Scotsman Obituaries: Christian Shaw, stained glass artist whose work brightens buildings throughout Scotland

He was the son of Sax Shaw, himself a famous stained glass artist and post-war Artistic Director of the Dovecot tapestry studios, and the Shaw family home in the city’s Stockbridge in the 1970s was steeped in bohemian brio, and in the craft and business of glass.

While his older brother Kevan became an eminent lighting designer – he and Christian would work together on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s House for an Art Lover in the 1990s – Shaw learned his trade at Edinburgh College of Art, and at his father’s shoulder, and set to making his own business. A succession of studios in Edinburgh were kitted out with huge workbenches, easels at the windows, wooden boxes filled with lead strips, a kiln for firing the precious paintwork, and of course, the racks where perfect panels of new-minted glass were arranged in a spectrum of gorgeous colours.

Much of the work was the restoration of ancient windows: treasured glasswork that was often centuries old, its weather-beaten remnants warped and sagging in the frame.

A small, sharp-featured, wiry figure, Shaw was fit and strong, buoyant in nature and assiduous in patiently applying his gifts, and he had to be. It was hard and painstaking labour, one day perched on windswept scaffolding high against the wall of some stark northern church, the next bent over a jigsaw of glass with a paintbrush in the studio, reviving the intentions of a long-departed artist in minute detail, or the crossword-puzzle of researching some Latin inscription rendered unintelligible by delapidation.

It was work that was urgently needed, and Shaw found he was travelling far and wide. This was a man who made friends wherever he went, and his circle came to include far-flung Church ministers, country house Lairds and loyal patrons as well as local craftsmen and artists across the country, and his colleagues at the Church of Scotland Artistic Questions Committee, where he advised on stained glass for many years.

Closer to home, he was assembling and training the staff who would be at his side for huge projects like the Great Hall at Stirling Castle and St Magnus’ Cathedral in Kirkwall, undertakings which each went on for 13 years. The VW camper van that transported his first panels (its cassette player wired to an outrageously big speaker cabinet in the back) was long retired, and at his busiest Shaw was leading 15 members of staff in two studios.

He was a natural teacher, clear, patient and supportive, and generations of apprentices from all kinds of backgrounds were drawn to his workbench, learning to draw the cartoon that maps the pattern of a window, to cut and break a line in rich-hued glass, to wrap and solder it in lead fit for centuries to come. Many have gone on to enrich the community of glass artists with their own work in Scotland and beyond.

And in time they were joined by Shaw’s own children, Felicity and Andrew, who have developed the next generation of their father’s business. This must have been a sweet fulfilment for someone who loved his family as passionately as he loved his work.

Shaw was a man of irresistible enthusiasms in all of his life – a devoted bon viveur and dedicated host who could rustle up wonders in the kitchen and sweep up willing co-conspirators for any new adventure beyond – say on the waves, or the ski slopes, or the musical frontiers (like as not, of course, he had meticulously crafted the surfboard or guitar to a design of his own).

Steadied and supported at home and in his work by his 47-year partnership with Alison, in time he would bring these inspirations undiminished and joyfully to his grandchildren, Dylan and Owen.

And while he could look with satisfaction at an illustrious body of restoration work in Scotland’s grand buildings, he was as fond of the smaller, more personal spaces, like the old Stirling almshouse of Cowane’s Hospital, or the 15th-century Crichton Collegiate Church in Pathhead.

Above all, his greatest professional satisfaction was in making his own designs. In Edinburgh, you can see them in the beautiful little panels of the Days of Creation in the undercroft of St Giles’ Cathedral, or in Morningside United Church, where the famous Olympian Eric Liddell used to preach: Shaw’s measured, autumn-toned window evokes the Flying Scot in his characteristic running style, head thrown back to rejoice in God.

Shaw is survived by his wife Alison, children Felicity and Andrew, and grandchildren Dylan and Owen. In cathedrals and castles, public buildings and private houses, his spirit lives on in coloured light.

Obituaries

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