Stained Glass Work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Illustration: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Fight Between Sir Tristram and Sir Marhaus, 1862.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti produced artwork for these two stained glass window designs in 1862. They were part of a series produced by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Valentine Princep, Arthur Hughes and Rossetti under the guidance of Morris in the form of his original company of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co that had been set up in the previous year.

The commission was to provide a stained glass sequence of the popular medieval romance of Tristram and Ysoude, for Harden Grange in Yorkshire. Although the Grange no longer exists, luckily the stained glass windows are still with us and are kept at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museum. Although superficially a sequence, the individual glass pieces have much to do with each artist's interpretation and approach to the story; this also includes different levels of ability, Rossetti being classed as a professional fine artist, with William Morris very much on an amateur level.

Although Rossetti was only commissioned to complete two of the stained glass designs, compared to Burne-Jones five, these two tend to be much more dynamic and intense than Burne-Jones pieces and say much about the character of the two differing artists as well as their own unique approach to both the story and its interpretation.

Much of the early work of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co was not in fact the textile and wallpaper design work that was to so much colour our perception of the much later reincarnation of the company as Morris & Co. This early period relied fairly heavily on stained glass commissions. The competition was rigorous and ecclesiastical commissions in particular were heavily fought over. Many traditional companies with long histories in the supply of stained glass work were having to compete against a number of new and innovative companies such as Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co who were often set up with the intention of diverting some of the expanded trade in ecclesiastical interiors and accessories, towards themselves. In this respect, Morris used contemporary fine artists in order to try to gain an edge on potential rivals.

Illustration: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Sir Tristram and La Belle Ysoude, 1862.

Although not always successful ecclesiastically, Morris was adaptable enough to understand the growing market in domestic stained glass. The 1860s saw the architectural potential of the medievalist inspired Gothic Revival, which up to that point had been largely limited to the ecclesiastical; widen its horizons towards the civic and domestic market. In this respect, many public buildings and private estates started to take on the appearance of various forms of medieval inspiration. These buildings in turn, needed interior fittings and accessories. Many of the new companies such as the one Morris initially set up in 1861, soon found themselves supplying a wealth of different interior pieces in the guise of Victorian Gothic.

Stained glass, which had been classed as a needful necessity during the medieval period, was also to become the same for many a domestic home built or rebuilt during the mid-nineteenth century. No domestic home, particularly those that were built to reinforce newfound status, could be considered complete without at least some form of stained glass work. This was very often in the guise of family arms or crests, which were produced in order to copy those aristocratic and long-lived families that had maintained status for many more generations than the newly formed wealth of the nineteenth century.

Considering how mundane much of the domestic stained glass market must have been in the 1860s, it must have seemed a welcome relief to Morris and his clutch of artists, to be producing a series of work featuring such a contemporary theme as a medieval romance. It is sometimes difficult for us to realise that these Victorian medieval themes were very much part of the contemporary world. Just as our present day costume dramas do not in reality signify a true understanding of historical context, but reflect much more about aspects of our own contemporary culture through our continued reinterpretation of themes, so the same was true of the Victorian medieval romances.

Issues of selflessness, duty, fidelity, betrayal, jealousy and lust were all part of the Victorian interpretation of the medieval world and were much more powerful issues than forms of historical accuracy and truth regarding interpretation. In this respect, looking anew at the stained glass work interpretations conceived by Rossetti, although wearing a fine mist of medieval chivalry and romance, the work reflects both the individual beliefs and ideas of the artist, but also that of the culture he inhabited. The story of Tristram and Ysoude as interpreted in stained glass in 1862, is a reflection of the individual characters of six young men, but seen through the prism of the social setting as understood by those living in mid-nineteenth century Britain.

It is always important to see any creative individual within the context of their contemporary society. To interpret work purely from their creative individualism alone can never really give a full understanding of the work involved and indeed, of the creative.

Further reading links:
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Pre-Raphaelite Painters)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Demon and the Damozel: Dynamics of Desire in the Works of Christina Rossetti & Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Tate British Artists: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game That Must Be Lost
Collected Writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti And the Late Victorian Sonnet Sequence: Sexuality, Belief And the Self (Nineteenth Century Series)
The Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Modes of Self-Expression
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 9: The Last Decade, 1873-1882: Kelmscott to Birchington IV. 1880-1882
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Formative Years, 1835-1862: Charlotte Street to Cheyne Walk. II. 1855-1862 (Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
The Pre-Raphaelites: From Rossetti to Ruskin (Penguin Classics)
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Art of Century)
Pre-Raphaelites in Love
Art of the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites
Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelite Dream: Drawings and Paintings from the Tate Collection
The New Painting of the 1860s: Between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetic Movement (The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)
The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle (A Phoenix Book)
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists

French Wallpaper Designs of the 1840s

Illustration: French wallpaper design for a drawing room, 1849.

