Auld West Kirk, Greenock, Inverclyde
Address
Auld West Kirk, Esplanade, Greenock PA16 7SDRecommended by
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'Hope' windowArtist, maker and date
Cottier & Co., 1884Reason for highlighting
No one who works with stained glass in and around Glasgow cannot but fall in love with the sheer beauty of Cottier’s stained glass, an example of which is inside this lovely wee church on the banks of the river Clyde.
Daniel Cottier built a worldwide reputation, but I’ve selected this particular window, simply because it brings him back home, to his family, and the Clyde. It’s a very small, very personal tribute to his grandfather, and exquisitely beautiful.
The design has been attributed to Frederick Vincent Hart, who designed many of Cottier’s most refined windows.
Artist/maker notes
Daniel Cottier (1838-1891) had a varied training, including sometime in London, where he was directly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, before returning to Scotland, joining Field & Allen in Edinburgh in 1862. There he built up the stained glass business as foreman designer, before opening his own studio in 1864-65.
Cottier was prolific in many fields of the arts including furniture design and art dealing, along with stained glass. He spread his wings beyond Scotland opening offices in London, New York and Sydney, and is credited with introducing the Aesthetic Movement to America and Australia.
Sources:
200 Scottish stained glass artists by Rona H Moody in The Journal of Stained Glass Scotland Issue Volume XXX (2006)
Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Max Donnelly, Andrew Montana, Suzanne Veldink (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021)
Frederick Vincent Hart (1843-1914) was an artist, stained glass designer and decorator of furniture. He was born in Garthorpe, North Lincolnshire, the son of a church curate, and worked for a number of English and Scottish firms including, G.E. Cook & Co, Cox & Co., J. & W. Guthrie, McCulloch & Gow, and Cottier & Co. He has been described as “an aesthetic designer par excellence”, whose windows “bear comparison to those of Burne-Jones and in no way fall short.”
Source: Damozels and Deities: Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1870–1898 by William Waters (Seraphim Press, 2017)
Other comments
The Auld West Kirk is one of three churches that amalgamated in 2011.
The church has a number of stained glass windows from Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. thanks to the efforts of Allan Park Paton, librarian of the Greenock Library, who consulted Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The largest on the “Adoration of the Lamb” (1866) includes figures designed by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Simeon Solomon.
Further details, including more on the history of the Auld Kirk can be found at Lyle Kirk – Old West Kirk