who only ever wants to have her face painted as a zombie or pirate.

NEVER princess or fairy. How I love this child.

<<<<>>>>

I am finishing off another order for Rostra and Rooksmoor,

and all being well, I will try and do a little giveaway later this week.

Stay tuned.

Weedy

Of all the summer weeds, these are my favourite. Hoary Plantain. Great name, and I just love the 1950s "atomic" aesthetic of them.

Just taken on two (two!) commissions - the first for The Bull Hotel for one of the new rooms they are renovating which is to be in a contemporary Indian design. The second is for some more windows for this place. Going to be keeping me a bit busy for the next few weeks, so I'm afraid blog posts may be fairly thin on the ground. See you on the other side!

7 Aesthetic Themes - Part 1

I'm gatecrashing Jaboopee's meme today. I've been wanting to do a "what inspires me" post for a while, and this seems a nice way of doing it. The idea is that you list seven aesthetic themes in your work - showing some examples, and then how they feature in your work. I'm not sure I've got seven, but I'll get started and see how we go...

1) A 1970s Childhood We're talking Dick Bruna, FisherPrice, Bod, Meg and Mog, Playmobil, Topsy and Tim. Those strong, simple designs with their black outlines and bright colours translate to stained glass so well.

Images from here, here and here






2) Retro Fabrics I never get tired of gingham. Ever. It just always looks so fresh and fun and girlish. As soon as I learnt how to acid-etch glass, I used that technique to make gingham. Back in the old days, when I lived in London, we lived around the corner from Cath Kidston's first shop in Clarendon Cross. This was in the days before she was a household name and had sold her soul to Debenhams (sorry Cath) when it was a quirky little shop selling lovely things and the catalogue was a couple of photocopied hand-drawn sheets of A4 (cue harp music and misty eyed nostalgic moment). I digress. Around this time was when I started learning the various techniques of manipulating sheet glass, and the first pieces I made were pretty much homage to the fabric designs of La Kidston. I was also (much to the amusement of my OH) spending a lot of time hanging round the Imperial War Museum and using up my ration coupons. Once I'd worked my way through cabbage roses and floral sprigs, I moved on to abstract designs of the 50s and 60s - Lucienne Day and Evelyn Redgrave. I love the challenge of trying to recreate fabric designs in stained glass. The limitations of the medium are also what make it so addictive.
Images from here, here and here

3) Scandinavian Folk Art Bold colours, simple designs, repetitive patterns, flourishes, symmetry, flowers, birds. Of course.


Images from here, here and here

Well, as much fun as this is, it is also taking up all of my Friday night. So Part Two follows soon....

New Arrival

*Harumph. As usual, the red glass has come out looking decidedly blurry on the blog when it's perfectly fine in the picture really...you'll have to see it in the shop to believe me!

This is what's been cooking in the workshop over the last few days (along with the rest of the jobs that I can't seem to get to the end of). I made it for my friend who has just had her third baby...I figured that she might not get the same amount of attention that she did for her first and second - and surely you're going to need all the fuss you can get when you're on number three! So also in the box went a large bar of chocolate, Berrocca, sachets of Calpol, Infacol, Kamillosan...

I was so pleased with the way it turned out, and how much fun it was to make - so simple, just three pieces of glass (although one of them is a most troublesome shape to cut) and 4 solder joints. There might be a bit of Dick Bruna influence in there, alongside the whole 1950s circus vibe...


I even enjoyed wrapping it up...in fact I think I like sending parcels almost as much as I like receiving them! Check out that dinky little elephant gift tag I made from some of Nelly's Hama Beads (which I am becoming seriously addicted to - and I'm not the only one).


Anyhoo, to cut a long story short, I've also just listed it in the shop, as a personalised made-to-order thingummyjig.

Hope you all have fun weekends!