Christ Church, Southgate London N14
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Christ Church, The Green, Arnos Grove, London N14 7EGRecommended by
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South aisle windows - Patientia and PaxArtist, maker and date
Design by Edward Burne Jones and made by Morris & Co, 1909Reason for highlighting
Visiting this church made me rediscover my enthusiasm for the stained glass designs of Edward Burne-Jones. There are four pairs of figures in the windows of the north and south aisle, they look great from a distance because of this consistency of design and are full of amazing detail and colour. Burne-Jones designed all except the figure of St. Francis which is the latest and is by Henry Dearle. The pair I chose as my favourite represent patience and peace, mesmerising to gaze at their faces and conclude that Burne-Jones’ women definitely do not look all the same.
Artist/maker notes
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was born in Birmingham and studied at Exeter College, Oxford where he met William Morris, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. Together they created hundreds of stained glass windows that collectively stand as one of the finest artistic achievements of their time. The stature of this formidable artist and designer was recognised after his death when he became the first artist to be given a Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.
Morris & Co. (1875-1940) was the successor to original business of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. William Morris had always been the driving force behind the ‘Firm’ and he finally determined to remove his earlier partners and to take the business into his own hands, with Burne-Jones as principal designer. The business flourished and continued after Morris’s death, when it also continued to use Burne-Jones’s designs. It finally closed in 1940.
Sources:
For a brief overview of the two companies see Morris & Co on Wikipedia
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination by Fiona McCarthy, Faber & Faber, 2011.
William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber & Faber, 1994)
Burne-Jones Special Issue, The Journal of Stained Glass, Vol. XXXV, 2011
Damozels & Deities Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1870-1898 by William Waters and Alastair Carew-Cox (Seraphim Press Ltd, 2017)
Other comments
The above windows are only part of a great collection of windows by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co./Morris & Co dating from 1862 to 1911.