Three specially commissioned stained glass windows were unveiled at Bede's World by the Mayor of South Tyneside, Councillor Alan Kerr, on 1st December 2001, to coincide with the beginning of Advent.
The three windows are modern works of art inspired by the Golden Age of Northumbria. They celebrate Bede and the twin monastery of St Peter and St Paul's, Wearmouth-Jarrow, in which he lived and worked. The middle window shows Bede, writing. The other windows look north, towards the monastery of Lindisfarne, home of the famous Gospels, and south, towards Hild's monasteries at Whitby and Hartlepool. All three windows draw inspiration from artefacts from Northumbria's Golden Age - for example, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the St Petersburg Bede, and the Whitby Cross.
Stained glass artist Paul Georgiou said: 'I was inspired by the brilliance of Bede: his mind was so far ahead of his time. In the central window I wanted to capture something of the essence of his soul. This is one of the most unusual and exciting designs I have created in over 20 years as a stained glass artist. I gathered a unique collection of old stained glass to put into these windows, and in some cases I painted the same pieces three or four times to get the designs exactly right. I am very pleased with the end result.'
The making of the windows
The windows were made by Paul Georgiou and Robert Roy Hickling.
The glass is all antique English mouth-blown glass, traditionally made. Individual pieces of glass in the windows range in age from just 5 years old to 60 years old. The glass comes from all over the country. Some of the oldest pieces of glass were used to create images from the Lindisfarne Gospels. Some of the glass – for example the glass in Hild's robes – was made in Sunderland, near to Wearmouth, the site of the other half of the twin monastery in which Bede spent his life.
Various techniques were used to create the designs. Some of the more complicated pieces have been fired up to five times. Hydrofluoric acid was used to remove areas of colour from already-coloured glass – the letters have been inscribed in this way. Some of the designs have been painted on and then fired. The bright yellow colour – used for the halo in the Bede Window and elsewhere – is made by applying silver nitrate onto the glass before firing. This is a delicate process and can easily go wrong if the firing temperature is slightly too hot or too cold.
