Alan Younger, Stained Glass Artist/Designer
Bill Schenley
Alan Younger
Stained-glass artist and designer
Alan Christopher Wyrill Younger, stained-glass artist: born London 13
March 1933; married (two daughters); died London 12 May 2004.
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Alan Younger's legacy in stained glass is not only in his completed
commissions in numerous important public buildings, but also by the
support he gave to the craft itself and to artists who sought his
advice.
Younger was an active Fellow and Vice-President of the British Society
of Master Glass Painters and he felt a duty to preserve the traditions
and skills of the craft at a time when they are under threat. He knew
that excellent contemporary design requires an historical platform to
perform at its best.
Born and educated in south-east London, Younger began his professional
career in 1953 as assistant to Carl Edwards, working on large-scale
commissions that included the House of Lords Debating Chamber, the
Temple Church and Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. This experience, by
his own admission, helped when the opportunity came to design and make
the large Rose Window in St Albans Cathedral in 1989 and the East
Window in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey, installed in
October 2000.
In 1956 he was inspired by an exhibition for the stained glass in
Coventry Cathedral and three years later became an assistant to
Lawrence Lee, Professor of Stained Glass at the Royal College of Art,
who had supervised the making of the nave windows. Younger's time with
Edwards had instructed him in the running of a studio and what was
expected of a professional designer and under Lee he learnt
self-expression as a glass painter and craftsman.
After a working relationship lasting six years, Younger left Lee's
studio to concentrate on designing new glass, while supporting his
young family by teaching art. He was a highly competitive man with a
steely ambition focused on making his own designs, and the opportunity
to win his first commission came in 1966, for Haselbech Church,
Northamptonshire. The following year he made the East Window at Boldre
Church, Hampshire, demonstrating the full range of his extensive craft
knowledge: flashed glass melted expertly with hydrofluoric acid, a
variety of tonal textures in the painting and a glass palette that
ranged from off rubies to flashed greys applied with silver stain, the
whole structurally interlaced with passages of tinted whites.
Younger's first windows were made at the Fulham Glass House, using the
Lowndes & Drury studio rented at that time by Keith New, who had
worked with Lee and Geoffrey Clarke on the Coventry windows. Later, he
moved to Crystal Palace where he set up his own small studio at the
bottom of the garden.
Alan Younger chose not to employ assistants because he wished to cut
and paint all of the glass himself. To watch him dabbing at the
surface of the glass with tissues or his badger brushes, or sticking
out the glass paint with a needle or the tips of his fingers, made one
realise that it would have been impossible for anyone else to make up
his designs. A master of improvisation, he combined imperfections in
the glass with glass painting "accidents" to manipulate the
transmission of daylight in precisely the manner he wanted.
Younger's other major ecclesiastical commissions are to be found in
Durham and Chester Cathedrals while his major secular work is confined
to Saudi Arabia. But one humble window demonstrates the qualities of
the man admired by those who knew him best. Close to his cottage in
Worth Matravers, Dorset, is St Aldhelm's, described by Simon Jenkins
as a "wild clifftop chapel", a building much loved by Alan Younger in
which there is a single lancet light.
After it was damaged in a violent storm, he produced a design for a
replacement painted window that was rejected by the local Diocesan
Advisory Committee, who insisted it be replaced with plain white
glass. Younger possessed a sublime calmness in circumnavigating any
challenge and his eyes twinkled when he arrived at my studio one
morning with the intention of using my glass stock. He wanted some
"slab" or "bottle glass" in a variety of white tints that would hold
and diffuse the sunlight and we spent the day searching for some
late-19th-century "Prior's Glass" which he decided to use in whatever
shape he found it in - adapting his design to fit the glass.
This small window, installed in 2000, is testament to a master glazier
displaying a complete knowledge of the inherent qualities of the
materials with which he worked and an outstanding ability to produce
contemporary glazing which sits perfectly at ease in a medieval
setting. The glass captures the light, either glowing or sparkling as
the design fluctuates constantly, along with the mood of the sky and
landscape, from slate grey to blood-red sunset.
Alan Younger stained glass:
http://www.stmarysewell.com/images/millenniumwindow.jpg
http://www.churchcrawler.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/churchcrawler/gwent.htm