Stained Glass of Percy Bacon & Brothers

Triptych window; Nativity, Ascension, Jesus Healing.
Given by John Bibby.
Photo © Phil Nash from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 & GFDL

Triptych window given by John Bibby
Photo © Phil Nash from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 & GFDL

This is a strangely arresting window and a fine example of Percy Bacon's craft. Dated 1910 and given by John Bibby. From an architectural viewpoint, the wide lancets (one hesitates to call them so, but to resist is futile) are beautifully proportioned. The central taller light seems perfectly to enhance the flanking, shorter lights without dominating. Wide mullions allow a good distance between the lights reinforcing the sense of proportion. One might say that the architect has excelled. This separation has given license to the stained glass designer to present individual, almost unrelated, narrative scenes to each of the lights; by contrast, lights separated by narrow mullions would more likely, at least by Bacon, be conjoined by a single narrative scene and a border of architectonic devices framing the whole window, or by individual figures confined to each light. Bacon has used the full heights of the lights to extend the canopies into the trefoil heads, a technique which masterfully maximises the available space and draws one's eyes upwards in order to witness the whole scene; while at the same time, being predominantly of white glass, the canopies perform the secondary function of allowing as much light into the building as possible.

Three narrative scenes from the life of Christ are depicted (l to r):

• Nativity
• Ascension
• Jesus healing, possibly the lame man from Bethesda (John 5:1-15)

The window was installed under the supervision of the architect, Edmund Ware.¹ It is unsigned.

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1. The Builder 1909-08-21: Vol 97 Iss 3472. p222