Peter Cormack

Arts & Crafts Stained Glass Peter Cormack

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references.; Beautifully illustrated and based on more than three decades of research, Arts & Crafts Stained Glass is the first study of how the late-19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement transformed the aesthetics and production of stained glass in Britain and America. A progressive school of artists, committed to direct involvement both in making and designing windows, emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, reinventing stained glass as a modern, expressive art form. Using innovative materials and techniques, they rejected formulaic Gothic Revivalism while seeking authentic, creative inspiration in medieval traditions. This new approach was pioneered by Christopher Whall (1849-1924), whose charismatic teaching educated a generation of talented pupils--both men and women--who produced intensely colorful and inventive stained glass, using dramatic, lyrical, and often powerfully moving design and symbolism. Peter Cormack demonstrates how women made critical contributions to the renewal of stained glass as artists and entrepreneurs, gaining meaningful equality with their male colleagues, more fully than in any other applied art. Cormack restores stained glass to its proper status as an important field of Arts and Crafts activity, with a prominent role in the movement's polemical campaigning, its public exhibitions, and its educational program--; Provided by publisher. Biographical Note: Peter Cormack is a noted scholar of 19th- and 20th-century British and American stained glass, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts Movement."Publisher Marketing: Beautifully illustrated and based on more than three decades of research, "Arts & Crafts Stained Glass" is the first study of how the late-19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement transformed the aesthetics and production of stained glass in Britain and America. A progressive school of artists, committed to direct involvement both in making and designing windows, emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, reinventing stained glass as a modern, expressive art form. Using innovative materials and techniques, they rejected formulaic Gothic Revivalism while seeking authentic, creative inspiration in medieval traditions. This new approach was pioneered by Christopher Whall (1849 1924), whose charismatic teaching educated a generation of talented pupils both men and women who produced intensely colorful and inventive stained glass, using dramatic, lyrical, and often powerfully moving design and symbolism. Peter Cormack demonstrates how women made critical contributions to the renewal of stained glass as artists and entrepreneurs, gaining meaningful equality with their male colleagues, more fully than in any other applied art. Cormack restores stained glass to its proper status as an important field of Arts and Crafts activity, with a prominent role in the movement s polemical campaigning, its public exhibitions, and its educational program."

Contributor Bio:  Cormack, Peter Cormack read art history at Trinity College, Cambridge. For the past twenty years his principal field of research has been 19th-and 20th-century stained glass, on which he has written and lectured extensively.