Tickets are still available for the Stained Glass Museum’s autumn lectures, which focus on neglected aspects of twentieth-century stained glass in Britain. There will be opportunities to hear about the successful Arts & Crafts artist Theodora Salusbury (who is not as well known as her peers), the important role that the Lowndes & Drury studio (often known as the Glass House) had in the production and development of stained glass immediately after the Second World War, and the stained-glass artist and painter Keith New, whose work at Coventry Cathedral should have launched a successful career, but whose significance is only now beginning to be appreciated.
All the museum’s autumn lectures take place on Thursdays at 7pm, at the Ely Cathedral Education & Conference Centre, Palace Green, Ely, CB7 4EW. Tickets cost £7.50 each (£6.50 for Friends), or £20 for all three lectures (£18 for Friends). Bookings can be made online, or by telephoning the museum shop (01353 660347).
Andrew Loutit: ‘Proud as a Peacock: The Work of Theodora Salusbury 1875–1956’
Thursday, 29 September 2016, 7pm for 7.15pm start. Theodora Salusbury was born in Leicestershire and followed several courses of art training in the early twentieth century, including ones at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art; she also served a four-year apprenticeship with Christopher W. Whall. Most of her known work dates from between the two World Wars, and was produced at studios in Kensington (London) and Cornwall. She was among those artists who used the facilities of Lowndes & Drury at the Glass House (Fulham), and her work is often identifiable by the use of a peacock as her maker’s mark. Andrew Loutit is Salusbury’s great nephew. He has travelled far and wide through England and Wales following up information from stained-glass experts and friends in order to find his great aunt’s windows.
Alan Brooks: ‘Lowndes & Drury and Post-War Stained Glass’
Thursday, 6 October 2016, 7pm for 7.15pm start. Founded in 1897, the London firm of Lowndes & Drury played a vital role in twentieth-century stained glass in Britain. From the surviving archives, at least 150 artists had their work made at its premises. The studio is well known for its contribution to the Arts & Crafts movement, but this lecture, after describing the early history of the firm, will focus on the English work that emerged from the studio in the post-war period. Alan Brooks has carried out considerable research into nineteeth- and twentieth-century stained glass. In 2012, he published The Stained Glass of Francis Spear, the first study of Spear’s work. Since then, he has been researching the many artists and craftsmen who worked at the Lowndes & Drury studio in Fulham.