I have seen images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ Jesus, St. Joseph, and other saints on stained glass windows.  
Are there rules governing what images go on stained glass windows?

Yes - decided by the window's owner. My local Hells Angels Chapter Headquarters has a rather fetching one which includes a young Jane Fonda as Barbarella and a young Carrie Fisher as the captive Princess Leia. Skimpy bikinis are the rule in that one.

The stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral in France are almost 1,000 years old.

nordmann wrote:

Princess Leia

Not just Princess Leia on this one but all the main characters from Star Wars:



That said - with 'Jedi Knight' being given under the 'What is your religion?' question by hundreds of thousands of respondents in the UK censi of 2001 and 2011, then maybe it's not the best example of contemporary secular stained glass. As an art form, stained glass was popular from Persia to the British Isles throughout the Middle Ages. This was mainly for religious (i.e. Christian and Islamic) purposes but not exclusively so. Following the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century it gradually began to fall out of favour (particularly in northern Europe) and was virtually non-existent for about 150 years from the mid-17th Century until being revived in the 19th.

The revival of the art of staining glass in the 19th Century also saw its increased use for secular purposes. There are some examples of pre-17th Century secular stained glass but these are few and far between. Norwich Guildhall, for example, is a secular building which boasts a fine array of surviving 15th century stained glass windows but the subject matter on them is overwhelmingly religious and would not look out of place in the neighbouring Cathedral.

In London, the Haberdashers' Company has this piece which is purportedly from the 15th Century:



It is unmistakably secular and shows the Company's Arms. I haven't been able to find out exactly where it is located though. It could be on Gresham Street where the company's Hall was located from 1458 - 1996. That Hall, however, had to be rebuilt twice. The first time following the Great Fire of 1666 and the second time after the Blitz of 1940. Or it could have been removed to the company's new premises in West Smithfield. Either way it did very well to survive both those events. The look of it is definitely very old and aged glass is a look that is almost impossible to fake.

Does anyone know where it is - or does anyone know of other examples of medieval secular stained glass elsewhere such as on the continent?

An internet search tells me that a company called Leading Lights of London recently restored the 1446 window for them. However you can "walk" around much of their new hall in Smithfiled on their site and it's nowhere in evidence, at least that I could see (though they have an impressive amount of artefacts related to their history on their walls).

Leading Lights link

Haberdashers Hall virtual tour link (worth a visit)

nordmann wrote:

you can "walk" around much of their new hall in Smithfiled on their site and it's nowhere in evidence, at least that I could see (though they have an impressive amount of artefacts related to their history on their walls).

The reason is that it is located above the Hall’s Cloakroom Desk which doesn’t feature on the virtual tour. After having drawn so many blanks on this I decided to email the company archivist Dr David Bartle to enquire as to its location who in his reply kindly supplied images of the stained glass in its setting:







1446 is an interesting year for the Grant of Arms as it came only a few months after the wedding of King Henry VI to Margaret on Anjou. That year would see the terms of the Treaty of Tours (by which the marriage had been arranged) made public. This caused a stir because, according to the treaty, not only did the beautiful teenage bride come without a dowry but the Plantagenets were expected themselves to then cede the province of Maine to Margaret’s uncle Charles VII. Needless to say that Charles was also the Valois rival of Henry's for the title of King of France. Anyone in England who before 1446 had been under any illusion as to just how parlous a state the Plantagenet cause in France really was, now had those illusions well and truly dispelled. As the final Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years War drew to its close, Henry was no doubt mindful of the need to bolster his position in England and the Haberdasher’s Grant of Arms at that time can perhaps be seen in this light.

Thanks for that, Vizzer.

What an absolutely dreadful location in which to place such an important artefact! The history of the object itself merits respect in its own right, let alone as an accurate mirror of the company's own long and varied history too.

I understand that London merchants have, from long before even the Haberdashers formed their guild, a deserved reputation for hard-nosed and pragmatic pursuit of wealth that keeps them in the "here and now" and apace with modern trends and sensibilities (in which respect for history unfortunately is so often seen as of little value), but even a cursory acknowledgement of their own history, one would think, might have encouraged them to use this artefact in particular as the focus of any visitor experience. As "interpretative interfaces" go (modern museum jargon for "things what tell a bloody great story") they are fortunate to have such a unique and powerful example.

And they stick it over their cloakroom! I suppose we can only be grateful that the wall area next to the gents toilet obviously didn't occur to them.

And another thing, the Res Hist version has it the other way up which looks better to my mind. Are they little brooms or tassels - or what? And the curly feathers? And the wheels, come to that. perhaps my notion of a haberdasher is wrong. As I recall a haberdasher was where little old maiden aunts went to buy glossy plaster cherries to pin onto summer straw hats and quietly also buy suspenders in a dark area of the shop. it is so sad to reach my great age and still to know so little. As for modern museums, they show something the size of a pea in 6cu metres and keep relevant other stuff stuffed tighly away in 60cu metres in store. Grrrrr to the power of 3.

