Detail of window depicting repair of the cathedral in the 1660s by C E Kempe, 1901 Lichfield Cathedral. (Incidentally, Lichfield was where Diana Tutton was brought up.)

Jane Brocket’s new book How to Look at Stained Glass: A Guide to the Church Windows of England was published recently and of course we sell it in the shop. It is very wittily arranged as an A to Z. The first sentence is: ‘Abstract stained glass in a church can be challenging. In a place where people are looking for meaning, it does not offer any immediate answers or guidance.’ The final entry is Zzzzz: ‘Windows are packed with action, incident and grand gestures. But sometimes in the midst of all this the pace slows down, tiredness takes over, and the viewer finds a weary figure fast asleep, leaning against a column or resting his head on his arm…’ This is Detail of Annunciation window by Karl Parsons 1912 St Alban’s Church, Hindhead.

Willem Winter (1874-1958), who lived and worked in Holland, designed Votes for Workers in 1909. This poster was the joint winner with the Duncan Grant poster (that we sell in the shop as a tea towel) of the poster competition organised by  the Artists’ Suffrage League and  the NUWSS.

Mary Lowndes (1856-1929): Justice at the Door was published by  the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1913.

Joan Harvey Drew’s 1909 Womanhood 1909 was a poster printed in such a way as to be used, with handwritten annotation, to advertise a local society’s meetings.

Dora Meeson Coates’ prizewinning design for the Artists’ Suffrage League/National Union of Women’s Suffrage poster competition 1908. Elizabeth Crawford writes: ‘A gloss on the message might be that, since the third quarter of the nineteenth century, women had helped run campaigns for all the organisations represented by the six boys [Primrose League, Trade Unions etc] but would do so no longer while they remained with the parliamentary vote.’

We celebrated the excellent new book by Elizabeth Crawford from April 3-6 this year (type in the date under Search the Post) and this week are celebrating it again: we sell Art and Suffrage: A Biographical Dictionary of Suffrage Artists in the shop. Here is a 1908 poster by Emily Harding Andrews (1851-1940): details about her on p.35 of the book.