File:Frank Brangwyn - Design for a fan.jpg

Identifier: frankbrangwynhis00spar (find matches)
Title: Frank Brangwyn and his work. 1911
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Sparrow, Walter Shaw, 1862-
Subjects: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir, 1867-1956
Publisher: Boston : Dana Estes
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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tury by Pugin, as if good drawing and gloriouscolour were impossible to unite in a window decoration.Then larger pieces of glass were made, and cartoonists hadto face the difficulty of keeping away from pictorial realismwhile composing with human figures and with fewer leadedcanes. And that was not all. As soon as the lead stripsbecame less numerous, their effect became less and lesslike a mosaic, and craftsmen and the public becameconscious that occasional strips of lead were ugly; andthis gave a great impetus to a vogue in/«////^^ windows,where the lead was concealed with the utmost care, andin which artists used plates of translucent glass and appliedthe designs and colours with enamels, vitrifiable pigments,metallic oxides combined with vitreous compounds knownas fluxes. In such windows we are expected to forgetthat glass is the material, and usually they are not decora-tions at all, but third- and fourth-rate pictures stuck upin a window opening.216 <fa Pi o fa zo ►—I w Q
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Uesigns for Mouse Furnishing We see, then, that experiments for a long time haverun counter to the old conception of a coloured window—as a many-tinted mosaic made up with small pieces ofglass, these being patterned into a translucent ornamentby means of many leaded canes. Brangwyn had to acceptthe existing conditions, and to find in his cartoons atrue method of fenestral decoration without much helpfrom the lead and the iron which used to be essentialto coloured windows, their construction and safety. Thedifficulties were very great, and if some of the results donot seem to be worthy of the inventive skill and carebestowed on them, others are quite charming. Foremostamong the secular subjects I may put the Flute Players —a design of true and gracious decoration ; its lines areall beautiful and carefully thought out in their relationto a speculative treatment of material. A purist mightobject to the sitting nude figure of the girl, because herwhole body is cut out of a single piec

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