Delia’s Geometric Glasswork

Delia Whit­bread is a painter as well as a stained glass designer and maker. She works in a vari­ety of media from char­coal, through gouache to oils. In 1985 she under­took the Mural Design Course at Chelsea School of Art where she spe­cialised in stained glass. She went on to study Visual Islamic and Tra­di­tional Art at the Royal Col­lege of Art and com­pleted an MA by Project in 1989. She was a Senior Lec­turer spe­cial­is­ing in the teach­ing of stained glass in archi­tec­tural con­text for the Art in Com­mu­nity course at the Uni­ver­sity of Sur­rey, Roe­hamp­ton for the 14 years. In 2008 Delia com­pleted an art-practice-based PhD in the School of Art, Design, Media and Cul­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Sun­der­land — the cul­mi­na­tion of a 20 year dream to make a rose win­dow cel­e­brat­ing multi-cultural female images.

Com­men­tary on the Works

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Blue Snake (1999)
Sam­ple trac­ery panel for the fin­ished dig­i­tal image of Lilith – in the Hero­ines sec­tion of The Womb of the Rose dig­i­tal rose win­dow project.

Size: 56 cm x 42 cm; Frame: Framed with fix­ings for hang­ing;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted details.

Cor­nish Sun­rise (2010)
A dec­o­ra­tive piece based on a Cor­nish seascape using a mosaic of clear unfired glass pol­ished and fixed to a clear glass panel with clear adhesive.

Size: 35 cm x 35 cm; Frame: Lead framed with sol­dered cop­per wire hang­ers for fix­ing;
Medium: Appliqué glass panel.

Cos­mic Egg (2002)
Third sam­ple panel made for the cen­tral panel of The Womb of the Rose dig­i­tal rose win­dow project. It is based on the Hindu image of the Tantric Egg mat­ter before it becomes form float­ing in chaos. In the design it sym­bol­ises the essen­tial trans­gen­dered nature of all mat­ter — like the egg in the womb before fertilisation.

Size: 85 cm diam­e­ter; Frame: With fix­ings for hang­ing;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted details.

Divine Union
This panel is part of a series illus­trat­ing sea sym­bols and is based on a cockle shell.

Size: 35 cm x 35 cm; Frame: Unframed with sol­dered cop­per hang­ers;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, enam­elled and painted details.

Fam­ily Myth (2010)
This com­mis­sioned panel shows the buyer’s fam­ily in an imag­i­nary nar­ra­tive based on her per­sona in an online gam­ing com­mu­nity where she used to be known the Mis­tress of Thieves. As the buyer lives in Northum­ber­land, it is a coastal scene with Bam­burgh Cas­tle in the back­ground. She car­ries a key and some jew­ellery taken on her raid to the castle.

Size: 55 cm x 70 cm; Frame: Framed;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted details.

Kali — Mis­tress of Life and Death (1989)
The first sam­ple panel made for the cen­tral Arche­types sec­tion of The Womb of the Rose dig­i­tal rose win­dow project illus­trat­ing the Hindu God­dess Kali. One of old­est of the Hindu deities, she blesses with her right hands — in the upper one she holds a lotus. How­ever she destroys with her left hands where she car­rys a bloody axe and a sev­ered head. Respect for her fear­some nature was a mark of devo­tion among her dis­ci­ples who would med­i­tate in grave­yards to over­come their fear of death. She is often shown with a black face to sym­bol­ise her destruc­tive energy but her white face sym­bol­izes lib­er­a­tion. The small pat­tern panel below the main image fea­tures the geo­met­ric sym­bol for Kali in the Hindu tra­di­tion – a down­ward point­ing tri­an­gle sym­bol­iz­ing her power over the mate­r­ial world.

Size: 120 cm x 200 cm; Frame: Framed, requires fix­ings for hang­ing;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted details.

Lilith 2 – Spirit of Instinc­tual Wis­dom (1998)
Sec­ond sam­ple panel made for the mid­dle Hero­ines sec­tion of The Womb of the Rose dig­i­tal rose win­dow project includ­ing two atten­dant owls who sym­bol­ize the all-seeing and wise nature of the god­dess. The smaller lower panel con­tains an 8 petal flower and eye motif.

Size: 150 cm x 180 cm; Frame: Framed;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted details.

