Church of St Peter and St Paul, Tonbridge, Kent
Address
Church of St Peter and St Paul, 155 Church Lane, Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1DARecommended by
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East windowArtist, maker and date
Designed by Leonard Walker and made at James Powell & Sons, 1954Reason for highlighting
Leonard Walker was unique in his extensive use of very high quality, mostly unpainted glass producing a stunning jewel-like quality, and this five-light window of Christ in Glory is one of his best.
Artist/maker notes
Leonard Walker (1877-1964) studied at the St John’s Wood Arts School, where he later became principal. He worked in the Arts & Crafts tradition and hoped that his approach might have heralded a new future for British stained glass, but it was too reliant on specialist glass manufacture and his own design skills.
He was also an Olympian, competing in the 1928 Amsterdam games in Painting, Drawing and Watercolours.
Sources:
Arts & Craft Stained Glass by Peter Cormack (Yale University Press, 2015)
Leonard Walker on Olympedia
James Powell & Sons was formed when James Powell purchased Whitefriars Glass, an old established glass works, in 1834. His sons developed the business to be one of the major firms of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Especially notable is their work with Charles Winston in the 1840s and 1850s to improve the quality of glass available, and the many fine designers with whom they worked. The company’s innovations extended beyond stained glass, with the company developing a formidable reputation in a number of fields, including tableware glass, where Whitefriars Glass remains highly collectable. The stained glass department finally closed in 1973, and the company in 1980.
Sources:
James Powell & Sons, Whitefriars by Jacqueline Banerjee PhS, Associate Editor, The Victorian Web
Victorian & Edwardian Stained Glass by Marta Galicki (Historic England, reprinted by Morris & Juliet Venables, 2001)