Thomas Willement

Thomas Willement (18 July 1786–10 March 1871) was an English stained glass artist, called "the Father of Victorian Stained Glass", active from 1811 to 1865.

Willement was born at St Marylebone, London. Like many early 19th century provincial stained glass artists, he began as a plumber and glazier, the two jobs, now separate trades, being at that time linked because both required the skills of working with lead. In 1811, Willement produced a window with a heraldic shield. It was from this beginning that he went on to become one of the most successful of England’s early 19th century stained glass artists.

The great period of stained glass manufacturing had been the period from about 1100 until about 1500. After that time, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII and the destruction of the Church’s artworks by Puritans in the Parliamentary Period, there was little stained glass manufacture. Those few windows which were produced between 1500 and 1800 were generally of painted glass in which process the colours were applied by brush to the surface of the glass and fired to anneal them, rather than the artist working with numerous sections of coloured glass and piecing them together.

It has been claimed of Willement that through his observations of old windows, he reinvented the ancient method of leading coloured pieces and integrating the visually black lines created between the colours by the lead cames into the design of the window. From observing 14th century windows such as the West window of York Minster, Willement developed the artistic method of arranging figures one to each single light, surmounted by a decorative canopy.

He was further encouraged after 1839 in the archaeological direction that his work took by the Cambridge Camden Society who promoted all things Medievalising in the structure of new churches and the restoration of old ones. Willement was encouraged by the society and also received the patronage of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the most famous ecclesiastical architect and designer of Churches. Unfortunately Willement suffered a falling out with Pugin who accused him of being mercenary. (Pugin also had previously fallen out with his first stained glass artist, Willement’s pupil, William Warrington.) It is also possible that the style of Willement's figures was not sufficiently archaeologically correct to satisfy Pugin who was himself a meticulous and elegant draftsman.

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