I was there end of the Seventies in Jerusalem and saw the 12 stained glass windows of Chagall. We bought the pictures from I guess a Palestinian street vendor while we found it too expensive at the place itself.
And the pictures lay now somewhere between all the journey stuff to be never seen again...but today I learned the history behind it all, with this pop up again of stained glasses...and I wasn't aware of it...

I found the colours and composition beautiful and was a bit moved as sometimes when watching art...but no stories behind, just pure esthetics...but now the story behind it all...
https://publicdelivery.org/chagall-jerusalem-windows/

And some combination of arts...

And I wasn't aware yesterday when posting the "Avinu Malkeinu" (I didn't knew the song) that it was sung by Barbara Streisand (I didn't even knew her link with Israel) And as I all read she is a "pro peace" one...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbra_Streisand
And the lyrics:
https://www.metrolyrics.com/avinu-malkeinu-lyrics-barbra-streisand.html

And sung for Simon Perez

Thankfully I wasn’t drinking tea when I read your post, nordmann, as I imagine that it may well have been sprayed all over the keyboard and monitor.

I had originally thought that the Grant of Arms was possibly concealed behind one of the three shuttered display cabinets visible on the wall on the right-hand side of the Haberdasher Hall’s Orangery as shown on the virtual tour. It being stored there, perhaps, only to be revealed on high days and holidays etc. After having been disabused of this by Dr Bartle and informed that it was located in the Cloakroom area, I tongue-in-cheek suggested that the idea of the stained glass being ‘by the toilets’ could well cause bemusement if not amusement to the readers on Res Historica. I think that the word ‘cloakroom’ is the problem here. Dr Bartle was at pains to point out that the position of the stained glass means that ‘it is seen by almost all visitors to the Hall on arrival’. He went on to jest ‘I don’t want it thought we so disrespect our heraldry as to put it above a urinal!’

I actually feel quite guilty because I assured Dr Bartle that I would do my best to try relay that information as respectfully as possible. A cloakroom desk, however, is not the same as a main reception desk and barely 48 hours after he wrote that, you duly posted the bit about ‘the wall area next to the gents toilet’.

In full agreement, Priscilla, that the arms displayed as an arched window look much better than when rotated as a shield. In its current location (above the cloakroom desk) the stained glass is back-lit by a light-emitting diode. Surely such a piece was designed for and deserves natural daylight. Perhaps there is some sort of conservation advice about protecting it from direct sunlight but I can’t think that that’s the case. Whatever the reason, (and it's the Company’s own property and Grant of Arms after all), but my penny’s worth advice would be to move the original to the quadrangle where it can catch the sun's rays and maybe install a replica above the cloakroom desk (if needed).

The 1446 arms are also more strikingly individual than the somewhat chivalric 1503 successor (a lion guardant). But what the 1446 arms actually depict is another question. It could be that the hand brushes shown are clothes brushes with the supply of dry-cleaning aids having been a significant part of a mediaeval haberdasher’s stock in trade. I’ve also read somewhere that chicken feathers were used for the wet-cleaning of specific stains on garments and other fabrics, so perhaps the supply of feathers for cloth cleaning was also what haberdashers were known for. It would be tempting also to suggest that the ‘wheels’ on show are actually buttons but that might be a guess too far. They really do just look like wheels.

P.S. Paul - If you like Hebrew songs (as I do) then I've made a posting on the Historical TV and Radio thread which you might find of interest.

Vizzer wrote:

P.S. Paul - If you like Hebrew songs (as I do) then I've made a posting on the Historical TV and Radio thread which you might find of interest.

Thanks for that Vizzer. I already listened to it and enjoyed it.
Kind regards, Paul.

Vizzer wrote:

.... It could be that the hand brushes shown are clothes brushes with the supply of dry-cleaning aids having been a significant part of a mediaeval haberdasher’s stock in trade...

The arms were granted after a union of two haberdasher guilds, one dedicated to St Catherine (hence the Catherine wheels) while the other had been called after St Nicholas and contained traders dealing almost exclusively with materials supplied from Milan. This guild split in two itself - with one branch specialising in hats, still chiefly made from the Milan materials (hence "milliners") while the other, now specialising in felt undergarments - the "hapertas" after which the whole company's business was named - merged with the larger St Catherine outfit already doing these garments and much else besides. The hand brush for keeping felt clean would remain a symbol of milliners for centuries afterwards, I assume it being an essential piece of kit for keeping the noggin spruce at the time, so it seems the Nicholas influx simply wanted to retain this nod to their origins within the design.

PS: I still think Mr Bartle is defending a poor choice of location. It should at least be at eye level, back-lit, the centre piece of an extended display, and with about a thousand word outline of its rich history prominently displayed beside it. I will respectfully refrain from dashing any habers until this gross oversight is rectified, you can tell him when next discussing their toilets!

Take care with mentioning felt underwear also; tho wriggling out of criticsm in res hist style, not very well, either - such a usefil art here - feeling underwear, suspenders, and stained glass by the loo , may not touch his sense of humour. In any case, underwear made of felt is a gruesome thought enough without feather tickling sticks to spruce them up. it's hard to stay focused on stained glass with such info.

The "hapertas" is a garment worn under armour, not next to the skin.