William Warrington

William Warrington, (1796–1869), was an English maker of stained glass windows. His firm, operating from 1832 to 1875, was one of the earliest of the English Medieval revival and served clients such as Norwich and Peterborough Cathedrals. Warrington was an historian of medieval glass and published an illustrated book The History of Stained Glass.

In his youth, Warrington first trained with his father as a painter of armorial shields. He then moved for a time into the stained glass workshop of Thomas Willement, one of the earliest such workshops to be of high renown. In 1832 Warrington established his own stained glass company, where he produced windows that well satisfied the rising fashion of Gothic Revival and in which his own skills as an armorial painter were utilised in the production of domestic as well as ecclesiastical windows.

From studying existent ancient windows and emulation of the leading techniques of the master Thomas Willement, Warrington developed a style which allowed him to create windows strongly resembling those of the 13th and 14th centuries in appearance. His windows became the preferred choice of the architect Augustus Welby Pugin who used them in most of his earliest churches, between 1838 and 1842.

But Pugin was soon to fall out with Warrington, claiming “The Glass-Painters will shorten my days, they are the greatest plague I have. The reason I did not give Warrington the window at the hospital is this. He has lately become so conceited and got nearly as expensive as Willement.” Warrington produced drawings of windows to be used by Pugin in the Houses of Parliament, but the firms that Pugin employed were Ballantine and Allen and Hardman & Co.

In 1848 Warrington published “The History of Stained Glass, from the Earliest Period of the Art to the Present Time” . The book came out in a folio edition with coloured lithographs illustrating British stained glass windows from the 11th to the 15th centuries. However Warrington expressed his dislike of the glass of the centuries that followed as being “a misconception and misapplication of this art.”

Among Warrington's significant commissions was the tiered arrangement of windows for the Eastern Apse of Norwich Cathedral. He also designed for Ely Cathedral, where his work may still be seen, both installed and on display in the Stained Glass Museum.

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