Philip Smith
8 April 2024
British artist Sir Brian Clarke (b.1953) is widely considered the most important artist working in stained glass today. Through his work in architectural and autonomous stained glass, often on a monumental scale, he revolutionised not only technologies but also philosophical conceptions of what can be achieved through this medium.
In April 2024 we were pleased to present two important early commissions by the artist - The Plumb Windows - in our MODERN MADE auction.
Commissioned for the home of a northern business family, The Plumb Window (and the accompanying Plumb Window II) is the largest of Clarke’s domestic, and secular, architectural commissions from the period. The composition divided across fifteen individual panels, read as a whole, depicts an abstracted landscape. An exemplar of Clarke’s maturing style, using characterful and richly textured transparent and translucent mouth-blown glasses.
The work is in the lyrical mode which characterises Clarke’s early stained glass; displaying what art historian Martin Harrison describes as "Clarke’s devotion to flowers as events — literally and metaphorically — in a field", the leading is expressively graphic, and in rendering the imagined landscapes of both Plumb windows, Clarke has eschewed the use of glass paint, emphasising the innate qualities of the material. The two Plumb Windows should also be seen as kinetic artworks, with a secondary visual dynamic created by the passage of light through them over the course of each day.
As the present owner has noted; “The window has for me always been about rootedness - my husband loved mountains and I was engaged with the earth through gardening - so the picture Brian captured so delicately expressed our joint interests. Those roots into the land have sustained us through the decades as we brought up our family.
The work feels so pertinent now in an era of climate change embodying as it does the connectivity of the earth from soil to glacier, and I cannot thank Brian enough for this leading light that has been in our life.”
...I was 21 when I created it - and actually fabricated it myself - during the brief period I lived in Preston. I saw it then, and see it now, as a sort of doorway or window onto another world. An Arcadian experience that also was the beginning of a lifetime of experiments in the medium around the globe. It possesses, I like to think, an innocence that is impossible to fake - an uncluttered belief in abiding and endless affection.”
One of three panels of Plumb Window II, prior to installation into architectural setting, was shown as part of the travelling exhibition Glass Art One in 1975, beginning at Derby Cathedral before travelling to Mid-Pennine Arts Association Gallery in Blackburn, Blackburn Cathedral, Manchester Cathedral and Bakewell Parish Church.
The designs and preliminary studies were featured in the exhibitions Brian Clarke: Paintings and Installations, 1977 at Sheffield Polytechnic; Robert Fraser Gallery, London, c.1984; Brian Clarke: The Art of Light, 2018 at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; and, most recently in Brian Clarke: The Art of Light, 2020-1 at Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Plumb Window I and Plumb Window II featured in the Spring 2024 edition of MODERN MADE - an auction of Modern, Post-War & Contemporary Art, Design, Craft & Studio Ceramics - at the Mall Galleries in the heart of London.
We would like to thank the Studio of Sir Brian Clarke for their assistance in cataloguing the present works.
Illustrated Top: Portrait of Sir Brian Clarke by Mary McCartney, courtesy of the studio of Sir Brian Clarke
