SIR BRIAN CLARKE (BRITISH 1953-)
THE PLUMB WINDOW I, 1974
polyptych in fifteen parts, mouth-blow English, French Antique and Belgian Opal glass with mirrors, cut and leaded
approximately 210cm x 243cm (82 5/8in x 95 5/8in)
Private Collection, U.K.
“The 1974 work is I think the most significant of my early works and one that I remain fascinated by today. I was 21 when I created it - and actually fabricated it myself - during the brief period I lived in Preston. I saw it then, and see it now, as a sort of doorway or window onto another world. An Arcadian experience that also was the beginning of a lifetime of experiments in the medium around the globe. It possesses, I like to think, an innocence that is impossible to fake - an uncluttered belief in abiding and endless affection.” – Sir Brian Clarke, 2024. Commissioned for the home of a northern business family (together with the smaller, related Plumb Window II), The Plumb Window is the largest of Clarke’s domestic, and secular, architectural commissions from the period. The composition divided across fifteen individual panels, read as a whole, depicts an abstracted landscape. An exemplar of Clarke’s maturing style, using characterful and richly textured transparent and translucent mouth-blown glasses. The work is in the lyrical mode which characterises Clarke’s early stained glass; displaying what art historian Martin Harrison describes as ‘Clarke’s devotion to flowers as events — literally and metaphorically — in a field’, the leading is expressively graphic, and in rendering the imagined landscapes of both Plumb windows, Clarke has eschewed the use of glass paint, emphasising the innate qualities of the material. The two Plumb windows should also be seen as kinetic artworks, with a secondary visual dynamic created by the passage of light through them over the course of each day. One of three panels of Plumb Window II, prior to installation into architectural setting, was shown as part of the travelling exhibition Glass Art One.As the present owner has noted; “The window has for me always been about rootedness - my husband loved mountains and I was engaged with the earth through gardening - so the picture Brian captured so delicately expressed our joint interests. Those roots into the land have sustained us through the decades as we brought up our family. The work feels so pertinent now in an era of climate change embodying as it does the connectivity of the earth from soil to glacier, and I cannot thank Brian enough for this leading light that has been in our life.”  Exhibited: Panel from Plumb Window II:Derby Cathedral, Glass Art One, 1975, travelling to Mid-Pennine Arts Association Gallery, Blackburn, Blackburn Cathedral, Manchester Cathedral and Bakewell Parish Church. Designs and Preliminary Studies:Sheffield City Polytechnic, Brian Clarke: Paintings and Installations, 1977;Robert Fraser Gallery, London, c.1984;Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, Brian Clarke: The Art of Light, 2018;Museum of Arts and Design, New York, Brian Clarke: The Art of Light, 2020-21.   Literature: Wolfenden, Ian, ‘Brian Clarke : Glass Art One’, Crafts Magazine, London, January 1976, p.50, no.18. Coleman, Marigold, ‘Glass from the North’, Crafts Magazine, Crafts Council of Great Britain, London, May 1977, p.17, no.26;Clarke, Brian (ed.), Architectural Stained Glass, John Murray Publishers, London, 1979, p.153;Harrison, Martin and Brian Clarke, Brian Clarke: Paintings and Projects, Quartet Books, London, 1981, pp.93-94, 187 and 191;Clarke, Brian, Paul, Greenhalgh and Norman Foster, The Art of Light, HENI Publishing, London, 2018 and second edition, Museum of Arts and Design/HENI, 2020, p. 18, Plumb Window I illustrated and p.11 for an illustration of the preliminary design of Plumb Window I;Hans Ulrich Obrist, Brian Clarke: Collages 2022 –2023, HENI Publishing, London, 2023, p.16 for an illustration of the preliminary design of Plumb Window I. We would like to thank the Studio of Sir Brian Clarke for their assistance in cataloguing the present work.