Karl Bergemann Parsons (23 January 1884 – 30 September 1934) was a British
stained glass
Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...
artist associated with the
Arts and Crafts movement.
Early life, 1884 – 1898
Parsons was born in
Peckham
Peckham () is a district in southeast London, within the London Borough of Southwark. It is south-east of Charing Cross. At the United Kingdom Census 2001, 2001 Census the Peckham ward had a population of 14,720.
History
"Peckham" is a Saxon p ...
in south London on 23 January 1884, the 12th and youngest child of Arthur William Parsons (1838–1901), a foreign language translator, and Emma Matilda Parsons, née Bergemann (1837–1914). He was christened with the names Charles Bergemann, though the family always called him Karl, the name he was to use in later life.
From 1893 to 1898 he attended
Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys School at
New Cross in south London.
Introduction to Whall, 1898 – outbreak of war
One of Parsons’ older sisters was the artist
Beatrice Emma Parsons
Beatrice Emma Parsons (1870–1955) was a British painter and is best known for her watercolours of garden subjects. Parsons, along with George Samuel Elgood and Ernest Arthur Rowe, is considered one of the leading English painters of gardens.
...
(1869–1955). Beatrice worked for a while in
Christopher Whall’s studio and when Parsons left school, Beatrice persuaded Whall to take him on as an apprentice. Whall it seems saw promise in Parsons'
sketches. Apart from starting with Whall as a pupil-apprentice at Whall’s
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
...
studio, he also worked at
Lowndes and Drury
The Glass House building was a "purpose-built stained-glass studio and workshop" for stained glass artists in Fulham, London. Having gone into partnership in 1897, Mary Lowndes and Alfred Drury had The Glass House built in 1906 for use by indepen ...
in Chelsea, this under Whall’s supervision. He also attended Whall’s classes at the
L.C.C. Central School of Arts & Crafts
The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cra ...
.
He completed his apprenticeship in the 1900s and then worked as one of Whall’s assistants. In September 1904 he began teaching at the Central School, initially as one of Whall’s assistants and then as principal teacher of stained glass. One pupil was
M. E. Aldrich Rope
M. E. Aldrich Rope (Margaret Edith Rope) (29 July 1891 – 9 March 1988) was an English stained-glass artist in the Arts and Crafts movement tradition active between 1910 and 1964. She was a cousin of Margaret Agnes Rope of Shrewsbury, anoth ...
, cousin of
Margaret Agnes Rope
Margaret Agnes Rope (20 June 18826 December 1953) was a British stained glass artist in the Arts and Crafts movement tradition active in the first four decades of the 20th century. Her work is notable for the intensity and skill of the paintin ...
. Another pupil was Joan
Fulleylove who worked with
and in fact continued Esplin's work for the
Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
cathedral in
Khartoum when Esplin could no longer do so.
Throughout the 1900s he was to assist Whall on his major commissions and in 1905 drew some of the illustrations for Whall’s book ''Stained Glass Work'' this along with fellow student
Edward Woore. Parsons assisted Whall with the windows for
Gloucester Cathedral
Gloucester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, in Gloucester, England, stands in the north of the city near the River Severn. It originated with the establishment of a minster dedicated to S ...
and also those for
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England. It forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Justin Welby, leader of the ...
,
Southwell Minster,
Tonbridge School Chapel, and churches in
Ashbourne,
Ledbury
Ledbury is a market town and civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England, lying east of Hereford, and west of the Malvern Hills.
It has a significant number of timber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Street ...
and
Burford.
In 1907 he married Grace Millicent Simmons. She too studied at the Central School and became an Arts and Crafts
embroiderer
Embroidery is the craft of decorating Textile, fabric or other materials using a sewing needle, needle to apply yarn, thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, emb ...
.
In 1908 he worked with Whall on the design and execution of
apse windows for
Cape Town Cathedral and in that year set up his own studio at the Glass House in Fulham. In the same year he began work on his first independent commission, a series of windows for St Alban,
Hindhead. He also exhibited three designs at the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
and 25 September 1908 saw the birth of his daughter Margaret Rosetta.
It was the architect
Herbert Baker who had asked Whall to take on the Cape Town windows and it was Baker’s associate Fleming, who in later years was to invite Parsons to undertake other commissions in South Africa. Close connections with architects were important to people like Parsons and he was to have a similar relationship with
Robert Lorimer in Scotland which was to lead to his receiving important Scottish commissions. Other important contacts were John Duke Coleridge, and
Everard and Pick. Whall had similarly benefitted from close ties to the likes of the architects
John Dando Sedding
John Dando Sedding (13 April 1838 – 7 April 1891) was an English church architect, working on new buildings and repair work, with an interest in a "crafted Gothic" style. He was an influential figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, many of wh ...
and
Henry Wilson.
