Mentoring: A Path of Growth
January 2010
Banner photo: Road to Purse Caundle, U.K. [©David Noton/Getty Images]
Sharing the Tradition
David Williams and Stephen Byrne are stained glass artists who work from a custom-built studio in a village in the county of Shropshire in the U.K. They spoke with the SGI Quarterly about their experiences of learning and passing on their ancient craft. Visit David and Stephen on the web at www.williamsandbyrne.com.
Stephen Byrne and David Williams at workDavid Williams: My principal mentor is Patrick Reyntiens. I studied printmaking and painting in my youth. After I'd left college, I developed an interest in stained glass. I wrote around to a number of stained glass studios, and Patrick saw my letter and got in touch.
It's like walking into a very familiar room, a room that is entirely new but has a familiar feel to it. That's how I felt when I walked into a stained glass studio. I was fortunate enough to work initially as his apprentice, in the conventional sense of doing lots of tasks over and over again until you become particularly proficient at them. Over time we developed a relationship which has shaped my whole life.
Patrick does everything with great panache. His four children all describe him as a terrible show-off and he is. But there are some people who can show off because they can, because they do things well, and he's one of those. In the nicest possible way I mean that.
The acknowledgment that he had to learn his craft from someone else left him completely open and unguarded about what it was that he did. It was a willingness to say, "This is a well-established craft that goes back 1,000 years. We haven't invented something new that needs protecting--here it is."
I would mix a good quantity of paint each morning, and he would sit in front of the window and start painting, and I was there as a witness to it. It's almost a symbiotic process, being able to stand next to someone who is actively doing something without saying, "This is what I'm going to do."
There was Patrick, this man who was the doyen of stained glass interpretation and painting and design of the 20th century. On occasion he would say to me, "What do you think?" and I might suggest something, perhaps that a particular color change might be beneficial, and it was acknowledged and might indeed be changed. Those sorts of things when you're learning your craft, they carry you forward.
When I joined his studio, there were six other people. Some were postgraduates, some had come from America to work with him. It was an environment with a free exchange of information, where you could produce something to the very best of your ability. It's to do with being focused on what you do, and willing to watch and listen and to amend things. It's being shown by example the ways of going forward.
This means acknowledging that there are always better ways of doing something. Stephen and I have developed a relationship where neither of us is bullish enough to say, "Look, this must be done this way." Each of us has strengths, and there is always plenty of room for exchange of ideas.
I've always worked from the basis--with the students that we have and with all our dealings with clients and people we meet--that, as I said earlier, I haven't invented anything, and therefore sharing information which was given freely to me seems an honest duty. If you're given the ball, you shouldn't run away with it and go and hide; it should be given to other people. I've always worked on that basis, as has Stephen.
Creating Beauty
Stephen Byrne: I was working in the financial sector, and growing more and more frustrated with that. I wanted to do something different, to engage more with a proper sense of earning a living. When I decided on stained glass, one of the things on my mind was that this is a thousand-year-old tradition. Every day there will be the possibility of learning new things, and every day there will be the possibility that what you've learned you can improve on. But I found so many teachers who just wouldn't teach. David and I had diametrically opposed experiences in that sense. There are people who are very open within our field, but there are also people who are incredibly closed about techniques, because it's a guild, if you like.
My passion now is to teach. And, if someone has got that interest and a respect for the craft, to kindle it. Because the thought that people who want to learn, who want to pursue something skillfully and with devotion, should be prevented from doing so--to us this is wrong. The techniques have been going for more than 1,000 years, and they belong to people, they're public.
Our doors are open to people who want to know, in a way that many studios' doors are shut. One gains so much from being open. The amount of life that brings--if you aren't like that, it's like being in a stale room where the air doesn't circulate. The thought of living one's life afraid of giving anything away and afraid that someone might be better than you is not how we live.
People come here from all over to learn--in the past it's been small groups which would come for a very intensive weekend with us. But we would be in touch with them a lot before, and we're always in touch with them afterwards. Although they are coming to see things and practice things physically with us over those weekends, the commitment is there before and after.
We don't teach the same course the same way every time, we respond to the people who are there. Next year, we're going to organize summer schools. We focused on the technique straightaway because of our experience that it's the techniques about which people are secretive.
There is a way you mix your paint, there are certain recipes. But as with cooking, there's a certain judgment and flexibility--your attention to what is actually happening right now. There's a lot to do with pace and rhythm, in a sense. Of course, this is something which we can only teach bit by bit through dialogue.
So, it's not just the techniques, there is a lot more with every craft. Could a robot do it? No, because there isn't the emotional response to it. And we teach the emotional response by talking to people, by keeping in touch with people.
I think the really successful students are people who are doing it because they are focused on making something which is beautiful. And the reason for them being focused on making something beautiful is not for their own glory but that they take pleasure in the existence of beauty in the world. That is very different from people who want to make something for the purpose of adulation. Of course, no one can make something beautiful without a huge amount of discipline.
For us, it's the individual quality of things. We certainly do want to make something beautiful. We are going to make it by hand and not mass-produce things. Some artists have gone down that route. If that became widespread, it would be very damaging for the integrity of the craft. We still use paintbrushes! It is impossible for everything in the world to be made by hand these days. But there are still places where attention to detail does matter.
