Charles Eamer Kempe was a British Victorian era designer and manufacturer of stained glass. His studios produced over 4,000 windows and also designs for altars and altar frontals, furniture and furnishings, lychgates and memorials that helped to define a later nineteenth-century Anglican style. The list of English cathedrals containing examples of his work includes: Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield, Wells, Winchester and York. Kempe's networks of patrons and influence stretched from the Royal Family and the Church of England hierarchy to the literary and artistic beau monde.
Kempe in 1860
Kempe's maker's mark, the wheatsheaf, on a window in St Mary's Church, Nottingham
The Scott Memorial Window in St Peter's Church, Binton
Central chapel window at the Duke of York's Royal Military School
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 traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from foil glasswork exemplified in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
The north rose window of the Chartres Cathedral (Chartres, France), donated by Blanche of Castile. It represents the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, surrounded by Biblical kings and prophets. Below is St Anne, mother of the Virgin, with four righteous leaders. The window includes the arms of France and Castile.
Grisaille stained glass (15th century)
Renaissance roundel using only black or brown glass paint, and silver stain. The bishop-saint Lambrecht of Maastricht stands in an extensive landscape, 1510–20. Diameter 8+3⁄4 in (22 cm). Designed to be placed low, close to the viewer.
Detail of German panel (1444) of Visitation; pot metal, including white glass, black vitreous paint, yellow silver stain, and olive-green enamel. The plant patterns in the red sky are formed by scratching away black paint from the red glass before firing. Restored with new lead cames.