Lilith 1 — Spirit of Instinc­tual desire (1998)
This panel is based on a 4000 year old clay relief of a Sumer­ian god­dess which is in the British Museum. Innana/Ishtar was the God­dess of Love and War shown rid­ing on lions with clawed feet and wings. She wears a horned head-dress and car­ries sym­bols of power in her hands. Lilith was the demonised first wife of Adam — a myth made up long after the orig­i­nal Bible story of Adam and Eve when the Israelites were cap­tives in Baby­lon. She was reputed to kill babies and haunt men in their sleep.

Size: 80 cm x 100 cm; Frame: Framed;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, enam­elled and painted details.

Mer­maids and Mino­taurs (1995)
This is a Yin-Yang alle­gory about the rela­tion­ship of instinct – cold but seduc­tive (rep­re­sented by the Mer­maid), with desire — hot and dan­ger­ous (rep­re­sented by the Mino­taur). The story reads from the inside to the bor­der. The Mino­taur is kissed by the Mer­maid and then he chases her around the cir­cle. In the blue cor­ners of the ring they have eyes only for each other but those eyes reflect their mir­rored attrac­tion. In the bor­der she catches him with her flower through the ring in his nose.

Size: 74 cm x 75 cm; Frame: Framed;
Medium: Gouache and Mixed Media on paper.

Pisces
One of a series of small pan­els illus­trat­ing star signs. Pisces in medieval imagery was depicted as two fishes attached to each other but swim­ming in dif­fer­ent direc­tions which accounts for their often con­tra­dic­tory moods.

Size: 25 cm x 25 cm; Frame: Unframed with sol­dered cop­per hang­ers;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, sand­blasted and painted details.

Recon­fig­ur­ing the Rose (2004–2006)
Using the com­puter to sim­u­late stained glass, a vir­tual rose win­dow is visu­alised using mod­ern tech­nol­ogy.
The project has pro­duced a unique inter­pre­ta­tion of a rose win­dow that cel­e­brates the diverse nature of being female in the 21st cen­tury. It adapts the tra­di­tional styl­iza­tion of medieval glass and com­bines it with mul­ti­cul­tural images from all over the world, using the inter­net to cre­ate an online col­lab­o­ra­tion between the female artists.
This is a vision­ary project that can be repro­duced and pro­jected in dif­fer­ent con­texts with a pow­er­ful and impres­sive result.

Size: 450 cm diam­e­ter;
Medium: Dig­i­tal media.

Red Snake (1999)
Alter­na­tive red back­ground for the snake in the trac­ery panel for the fin­ished dig­i­tal image of “Lilith – in the Hero­ines” sec­tion of The Womb of the Rose dig­i­tal rose win­dow project.

Size: 35 cm x 25 cm; Frame: Framed with fix­ings for hang­ing;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­eled and painted details.

The Big Bang – top sec­tion (1987)
This piece illus­trates part of a larger design show­ing the human world in mod­ern chaos – the top sec­tion, In the Begin­ning… shows God’s frag­mented cre­ation with saints, birds and an apple tree. The lower pan­els show a green Devil with a com­puter sur­rounded by planes, bombs and bags of money with the rest of the quo­ta­tion ‘was the Word…’.

Size: 65 cm x 75 cm; Frame: Framed (dark grey painted wood frame);
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, enam­elled and painted details.

Trib­ute to Tarkovsky (1988)
Fin­ished panel illus­trat­ing some of the imagery com­mon to all the 7 films made by Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russ­ian film Direc­tor who died in 1986. The names of the films fea­ture in the red flow­ers in the tree. The image was largely inspired by his last film, The Sac­ri­fice. The icon recur­ring in the pic­ture is The Holy Trin­ity by Andrei Rublev, the 15th cen­tury Russ­ian painter, who was the epony­mous sub­ject of Tarkovsky’s most cel­e­brated film. The poetry is by his father Arseniy Tarkovsky — a well known lyric poet. The Russ­ian text in the tree trans­lates as ‘But there has to be more’. The trans­lated verse is from the poem “Life, Life”.

Size: 155 cm x 155 cm; Frame: Metal frame;
Medium: Leaded glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted, enam­elled and painted detail.

Trib­ute to Tarkovsky sam­ple panel (1986)
The sam­ple panel for a larger design based on the films of the Russ­ian film Direc­tor Andre Tarkovsky (1932– 1986). The text, taken from one of his father Arseniy’s poems, reads “Real­ity and light exist, but nei­ther death nor darkness…”

Size: 70 cm x 70 cm; Frame: Framed (dark grey painted wood frame);
Medium: Leaded + Appliqué glass panel with stained, etched, sand­blasted and painted details.