French wallpaper design during the mid nineteenth century, it is fair to say, was not on the scale of that being produced in Britain. However, although the scale of production in Britain was one that was difficult to compete with, this did not necessarily mean that the standard of design was also competitive. Britain could be proud of the fact that its wallpaper retail trade was by no means elitist, and in fact supplied a relatively cheap product to a large proportion of the general public. However, there were particular problems when it came to the standard of pattern work achieved on many examples sold in Britain and this became more acute when compared to those being produced at the same time in France.

The three examples illustrating this article are French derived wallpapers that were imported and then sold across Britain in about 1849. It was a relatively common practice in Britain to sell both home produced and foreign sourced wallpapers. The first two examples were imported by W B Simpson and the third by Jackson & Graham, both companies trading from London.

Illustration: French wallpaper design for a bedroom, 1849.

Most imported wallpapers would have been French. To a certain extent this would have been for the long standing reason that in Britain, France had a long and illustrious reputation for high standards in interior decorative accessories and therefore anything French would have sold well as far as the British retail trade was concerned. However, the reputation was not an idle one as French decorative work was considered to be consistently of a higher standard than the British equivalent. This became more acute when the industrial revolution took over the process of interior accessory production across Britain, where most of the hand produced work disappeared leaving only a very small niche market for those that could afford any form of hand production. Although industrial processes were also widespread in France, detailed hand production still survived as did the French reputation for quality over quantity.

Interestingly, the first two French examples in this article were produced using both machine and hand block printing. All of the first example which was produced ideally for a drawing room, was produced using a cylinder printing process, except for the gilding which was applied by hand block printing. Ironically, the hand-produced gilding actually detracts from the pattern work and seems crudely applied, which is a shame as the pattern itself is very finely tuned and seems almost effortless in its composition.

Illustration: French wallpaper design for a bedroom, 1849.

The second example, produced ideally for a bedroom, had a machine produced background, with a block printed foliage inspired pattern. The industrial process has been limited to a background filler and took no part in the more obvious pattern process. This combination of machine and hand production was a relatively successful process that perhaps should have occurred to British manufacturers as a viable option, particularly when considering the low standards being regularly achieved by British companies using full automation.

In the third example a certain amount of hand block printing was used, though it is unclear if it was entirely hand produced and could well have been a compromise production of both hand and industrial process, as in the first two examples. Whatever the case, it is a fine example of quality production from France, even though the same industrial process as was used extensively in Britain was still part of its manufacture.

This does not necessarily imply that hand production should always be seen as superior to that produced by industry. However, it certainly does imply that the human creative process should be uppermost when considering mass production. When the human element is extracted from the industrial process, leaving little or no room for genuine intuitive flair and creativity, the result is flawed and by its very nature, monotonous. This genuine Achilles heal within the industrial process would ultimately be picked up and intensely highlighted and criticised by the Arts & Crafts movement in particular. Ultimately, it should be remembered that whatever factory or industrial process is used to produce mass manufactured goods, all of those goods will eventually end up in the hands of a human individual. In that respect, understanding the point and usefulness of a product should always have the human element firmly in the centre of its being.

Further reading links:
French Scenic Wallpaper 1795-1865
Wallpaper: The Ultimate Guide
Wallpaper in Decoration
Wallpapers of France, 1800-1850
Off the Wall: Wonderful Wall Coverings of the Twentieth Century
Wallpaper, its history, design and use : with frontispiece in colour and numerous illustrations from
WILLIAM MORRIS WALLPAPERS AND CHINTZES.
Wallpaper in America: From the Seventeenth Century to World War I
Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings
French Interiors of the Eighteenth Century
Parisian Interiors
Parisian Interiors: Bold, Elegant, Refined
Victorian Interior Decoration: American Interiors : 1830-1900
Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau
Hints on Household Taste: The Classic Handbook of Victorian Interior Decoration
Principles of Victorian Decorative Design

Let Glasgow Flourish by Ann Macbeth

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Let Glasgow Flourish embroidered banner, c1910.

