A touch of glass workshop

                                                                                                                                                                        

   

                                                                                                                                                                           

This workshop took place on the 9th & 10th February 2017

KAE Films filmed us on the first day, I did a few shots on the second day.  

                                                                                          

Both days were at the Education venue of the Shrewsbury Museum.

We first viewed the film KAE and Nathalie had written together to offer the children a guided 'walk through' the Heavenly Lights exhibition selecting 
the artwork relevant to the artistic activities to follow.

A walk which took them for a journey in the stories Margaret Agnes Rope has painted.

                                                                                                                                                                                     

Nathalie did then an introduction to the art of stained glass, an art form they may have seen in the Shrewsbury Roman Catholic Cathedral, as pupils of the Roman Catholic School.
It was a time to share the study Nathalie did
to identify the birds Marga had clearly cherished in her cartoons.
Two cartoons on show in the Heavenly Lights were the perfect display
of Margaret Agnes Rope love of birds.

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Cartoon 1

St Winefride (Newport,Wales)

One of five high windows by Margaret Agnes Rope in Saint Peter and St Paul in Newport. The birds truly have a meaning in the landscape. A dipper by the well, a lesser redpoll in the woody leafy background, a kingfisher appearing by her arm in its flight which is an other bird of waters or a solitary bird, all placed in the sites a ornithologist will find them.

The school the participants go to is named after St Winefride

St Winefride is also meaningful to Nathalie who first went to St Winefride's Well in 1995 or 1996.

She had been for a major head surgery in France in 1994, 

before she moved to Swansea University to study stained glass art. 

She since then went back to the site nearly each year. 

She wanted to give her prayers to St Winefride to keep her head in good shape for many years. 

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Cartoon 2

The Benedicte (Llandovery, Wales) 

Given in memory of Herbert and Teresa Vaughan, the nephew and niece of the artist, both of whom died in childhood and are depicted in the window.
Please read the full study on the post Feathered Regulars

I asked the children to work to a scale that will be proportional to the full size cartoon I had brought on site and showed to them. All glass pieces I had cut for them were to a size they were invited to keep as there reference once they had selected the piece of glass.

 KAE Films was hardly noticed by children all in the world of birds

  

 a few birds sketches before a first intro to glass painting

 they painted on a selection of coloured glass

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 Two questions

st Cecilia Shrewsbury Cathedral

Was Margaret Agnes Rope a member 

of the RSPB at its very beginnings?

if she was alive today she would be shocked many of the birds she painted are on red list or amber list

the lesser redpoll, the missile thrush,  

dipper, kingfisher, bullfinch, tawny owl

Flickr link sent by Arthur Rope

A few of the birds painted by the children

 after they chose the glass they loved.

Which of their birds will be in the final artwork?

Feathered Regulars

                     

updated
Fri. 3 Feb. 2017






I found the same week the latest Margaret Rope of Shrewsbury _ Stained Glass Artist of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Arthur Rope, as well as Women Stained Glass Artists of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Peter Cormack published 30 years ago for an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery.

Eagle

After more research on web pages, I noticed, that Marga and her cousin Tor have a wild life bestiary  no other stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement seems to have had. I will say I do not have the knowledge of all artwork of this movement and leave this observation I do open to critics.

Marga's windows have birds as the regulars of her house! She does not seem to use it as Christian Symbolism only. In her window for her nephew and niece I study bellow, the black bird, the owl, the woodpecker do not seem to present as baddies ( for an example, in this web page listing birds and their symbolism , "The blackbird represents the darkness of sin (black feathers) and the temptations of the flesh (its beautiful song). Once, while Saint Benedict was praying, the devil tried to distract him, appearing as a blackbird. St. Benedict, however, was not fooled, and sent him on his way with the Sign of the Cross.")
The black contre-jour of medium size birds just above horizons or behind figures ( St Peter and St Paul in Newport, Shropshire), a few flights of white doves or flocks of other birds may have meaning I am not aware of (visitation window in Shrewsbury Cathedral).

contre-jour

flights of birds Visitation window Shrewsbury Cathedral
tail's end black_common gull,  ochre wings_song thrush

just one contra-jour before branches 

Today as I am writing this post, I also took a photo of the contra-jour of a dove 

Earlier this year, I spotted a mockingbird in her Visitation Window in Shrewsbury Cathedral.

mockingbird

From that day I read all her windows searching for birds or wildlife.
I wanted to identify the wildlife she painted in her windows to open later choices for the workshop or design of our window for Shrewsbury Museum.

After my reading of the books mentioned above, I believe that her cousin took much inspiration or shared much of Marga's interest in painting animals of Great-Britain's fauna or wildlife of other countries in the artwork.
I will first keep updating this post for sharing  the birds I identified in her windows.





In one of Marga's earliest works entitled Goblin Market (inspired by a poem by Christina Rossetti)
an Australian Grass Parokeet stands in the left top corner as well as a blue tit hides in the leafy twigs.

Australian Grass Parokeet

Blue Tit

       

The most dazzling of her birds statements is in The Benedicte window
Church of Our Lady, Llandovery, Carmarthenshire

Given in memory of Herbert and Teresa Vaughan, the nephew and niece of the artist, both of whom died in childhood and are depicted in the window. Had she have times of study of birds with her nephew and niece? 

       

In Marga's artwork a bird story kept building parallel to all other themes she worked at.

In St Winefrede's window, Newport, the birds have truly a meaning in the landscape. A dipper by the well, a lesser redpoll in the woody leafy background, a kingfisher appearing by her arm in its flight which is an other bird of waters or a solitary bird.

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More of her artwork to study maybe in the near future, considering her windows have many feathered regulars.

turtle doves

House sparrows?

turtle doves with a dunnock or a small tree finch (Geospiza Parvulus)?  

short-toed lark

in Lanark, St Mary's, Scotland, the Pelican,
"symbol of Christ feeding its young with its own blood"

A short note:
As my windows will refer to collections of Shrewsbury Museum, Charles Darwin's work being of the collections, I wish even more wish to read a little bit about the Finches of the Galapagos and more than anything else his study of doves/pigeons.  http://darwinspigeons.com/#/victorian-pigeon-poems/4535732923. ( I photographed many doves in the birch tree I have sketched for the Marga & Collections artwork )