jarrow stained glass

Although I've been very busy working on more projects and sending out holiday orders, I wanted to share this bit of stained glass history with you!

Wearmouth-Jarrow is an English monastery located on the River Wear in Sunderland and the River Tyne at Jarrow respectively, in Northumbria.  The ruins of the Jarrow Monastery survives as the present-day church of St. Paul.  The Saxon-Norman nave collapsed and was replaced with a Victorian one, but the Saxon chancel survives, with the oldest stained glass window in the world, made up of excavated fragments dating from before AD 860.

Only 7" in diameter, this window is unique as it contains fragments of Saxon glass found during an archaeological dig in the church grounds to the south of the main building in 1973/74. The fragments were then placed in the window to form a mosaic.  Even though the restoration of the window cannot be an exact reproduction of an original window, it still gives us insight into early stained glass production.

 
The glass was made from sand and a plant ash, which were molten together in a furnace and blown into a sleeve which was cut down one side; it was then flattened out and cooled down. This technique is still employed by some traditional stained glass makers today.  Both clear and coloured glass were made. The glass was then cut into pieces, assembled and held together in a lead framework. Bits of this lead framework were dug up during the excavations at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.

The reason for the Saxon windows being so small is because of the costliness of the glass and the difficulty of manufacturing large quantities in the monastic workshop.  Bede tells us that in AD 674 Benedict Biscop imported French craftsmen from Gaul to produce glass windows for St. Peter's monastery at Monkwearmouth, which he had founded in the previous year. This is the first recorded use of stained glass in Britain. The local monks learnt their glassmaking skills from these craftsmen and were able to carry on the glass-making tradition at the monastery.

It's so neat to think about early stained glass makers, and to remember that this is a very old artistic tradition.  I also like to think that looking at older stained glass panels will inspire new ideas in my own work.

St. Paul's Church, Jarrow 
Article on early stained glass in Jarrow, BBC 4