Embroidered banners were a particular favourite of different social, political and religious groupings throughout Britain during the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Most, if not all were produced by women and a number have survived into our own contemporary era.

Ann Macbeth, one of the leaders of the Glasgow based revival of embroidery skills during the very last years of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was involved in a number of these embroidered banners. The example shown in this article was produced by her in about 1910. It contains the coat of arms of the city of Glasgow with its motto 'Let Glasgow Flourish.' The full motto is in fact 'Lord, let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word' in commemoration of St. Mungo who is said to have preached these words from his newly founded monastery built by the fishing hamlet of Glasgow in the sixth century. The fishing hamlet specialised in salmon, hence the representation of the two fish. The coat of arms has a number of different features and symbols each of which is tied to the story, both real and mythical, of early Glasgow. A good comprehensive guide to the coat of arms can be found at the Rampant Scotland website.

Although the Let Glasgow Flourish banner is by no means a particularly dynamic version of early twentieth century Scottish embroidery skills, and does not necessarily reflect the creative work that Macbeth was producing during this period, it does give an indication of her public persona in the city. The banner itself was presented by the city of Glasgow to the city of Lyons and therefore in many respects it gave its tacit approval to both the high standard of skills base that had been achieved largely through the localised Glaswegian Arts & Crafts movement, as well as that of Macbeth herself. 

It is perhaps difficult today to recognise other personalities within the Glasgow decorative arts movement of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, other than that of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Although Mackintosh clearly had a creative reputation that was deserving, there were a number of other creative artists, designers and crafts people that were his contemporaries and just as disciplined, professional and committed to new creative horizons as himself. Many were women and they were involved in a cross section of craft disciplines including metal, glass, wood, jewellery, and textiles as well as craft work that bordered and often crossed over into fine art. That many have been either forgotten or marginalised could well have more to do with twentieth century repercussions due to their gender rather than their creative skills base.

Ann Macbeth had a dynamism and lifelong passion for the promotion and expansion of the history as well as that of the contemporary craft skill of embroidery. She was particularly effective in the use of education, being a vital member of the embroidery department of Glasgow Art School during the very early years of the twentieth century, when arguably the art school had reached the apex of it power and influence. Macbeth was also involved in the educational promotion of embroidery as a viable employment skill to young Scottish women. To this effect, she had a working relationship with the Scottish Education Department. In some respects, it was Macbeth's relationship and contacts with the political structure in Scotland that landed her with the Let Glasgow Flourish commission.

The ex-Lord Provost of Glasgow, Sir William Blisland who was a particularly keen supporter of the Glasgow Arts & Crafts movement as well as that of Macbeth and her educational promotion of embroidery, commissioned her to complete an embroidered banner that was to be presented to Lyons in exchange for their initial presentation of an example of their famous silk work given as a gift to Glasgow.

Although much of the effort expended by Macbeth was to fast disappear in the twentieth century, particularly after the trauma of the First World War, it does not negate the fact that despite the loss of the wide-scale attraction of embroidery as a contemporary and potentially financially rewarding craft, Macbeth did much to promote the idea of craft as a viable option and one that could enthusiastically as well as practically be accepted and promoted by politicians as a integral part of the state. It was important for Macbeth to see craft development as one that could be implemented through state education and through the political system of the day. 

Any viable relationship between the creative world and that of politics and the state is perhaps a dimension that we have either lost or are incapable of understanding in the contemporary world we live in. A world which is now dominated by politicians who hope to negate their intrinsic responsibilities to the state by endlessly outsourcing to private companies who have neither the inclination or resources to promote any form of creative educational expansion on the scale that Macbeth attempted and thought was necessary. We are ultimately the poorer for it.

Further reading links:
Educational Needlecraft (1911)
The country woman's rug book (Paragraph Press reprint series of craft & hobby handbooks)
Embroidered and laced leather work
The playwork book,
The Glasgow Style: Artists in the Decorative Arts, Circa 1900 (Schiffer Book with Values)
Doves And Dreams: The Art of Frances Macdonald And J. Herbert Mcnair
Textiles from the Archives of the Glasgow School of Art
The unbroken thread: A century of embroidery & weaving at Glasgow School of Art
The Flower and the Green Leaf: Glasgow School of Art in the Time of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Movements of Modernity: The Case of Glasgow and Art Nouveau
GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART EMBROIDERY, 1894-1920.
Glasgow 1900: Art and Design
Glasgow Girls
Art Nouveau (Midsize)
Taking Tea with Mackintosh: The Story of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms