Craige Aitchison known for his flat, colourful and economic style of painting designed this window just before his death in 2009. In fact he only designed three church windows one of which I helped with at St Mary the Boltons in London and his last was one which I made and installed in St Martins in the Bullring, Birmingham, 2015.
This spotlight is on the process of making the window, firstly a single panel was a fusion of a clear base glass with broken yellow glass and frit to define the background. Then more frit was applied to add flecks of colour to the background which the client wanted to come through the black paint. It was fired in a glass kiln several times until ready to install into a bespoke metal frame fitted to the inside of the existing float glass glazing attached to the stone tracery. The pre-existing external glazing was already divided by a lead line so the fused glass I made was divided at the same height. The window overlooks the Bullring which is an open public space and can be viewed at night as well as from inside the church when open.
