Church of All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire
Address
Church of All Saints, Church Lane, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire OX17 2NRRecommended by
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West window – The Fiery FurnaceArtist, maker and date
Designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, 1871Reason for highlighting
This window stands out for me in a church full of windows by both Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and its successor Morris & Co. The design of the flames of the fiery furnace which surround the figures in the bottom 3 panels, is so original, strong but also decorative. The middle row of windows is also highly original, it shows a row of angels holding globes that tell the story of The Creation. Each angel is painted on two pieces of white glass in browns and yellows, so delicate, muted and precise.
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, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861-75) or the ‘Firm’, as it was colloquially referred to, was founded in 1861 by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Maddox Brown, Philip Webb, Peter Paul Marshall and Charles J Faulkner. The Firm started out with no lack of confidence. As Rossetti wrote in January 1862, ‘Our stained glass…may challenge any other firm to approach it.’
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 church has a superb series of windows by the William Morris firms dating from 1865 to 1893, starting with a fine east chancel window designed by William Morris, Philip Webb, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Maddox Brown and Simeon Solomon, and made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
There is a dedicated account of the windows in William Morris at Middleton Cheney: The Stained Glass in All Saints Church by Roger Bellamy, Brian Goodey, David Thompson & Richard Wheeler (Fircone Books, 2019)