The Friends of Abingdon Museum have organised a talk on the artist and printmaker John Piper. John Piper was also a master of modern stained glass, and a photographer. An example of his stained glass can be seen in St. Helen’s Church, as well as other churches in this area. Photographs he took of Abingdon can be seen in the Tate Collection.
The talk, by Revd Ian Browne, is to be held at the Amey Theatre at Abingdon School on 3rd March 2016 at 7:30pm. Tickets at £10 include a complimentary drink and are available from boxoffice@abingdon.org.uk, the Newbury Building Society, Mostly Books, and The Bookstore.
I’m a long time friend of Tony and Caroline Benyon (Benyon Glass) and my friendship with Tony goes back to when he used to draw The Lone Groover in the NME … I did the marketing for the rag in the 1970’s to ‘help keep it off the streets’.
Tony has gone on (via being an art lecturer at John Cass and the NME) to be a stained glass artist of reputation and an archivist of stained glass dedicated to giving full credit to the artisan craftsmen who actually did the ‘work’, unlike the ‘gentlemen craftsmen’ like Piper who did some vague sketches and then claimed credit for the finished work.
See Tony here
http://www.benyonstainedglass.com/index.php/9
A couple of years ago I walked Tony into St Nck’s and he ‘took the stained glass apart’ in terms of when restorations were done on terms of ‘glass colourations’, which fragments were really medieval, interpretation of the the windows. etc
It helps that his wife, the amazingly over-qualified Caroline:
http://www.benyonstainedglass.com/
is head of the stained glass guild … the first women, to my knowledge, to head one of these craft guilds.
If I get my place sorted before summer I’m hoping to get Tony and Caroline down for a weekend and I’d love to take them round St Helens. Backstreeter … would they let us in?
I went into Carl Edwards studio in Fulham in the 1970’s (Carl being Caroline’s dad) and it was like stepping several centuries back. Absolutely magical place of blown glass and lead stacked on dusty shelves. Painters in their seventies going blind …. Tony became his wife’s painter because all the old fellas were going blind.
And I get angry because there’s no craftsmanship and care in anything that the district council (yeah … lower case) have ever done to this town.
Piper took credit for other peoples’ work (I’ve seem the sketches and A-Beed the results).
It’s the microcosm of the World, folks, make way for the chancers. The guys in suits with no imagination at all.