Church of St Germanus, St Germans, Cornwall
Address
Church of St Germanus, St Germans, Saltash, Cornwall PL12 5NPRecommended by
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Chancel east windowArtist, maker and date
Designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and made by Morris & Co., 1896Reason for highlighting
One of Burne-Jones’ last designs and one of the largest windows in Cornwall. It is a repeat of his design for the Albion Congregational church, Ashton-under-Lyne, but with significant improvements, and is the best Aesthetic window in the Southwest.
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 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
There are further Burne-Jones designs in the south wall of the South Chapel. The impressive six lights of allegorical representations of the Virtues, spread across two windows, where inserted after the chancel east window, in 1902, but the designs are mostly much earlier and show how Burne-Jones’ designs changed over the decades.
Further details and images: Cornish Stained Glass – St Germans, chancel east
In the nineteenth century there was no local Cornish firm to rival the famous national firms. However, the firm of Fouracre & Son, based in Plymouth, did have an impact locally and examples of their work can be seen in the nave west window, 1889, and Chancel north 1 window, 1898. The later appearing to be influenced by Burne-Jones’ east window.