During the period 1909 to 1910, he worked for a short period with
Louis Davis Louis Davis may refer to:
*Chip Davis (born 1947), born Louis F. Davis, American musician
*Louis Davis (architect) (1884–1962), American architect
* Louis Davis (painter) (1860–1941), British artist
See also
* Lou Davis (1881–1961), American ...
, cartooning windows from Davis’ designs. In 1910 he exhibited designs at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Certainly Parsons worked closely with Davis in 1910 on the windows for St Anseln church (seven lancets for the Holy Spirit chapel) and
Holy Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...
in St Andrew’s Fife (a five-light Crucifixion window). It was Davis who had introduced Parsons to Robert Lorimer. In 1910, Parsons lived at 38 Gainsborough Road in
Bedford Park, London.
1911 saw the birth of his second daughter, Jacynth Mary, who became a
book illustrator.
In 1912 he received a commission for the Rolls and Grace memorial window at
Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey and in the next year his work was exhibited at the
Ghent International Exhibition. It was in 1913 that Parsons met the Irish artist
Harry Clarke.
One was to influence the other.
1914 – 1930
The Great War saw many of the Glass House staff leave to do military service and in 1916 Parsons himself was
conscripted into the
Army but was not posted overseas.
Demobilised in 1918, he resumed work at the Glass House and went back to teaching at the Central School. As a teacher, Parsons was, like Whall before him, to inspire several of his pupils to become stained glass artists, including
Lilian Pocock Lillian or Lilian can refer to:
People
* Lillian (name) or Lilian, a given name
Places
* Lilian, Iran, a village in Markazi Province, Iran In the United States
* Lillian, Alabama
* Lillian, West Virginia
* Lillian Township, Custer County, Ne ...
, Joseph E. Nuttgens and
Herbert Hendrie.
After the war there was a boom in demand for stained glass, particularly with many memorial windows being commissioned and Parsons appointed
Edward Liddall Armitage
Edward Liddall Armitage or E. Liddall Armitage (1887–1967) was an English stained-glass designer.[Chartres
Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as d ...]
where, with his brother Ambrose, he carried out a detailed study of medieval glass. Parsons wrote "So far as my knowledge goes, this world cannot show anything made by men so amazingly beautiful".
In 1927 he was commissioned to make the apse windows for the new
St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg.
1929 saw a collection of
poems that he had written published by the
Medici Society under the title ''Ann’s Book''. His daughter Jacynth provided the illustrations. (The previous year she had illustrated ''Forty Nine Poems'' by
W. H. Davies
William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, yet became one of the most popular poets of his time. His themes inc ...
, also for Medici). Over the years Parsons had several of his poems published in anthologies and periodicals. In the same year he resigned from his teaching post at the Central School.
1930 to 1934 – final years
In 1930 Parsons moved from
Northwood, where he had lived for many years, to
Shalbourne in Wiltshire. There he set up a studio at Ropewind Farm where he converted a mid-18th century
three-bay barn, adding a large, porch-like window to let in natural light on the north side. He also incorporated a small
granary on unusual brick and timber
staddles thus converting it into a larger purpose-built storage building and garage, giving access directly from Rivar Road. The house he lived in adjoined the site. It should have been an idyllic time for Parsons but his health deteriorated and finally, in 1933, he had to return to London, took a flat in
Putney and worked for a while with his great friend
Edward Woore. He died there the following year at the young age of 50. After his death on 30 September 1934, the cause of death being given as
cerebral thrombosis
A thrombus (plural thrombi), colloquially called a blood clot, is the final product of the blood coagulation step in hemostasis. There are two components to a thrombus: aggregated platelets and red blood cells that form a plug, and a mesh of c ...
and
arteriosclerosis, existing commissions were taken over or completed by Woore.
Works
Gallery
File:Karl Parsons St. Margaret window, St Giles Cathedral.jpg, ''St. Margaret'', St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh (1915)
File:Karl Parsons Pangbourne St. James.jpg, ''St. George, St. Michael and Nativity'' (1919) St. James Church, Pangbourne, Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
File:Fortitude and Hope window 1912.jpg, ''Fortitude and Hope'' (1912), All Saints Church, Eastchurch, Sheppey, Kent
File:Porthcawl.jpg, Detail from east window, All Saints Church, Porthcawl
All Saints Church, Porthcawl is a Listed Anglican church in the seaside resort of Porthcawl, South Wales. It is a daughter church of St John's in Newton, despite being considerably larger in size.
St John's, founded in the 1180s, proved suffici ...
File:Parsons, Waterford detail.jpg, ''St Cecilia and Angel'', St Michael and All Angels Church, Waterford, Hertfordshire (1929)
Notes
References
External links
Flickr photographers' pool of Karl Parsons' work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parsons, Karl
1884 births
1934 deaths
British stained glass artists and manufacturers
People from Shalbourne
People from Hillingdon
People from Peckham
Military personnel from Surrey
British Army personnel of World War I
British Army soldiers