Profile

Biography

BA (London), MA (York), FSA, FRHistS

Sarah Brown is a lecturer specialising in stained glass, its history and conservation. She is course director of the department’s MA in Stained Glass Conservation and Heritage Management, a role that she combines with her responsibilities as Director of the York Glaziers Trust where she is currently overseeing the conservation of the Great East Window of York Minster of 1405-8. She joined the History of Art Department in 2008 after a long career with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and latterly with English Heritage.

Sarah has worked on ecclesiastical architecture and stained glass of all periods, while specialising in the history and conservation stained glass of the Middle Ages and Gothic Revival. She is particularly interested in the intersection between art and craft and in the history of stained glass restoration in Great Britain.

Sarah is chairman of the British committee of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi based in the University of York’s Stained Glass Studies Research School, of which she is a member.

Research

Overview

• Stained glass c1300-1950
• Stained glass techniques and technologies
• Stained glass restoration histories

Current projects

Sarah is currently working on the medieval stained glass of two Gloucestershire monuments, the fourteenth-century glazing of Tewkesbury Abbey and the early sixteenth-century windows of St Mary’s parish church in Fairford. Issues of authorship, patronage and audience reception, both medieval and Post-Reformation, link the two.

She is also contributing to the research and examination of the Great East Window of York Minster, John Thornton’s documented master-piece of 1405-8, a project that will shed new light on many aspects of stained glass design and production in the later Middle Ages.

Research group(s)

• Stained Glass Research School
  
• Centre for Medieval Studies
  

Supervision

Sarah is currently supervising four PhD students (two full time, two part-time), working on the medieval stained glass of Winchester Cathedral, the post-medieval history of the stained glass of York Minster, the trade in stained glass between England and the Rhineland in the period c1800-1830 and the technology and conservation of medieval window lead.

She is particularly interested in hearing from students interested in working on aspects of the relationship between stained glass art and craft and in the interactions between art history and conservation.

Publications

Selected publications

• 'The West Window of St George's Chapel: A Restoration History' in Nigel Sauland & Tim Tatton-Brown (eds) St George's Chapel, Windsor: History and Heritage (Wimborne Minster, 2010), 114-124
• ‘Repackaging the Past: the Survival, Preservation and Reinterpretation of the Medieval Windows of St Mary’s Fairford, Gloucestershire’ in Virginia Chieffo Raguin (ed), Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West 1500-1700 (Farnham 2010), 91-112
• ‘Stained Glass Conservation at York Minster: Past Histories, Future Challenges’, in L. Pilosi, M. Shepherd and S. Strobl (eds.) The Art of Collaboration: Stained Glass Conservation in the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of the 2009 Corpus Vitrearum Forum on the Restoration and Conservation of Stained Glass Windows (London/Turnhout 2010), 57-64
• ‘Recovering the Past – Thinking about the Future: Writing about stained glass in England, c.1750-c.1850’, in Karine Boulanger and Michel Hérold (eds) Le Vitrail et les Traités du Moyen Ages á nos Jours, Corpus Vitrearum 2007 International Colloquium Transactions, (Bern 2008)
• ‘Catholic Church Building in England’, Ecclesiology Today 38, pp.7-24
• ‘“So Perfectly Satisfactory”. The Stained Glass of Thomas Willement’ in Sarah Brown (ed) A History of the Stained Glass of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Historical Monographs Relating to St George’s Chapel Vol. 18 , pp.109-145 (Windsor, 2006)
• ‘Image, Liturgy and the Topography of Devotion: St Mary’s Church, Fairford’ in Ecclesiology Today, 35 (2005), 3-22.
• ‘The Medieval Stained Glass’ in Richard K Morris and Ron Shoesmith (eds) Tewkesbury Abbey, History, Art and Architecture (Logaston, 2003), 183-196

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Encounters with the Material Object

Postgraduate

• The History and Theory of Stained Glass Conservation
• Advanced Techniques of Stained Glass Conservation
• MA Stained Glass Conservation Core Course 1: Basic Glass Handling and an Introduction to Stained Glass Conservation
• MA Stained Glass Conservation Core Course 2: Research Skills for Stained Glass Conservators

External activities

Memberships

• York Glaziers Trust
  Director and Chief Executive, responsible for the care of the stained glass of York Minster
• Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Great Britain, The Corpus of Medieval Window Glass, British Academy Major Research Project
  Chairman
• British Archaeological Association
  Council Member and General Editor of the Conference Transactions Series
• The Ecclesiological Society
  Council Member
• Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England
  Commissioner
• The Church Buildings Council
  Member of the stained glass conservation committee
• Worshipful Company of Glaziers
  Liveryman
• The Stained Glass Museum, Ely
  Conservation Advisor