Charles Eamer Kempe



Charles Eamer Kempe was probably the greatest Victorian Stain Glass designer  in Victoria history.   He dedicated his work to redesigning Churches and especially restoring the art of Stain Glass Windows depicting Jesus, Mary and the Saints and depicting many biblical scenes to bring Churches closer to God.   There is hardly a part of the country where you are not far from his work be it Yorkshire, Stirling,  Newcastle, Wakefield, Oxford University, Sussex, Brighton.    So, so many places.   Now you may well be asking what this has to do with my hunt for Virgo Immaculata?   My answer is that he restored medieval stained glass window production and copied the old and fading  to replace the original.    Now if it were a painting you would have probably had a signature of some kind but with stained Glass Windows you made up something individual on the window which those who looked at it would see and know who the designer was.    Kempe used several methods.  He like Pelicans and wheatsheafs, but he also used Gothic Pavilions and birds.   At the top of the window you will see such a Gothic Pavilion.    The dat on the stand is 18--  which is the date he completed the copy.

I discovered all this when I put the right words into the search engine and came upon the Church of All Hallows, Woolbeding.    The text tells me that during the Civil War the stained Glass windows in the Holy Ghost Church, built as a burial place for Lord Sandys and his family, were removed to Mottisfont Abbey for safety.     Mottisfont was also owned by the Sandys.    When the Sandys died off and the Vyne was inherited by a Sir John Mill of Woolbeding. who had a relation who was a vicar in Woolbeding and this Vicar promptly raided Mottisfont and took some of the Stained Glass windows to Woolbeding for All Hallows Church.  The ones he took were from the Holy Ghost Church.   In 18-- the Mills family called in Charles Eamer Kempe to renovate the fading Medieval Glass Windows.    I did rush on my PC to look at the renovated windows at All Hallows but alas there were many but none was the Virgo Immaculata.   I know that some of the windows from Mottisfont went to Winchester Cathedral and were renovated around the time of Kempe but he was not involved and there is no such window in the Cathedral.  

But the search goes on, my head grows bald, and there is more and more wrinkles on my face.   Still I really enjoyed finding out about Charles Earner Kempe.   He was part of the Oxford Reform Movement and an Anglo-Catholic.   His Stained Glass windows are at times breathtaking.  











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Translation of Luke 1: 28 in the Latin Vulgate by St Jerome.

.......et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus..... If indeed we are to have a Year of the Bible and indeed praise St Jerome, as indeed he deserves to be praised, for translating the texts approved by the Church into Latin, the language of the Mass, then surely we should check what the Latin says according to St Jerome before we rush into translating into other languages.    In this case translating  from the Gospel of Luke, St Jerome wrote the above, which translates  "..and entering the angel said to her 'Hail full of grace the Lord is with you and blessed are you among women".   Now you do not have to be a scholar to realise that this means much more than 'highly favoured'.   So why I ask myself does the translation we read in our Catholic Church at the gospel read 'highly favoured' rather than 'full of grace'  Why is this important?   Because if she was born 'full of grace' t
Read more

FAIR AS THE MOON, BRIGHT AS THE SUN, TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY SET IN BATTLE ARRAY

'Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array'. The above quote will be familiar to only a few Catholics today,   It was once on the lips of members of the Legion of Mary which was present in many parishes.    Fair as the moon and bright as the sun certainly describes Our Lady of Fatima but who exactly is meant by 'terrible as an army set in battle array?'   Certainly Our Lady appeared to ask us to pray for the conversion of sinners many of who were going to Hell for their sins as forewarned by her Son Jesus when he preachedHis Gospel.  Often we are trying and feel we are succeeding in living good lives when suddenly everything goes wrong  Like St Paul we often do the things we do not want to do rather than those that we want to do.   It is because we are involved in a war between Good and Evil and we are the children of Mary that the red Dragon wishes to devour in Revelations 12    We
Read more

The meaning of 'virgo Immaculata'

Image
As you will see from the stained glass window the name given to the image is Virgo Immaculata.   Mary was the virgin who remained sinless and spotless.  Yes she would have been tempted by Satan, but as the image shows she kept close to God in prayer and all the wiles of Satan, the forbidden fruit he offered, depictdd by the apple, ended up stuck in his throat while the right foot of Mary crushed his head. "I will put enmity between Thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed", God tole the serpent in Genesis   Satan was no match for Jesus who was God made Man but he had overcome a mere mortal before in Eve, What a triumph it would have been to destroy she whom Jesus loved above al others - his mother.   But Mary kept close to Jesus and to God, the new Eve, and mother of the new children that the death of Jesus brought into being.    And as Revelations 12 tells us having failed to destroy the birth of Jesus Satan  went after her other children - us.       When
Read more