bodner051

This blog is not supposed to be exclusively, or even mostly, about stained glass. However, for one reason or another, stained glass windows have been the subject of quite a few posts over the past year. There have been good reasons for that, as current events or just where my fancy has led me have made stained glass the subject. Just when I was planning to get back to my more usual subjects, a magnificent book has been published about New Zealand stained glass windows that simply has to be mentioned. Blown and cast glass must wait.     Brian Miller has just published a beautifully illustrated and most informative account of the work of his uncle Roy Miller (1915 - 1981), and the family firm that became Miller Studios in Dunedin in 1958.  Roy started working with his father Oswell as a signwriter after leaving primary school in the days when paint was mixed each morning from powder. Roy Miller spent his life working at Miller Studios, mainly executing stained glass wind...

Northland’s renowned Māori stained glass artist Kathy Shaw-Urlich has died peacefully after a long battle with cancer.  Kathy preparing panels for the wharekai at Whakapara marae in March 2013 Kathy was born in England, but as the daughter of Ron Shaw an English aircraft engineer and Desiree Joan Browne, a former Miss Northland, she affiliated to Ngāti Hau and Te Uri o Te Aho o Ngāpuhi. She made her first visit to New Zealand at the age of 26 to visit her Māori grandmother, and as a proud descendant of Patuone she eagerly explored her Māori heritage and especially her connection to her grandmother’s whānau of Ngāti Hau and Whakapara marae. Although never one to promote herself, Kathy in fact achieved considerable success. She topped her class and won a national competition as well as a scholarship while studying at the Swansea Institute, in Wales, before completing a Masters in Fine Art at Central St Martins in London.  In 1990 she exhibited glass panels at New Zealand H...

  If you thought (as I rather did) my last post was stretching the 'New Zealand Glass' title of this blog a little, then brace yourselves. The stained glass windows in the Karori chapel were made by noted Irish stained glass artist Wilhelmina Geddes, of the noted Irish glass studio An Tur Gloine (see http://newzealandglass.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/a-touch-of-irish-in-karori.html ). Wilhelmina Geddes also made the window I feature here.  But while the Karori windows are in New Zealand, this window is in the church of St John the Evangelist , Malone Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland.  Signed Geddes 1920 My attention was again drawn to this window by Northland glass artist Kathy Shaw-Urlich, who was greatly taken with it when she was studying Wilhelmina Geddes' work for her dissertation. My appreciation of the window has also been assisted by Nicola Gordon-Bowe, Associate Fellow of the Irish National College of Art and Design and author of the new biography and catalo...

As its name says, this blog is about New Zealand glass, mostly as a form of discipline to keep my enthusiasm in check. But occasionally, as you may have noticed, I stray a little, usually when there is a New Zealand connection. I also deal mostly with glass that is blown or cast. But this entry is about flat glass, architectural glass, stained glass, and although these windows are in New Zealand, they sit very firmly in the tradition of Irish glass. The New Zealand connection is both the location of the windows, in the Karori Crematorium and Chapel, Wellington, and a link to contemporary New Zealand maker of stained glass windows, Kathy Shaw-Urlich. Karori Crematorium and Chapel, Wellington The Crematorium and Chapel was built in 1909, as the doorway proclaims, and is a Category I Listed heritage place. It was the first crematorium built in New Zealand, but its main interest for us is in the six stained glass windows in the interior. These were commissioned between 1914 and 1939 from t...