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Clayton & Bell (1855-1993)

Stained glass firm founded in London by John Richard Clayton and Alfred Bell. Within a few years the firm occupied a leading place in stained glass design and manufacture. Exceedingly prolific, and although usually of high standard, the 'production line' approach was beginning to show by the mid 1860s, by which time the firm was established in Regent Street with 300 employees. The firm was also prominent in the creation of decorative schemes and murals for churches. In the 1880s the two founders withdrew from active participation and Alfred Bell's eldest son, John Clement, eventually took over the firm after his partnership with John Essex Clayton. Successive generations kept the firm going until the death of Michael Farrar Bell in 1993.

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Signature from St Francis and a Woman with Children 1962 Church of St Andoenus, Mounton, Monmouthshire north wall of the nave

William Waters, Angels & Icons: Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1850–1870 (Abbots Morton: Serapim Press, 2012), pp. 41–121.

'Clayton and Bell' Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, vol. iv, no. 3 (1932), 142–5.

Peter Larkworthy, Clayton and Bell, Stained Glass Artists and Decorators (London: The Ecclesiological Society, 1984).

Birkin Haward, Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 153–5.

Martin Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass (London: 1980), pp. 29–33 and further references.