Geddes, Wilhelmina
Wilhelmina Geddes (1887-1955) was a vital figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement and the 20th century British stained glass revival.
Raised in Belfast, she attended the city’s school of art from the age of 16 achieving successes in drawing, watercolour and graphic design. An illustration she exhibited in Dublin in 1910 caught the attention of Sarah Purser, and discerning a potential for stained glass she invited Geddes to An Túr Gloine to explore her suitability for the craft. The following year Geddes made a set of three small panels for Purser which confirmed how her confident drawing and painting style could easily translate to this medium. Purser fostered her talent, bringing her to view medieval glass in Paris and Chartres in 1912 and 1914, though Geddes also found inspiration elsewhere including gothic and Romanesque sculpture. Over the next few years Purser assigned her increasingly larger windows for prominent Belfast and Dublin locations.
Geddes remained in Ireland until 1925, when she moved permanently to London and established a studio at The Glass House, Fulham.
Her output in terms of windows was relatively modest, a mere forty windows (not all completed by her) and a handful of small panels, partly a result of ongoing health issues, and partly because she undertook some very large, labour-intensive commissions such as her astonishing 5-light war memorial window for the Church of St Luke, Wallsend, and her monumental 89-light Te Deum rose window for Ypres Cathedral, Belgium. Her last large work was her window for the Church of St Peter, Lampeter, installed in 1946.
Recent appreciation of her work includes Peter Cormack’s estimation that ‘Many would consider the powerfully expressive work of Wilhelmina Geddes, in particular, to be among the Arts & Crafts movement’s highest accomplishment in any medium’ while her art is described by her biographer as having ‘unique power and originality’.
On 25th January 2022 The Stained Glass Museum successfully acquired at auction the last window designed and cartooned by Wilhelmina Geddes. The subject, three seated female figures representing Faith, Hope & Charity was designed for St Paul’s Church, St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction, London, and was made after her death by her great admirer, Charles Blakeman, in 1956. The window had been commissioned by the vicar of St Paul’s, the Revd Chad Varah, founder in 1953 of the Samaritans.
Shown above is a memorial window for Major Sir Granville Wheler, Bt (1872-1927), which is installed in the Chapel of St Lawrence on his family’s estate, Otterden Place, near Faversham, Kent. The window focuses on Joseph of Arimathea , flanked by eight vignettes representing he principal moral Virtues. Two contributors had looked at including this window in their selections, but limited access to the Chapel, meant that it was omitted from their final selections.
Sources:
Dublin’s Stained Glass, A guide to the finest twentieth-century windows by David Caron (Four Courts Press, 2025)
Wilhelmina Geddes: Life and Work by Nicola Gordon Bowe (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015)
Arts & Crafts Stained Glass by Peter Cormack (Yale University Press,2015)
Wilhelmina Geddes by Jasmine Allen in (ed. Karen Livingstone) Women Pioneers of the Arts & Crafts Movement (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2024)
