His fully illustrated book Stained Glass from Welsh Churches brings together over six years of research and an archive of thousands of high-quality photographs, to produce a detailed narrative outlining the range and development of stained glass in Wales from the 14th century up to the present day.
In a post describing the scope of the book Martin has written:
'During the 1950s some tentative steps towards Modernism can be seen, and in Wales the beginnings of its own tradition of stained glass are also found. From the 1840s there is little to distinguish Welsh ecclesiastical stained glass from that made for English churches, and exported around the British Empire. The work of the Swansea firm Celtic Studios, and the course established in Swansea by Celtic Studios main designer, Howard Martin, laid the foundations for a Welsh tradition of making stained glass. This ‘Welsh’ tradition became increasingly internationalist in character, and some windows in churches of the late 1970s and 80s were made by Swansea students and ex-students, who sometimes came from other parts of the country and around the world, and have gone on to be distinguished artists in glass.
From the 1970s my chosen title of Stained Glass from Welsh Churches is all the more significant. More stained glass was being made for buildings that were not places of worship, and consequently some of the interesting work by artists based in and around Swansea such as Amber Hiscott, David Pearl, Alexander Beleschenko and Catrin Jones is not found in the book. Work in churches however becomes ever more vibrant, and exhibits a wide variety of personal styles, although often staying closer to traditional methods of making stained glass, rather than the growing vocabulary of techniques encompassed in the term ‘architectural glass’.
The book closes with an attempt to see what has happened in the last fifteen years and tentatively suggest what might lie ahead, as intimated by the gradually decreasing number of commissions and the creation of internal divisions in churches that invite the use of architectural glass techniques such as etching, enamelling and bonding.'
Martin also writes that, 'The chapters on Modernism and the creative artists of the end of the last century touched on the problems of commissioning stained glass for churches, and the freedoms of the artists within these commissions. What I also found was that changes in position of the Diocesan Advisory Committees had a huge effect on the work that was commissioned. Unfortunately it's now more of a historic problem, as here in Wales the number of new commissions is seriously limited by funds and diminishing congregations. Which is why commission4mission is such an important project!'
He thinks that the engagement of the church with visual arts has not been properly celebrated, probably 'because stained glass, murals and other church furnishings have been on the periphery of the core art market of painting and sculpture, which has largely determined which artists we now define as 'mainstream' according to the accepted narratives of western art.'
'During the 1950s some tentative steps towards Modernism can be seen, and in Wales the beginnings of its own tradition of stained glass are also found. From the 1840s there is little to distinguish Welsh ecclesiastical stained glass from that made for English churches, and exported around the British Empire. The work of the Swansea firm Celtic Studios, and the course established in Swansea by Celtic Studios main designer, Howard Martin, laid the foundations for a Welsh tradition of making stained glass. This ‘Welsh’ tradition became increasingly internationalist in character, and some windows in churches of the late 1970s and 80s were made by Swansea students and ex-students, who sometimes came from other parts of the country and around the world, and have gone on to be distinguished artists in glass.
From the 1970s my chosen title of Stained Glass from Welsh Churches is all the more significant. More stained glass was being made for buildings that were not places of worship, and consequently some of the interesting work by artists based in and around Swansea such as Amber Hiscott, David Pearl, Alexander Beleschenko and Catrin Jones is not found in the book. Work in churches however becomes ever more vibrant, and exhibits a wide variety of personal styles, although often staying closer to traditional methods of making stained glass, rather than the growing vocabulary of techniques encompassed in the term ‘architectural glass’.
The book closes with an attempt to see what has happened in the last fifteen years and tentatively suggest what might lie ahead, as intimated by the gradually decreasing number of commissions and the creation of internal divisions in churches that invite the use of architectural glass techniques such as etching, enamelling and bonding.'
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