Harry Clarke Stained Glass Windows. St Mary's Nantwich Cheshire UK

I was first introduced to the work of Harry Clarke by a lady, who one day entered my shop and made friends with me. 

A very interesting person, she was a maker of stained glass who had completed several commissions, in stained glass, for religious buildings in Perth Australia, where she was living. 

She had been born in Liverpool, but like many had emigrated with her parents at an early age.

She showed me his techniques and I was fascinated by his palette of colours.

We became good friends.

I purchased a first edition of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Falling under a spell.

This was not cheap at the time. Though it looks so now.

It was illustrated by Harry Clarke and I was taken by those illustrations that had the colours of Arabian nights with a Dublin Hue.

 Many were in black and white showing the Aubrey Beardsley inheritance of all illustrators at this juncture in time.

They had an aggressive stylisation with a feminine touch.

 (No I can't work that one out myself either).

I then stumbled across some information that he had been commissioned for stained glass at St Mary's Nantwich in Cheshire. I had to go.

Its probably fifteen years since I first saw them.

I had thought about going for a day out but it always seemed a long way off the motorway, when I would see the signs for the town.

I did get a chance during a recent visit to Nantwich to pick up a Joseph Hoffman glass vase.

I was taken by the whole setting of the church and the respect it retains in the centre of the market town. 

I have become used to seeing historic structures trashed in Liverpool as the clowns who ran the city ruined the listed buildings by allowing innapropriate development.

So that many of those listed buildings have lost their worth.

. 

But not here, in Nantwich. They want their history.

I wanted to see if I could make out the difference.

In the way that the light plays on the stained glass and the feeling that is within, and from several different centuries.

 I played 'Spot The Harry Clarke' and in no time at all I found them.

 It was dull day but the light came shining through the pale pinks and lilacs, and his unmistakable style finally became apparant in the drab light. 

It is at first glance, another stained glass window, in another church. but the more you look, the more you see. You can identify its him by his palette.

So I did a little video that I would like to share.

This was a Harry Clarke alright with all the usual symbolism and hidden meanings that I now associate with his remarkable way of seeing the world. Completed in 1919. The eyes have it.

And through his eyes you can journey into a distant place. 

Of Chivalric Knights and dragons breath and mythical places that feel real in your own imagination. 

That awake when you venture into Harry's thoughts.

This was a window commissioned in sad times but it has a glory in its melancholy.

Richard Coeur de Lion was as bold as I recall.  There is an atmosphere.

There is more than stained glass on view.

The Church is wonderful with its history evident for all to see. 

I won't put it all down here.

You can find more information here. St Mary's Nantwich. 

There are some remarkable carvings inside and on the outside of this medieval sandstone church that was restored in the 19th Century by George Gilbert Scott. 

I know the work of the family well. 

Growing up with the imposing Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool by Giles Gilbert Scott, also in sandstone.

There are a series of Misericords. I love that word.

A misericord is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer.

There are so many beutiful artifacts and historical features that I will have to go back again.

 In another fifteen years maybe?