FORGOTTEN CRAFT
Flora Jamieson was working in admin at Madame Tussauds when she found a book about stained glass. Now, she creates her own designs, bathing a medieval art form in a bold new light
Onwarm summer days, stained-glass artist Flora Jamieson cools off with a dip in the river near her Dorset home. As she swims, she watches for wildlife and observes how sunlight catches ripples on the water. “Swimming provides a special view of the river. Wildlife doesn’t seem to notice as I drift past,” Flora says. “Recently, I saw a blue tit perched among dog roses on the bank. It was the perfect composition – like a Victorian roundel in real life.”
Roundels – the decorative centrepieces in traditional Victorian stained-glass windows and doors – form a large part of Flora’s work.
Sitting at a lightbox in her studio, she restores these panels by hand, as well as creating work following her own designs. Each piece is carefully built up with enamels, vitreous paints and stains, and fired at high temperatures between each of the three or more layers. Flora starts with delicate brushstrokes to trace outlines of flora and fauna, before adding washes of colour. Stippling the paint with a coarse hog-hair brush provides shading and texture, while highlights are created by scratching and scraping – techniques that have barely changed over centuries.
Her journey into stainedglass making started in 1996, while she was working in an administrative role at Madame Tussauds in London. “I was tidying up the library one morning when Istumbled across areference book about stained glass,” she says. “It fascinated me. Iwas surrounded by people doing creative jobs and I realised I wanted to do that, too.” Soon after signing up for an evening course in stained glass, she was hooked. “I loved the challenge of creating it,” she says. “It’s like apuzzle, working out how to make something that looks beautiful and is also structurally sound.”
THE PANE ATTRACTION
To learn more, she took aSaturday job in astudio and, over three years, eventually ended up working there full-time. Flora mastered technical elements of the craft, such as scoring and cutting panes of glass using a bladed wheel, and shaping and soldering leadwork to secure panes in position, as well as traditional glass-painting skills.
Then, in 2003, the birth of her first child prompted Flora and her partner Mike to move out of London. “I had to stop work because you can’t work with lead when you’re pregnant,” she says. “We were visiting my sister when we saw a house in Bridport, with outbuildings perfect for my own studio.”
While her children were young, Flora stepped away from restoration and large Victorian-style pieces and focused on smaller creations in her own contemporary style: “At t
