Lynn Price
by Brenda Ross
The busy A6 north of Derby is not the obvious place to find a stained glass artist at work. But in the village of Ambergate, in a small building that has seen a previous life as an electrical shop, a bike shop and a hairdressers, Lynn Price has made her studio. With blinds over the front windows to hide the road, and jazz or relaxing music playing in the background to block out the sound of passing traffic, she works looking out from the back windows on a river that flows past a few feet away and which has provided inspiration for her current work.
"I cannot help but be affected by the river; I have worked beside it for a few years," she says. "The view changes through the seasons, and the river changes according to the light, even through the day. So does glass, so there is a link."
Lynn's first piece of work on a river/landscape theme was a commission for a barn conversion. "The client wanted glass panels for some doors that led into a contemporary room, so I was able to create a contemporary design. It had to say something about the landscape around the barn, and the client particularly liked the rowan tree so I incorporated some painted leaves in the design."
More recently she has produced six pieces on a river/landscape theme for a gallery, and has developed a technique for using skeletal leaves found while out walking near her studio. Having washed and ironed them, she sandwiches them between two pieces of thin glass, then incorporates them into a piece of work alongside coloured glass: "The scale of leaf I use dictates the scale of the piece of work, and a skeletal leaf makes the work more economic. A painted leaf takes so long to create successfully that it would be beyond most people's budget."
This is the latest in a series of developments in her work. Although she has been working in stained glass for 18 years, it has become a business in the last 7 years. It all began when she took a degree in ceramics and glass in the early 1980s at Buckingham College of Higher Education, having always been a keen potter. "Ceramics and glass are not far removed in the way they are made up," she says. "After my degree I made some glass pieces for friends and family, and to exhibit in local venues, and did a few commissions. I had an idea that I would be working in glass in the future but I could not afford to set up at that time. The materials are expensive; it took me about five years to build up my current palette of glass, with six or seven shades of each primary colour and a range of secondary colours."
So after her degree course she worked for the local authority in part-time posts, mainly teaching ceramics, so that she could save up and leave herself some free time to pursue her interest in glass. But after several years she found she did not have the time needed for her own work, so decided to make a change. In 1995, having answered an advertisement in Artists Newsletter, she gained an apprenticeship place at a private stained glass studio, Vertrate Artistche Toscana, in Siena, Italy. "They take two apprentices at a time, for three months, and before you go you have to have the basic skills and be able to make stained glass," says Lynn.
It was a wonderful opportunity - and hard work, working from 7am to 7pm and camping in a tent during an unseasonably wet period. The studio and its apprenticeship scheme are run by brothers Gianni and Massimo Bracialli, and Lynn worked as part of a team of four on a major church restoration, at St Bernados in Arrezzo:
"I experienced all aspects of the work including installation, which was marvellous. We made three huge pictorial windows, 3 ft wide and 15 ft high. I cut out, almost single-handedly, all the pieces for the window of St Teresa Margherita, it took me six weeks!"
She was also involved in making stained glass panels for houses in Siena, and particularly appreciated learning the skills of fire-on glass painting from the studio's talented fresco painter, Alberto Positano. She had to learn to paint "in the reverse" from the way learned during her school and college days. Instead of applying colour with a brush and building up layers, as for instance with watercolours, when painting on glass the paint is applied then brushed off to allow varying amounts of light through. "It was for the painting that I went there," says Lynn, "and having learned skills at the studio I have been developing my own style of work ever since."
Lynn calls herself a bit of a scatterbrain as a person, so she finds that working in stained glass gives a sense of order in her life, with its set processes of design, cut, lead, solder, putty. Cutting out the glass is the longest process. She uses machine-made and hand-made glass. "Machine-made glass has a more predictable and regular texture," she explains. "Hand-made glass has irregular texture and colours, is thicker at the edges and thin in the middle, and gives the best light effects. Machine-made glass gives 'flatter' effects."
When used in a door the finished piece has to be puttied to make it weatherproof, and Lynn makes her own putty to a secret recipe she learned in Italy, as she finds this better to work with than bought putty.
Lynn's work divides into two categories: "When you say stained glass, most people think of churches and Victorian front doors. It is difficult to get away from the traditional style, but I am presenting other things too, in a contemporary style, and have had some good reactions to it."
Lynn works solely to commission and most of her work is making or restoring panels in the front doors of Victorian and Edwardian houses, of which there are plenty in the locality. Her working area extends across Derbyshire into the borders of Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire, but she has made many front door panels in her own village, including five in the street where she works. She has made some further afield too - the client sends a photo of the door and details of measurements, period of the house, and preferred colours. But Lynn likes local clients so she can go to the building involved and get the feel of it: "During a commission you develop a relationship with a client; you get to know them and have been in their house."
The front doors provide her "bread and butter" work but she really likes producing contemporary designs for unusual settings, and developing her own work for exhibitions and galleries. This in turn leads to commissions of more contemporary work, and so her work develops.
"I am taking a medieval craft and using these processes in a traditional way but with new and contemporary ideas. On the one hand, I am a tradesperson when doing the front doors - measuring up and talking about the client's requirements. On the other hand, at galleries I get the chance to talk about how I feel. I am dealing with two different sorts of people but I am able to fit into both worlds."
Last year Lynn exhibited at the British Craft Trade Fair, in the Newcomers Gallery, and although she only received one order as a result she found attending the event benefited her because it boosted her confidence, in particular to go out and talk to galleries. "I had previously been preoccupied with earning a living. Now I am making different sorts of images."
She has produced a brochure for galleries, and a leaflet for the public on how to commission a stained glass window.
She also makes some small pieces of work to sell direct to the public, in particular at the Wirksworth Festival, held a few miles from her home over two weekends each summer.
"It includes public exhibitions, and artists exhibit in people's homes and gardens. During the Festival I meet people I have done work for, who come to say hello, plus new clients, and I am also able to network with other artists."
Most recently she has been making experimental pieces fusing materials such as metal filings, copper wire and fabric to glass in the kiln, then putting these in traditional leaded panels that are not very colourful. She has made these into a contemporary display piece to attract customers, and when it has served its purpose she will offer it for sale. She is also experimenting with creating tiles made up of small squares of glass, some of single coloured glass and some patterned by fusing together two or three layers of 2mm thin glass in different sized shapes.
Lynn still does some adult education teaching, at evening and afternoon classes, but mainly in ceramics, with some drawing. She hopes to teach stained glass in the future. She has a vision of running a gallery on the ground floor of her premises, where she presently has her studio, to sell other local artists' work as well as her own, and on the floor underneath, which is at the level of her small riverbank garden, having a workshop where she could run teaching weekends.
"I would also love to receive a commission that used my current theme of reflecting the landscape and enabled me to incorporate a large piece of work into a public building, such as a hospital or arts centre, where the nature of my work flowed through the building and reflected what was outside."
