The message in the glass

Collecting stained glass seems to have fallen somewhat from fashion. In the first half of the 20th century, acquisition was lively and prices soared as the Big Three — William Burrell, Pierpont Morgan and William Randolph Hearst — vied for possession of the best examples of this essentially Christian artform. (There is no stained glass recorded before the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century. It may have become secularised later, but it was originally intended for purposes of religious instruction and adornment.) After the second world war, tastes changed and stained glass was largely ignored. In recent years, there has been something of a revival of interest, with Sam Fogg a pioneer in the field. Two years ago he mounted his first exhibition devoted to the subject, Images in Light: Stained Glass 1200–1550, and the entire show was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. The sequel, Illuminating the Past: Stained Glass 1200–1550, is now in the West End, and attracting a great deal of scholarly and general interest.

The ground-floor gallery of Fogg’s premises off Bond Street gives a taste of the splendours to come. A handful of examples of stained glass are carefully presented, illuminated against custom-made light boxes, with the odd piece of stone carving or statuary placed strategically nearby. There’s a piece of English glass from the second half of the 15th century — an armorial shield of the Horne family of Essex, wittily depicting two strap-hanging hunting horns. There are a pair of composite panels made up of salvaged fragments from the Norwich School, also 15th century, probably put together in this fashionable ‘mosaic’ style during the 19th century. Look at the unbearably plangent blues surrounding the lions’ heads in the right-hand one. Here is a lute-playing angel mixed up with architectural elements, drapery and clouds in a satisfyingly decorative whole.