Lowndes & Drury (1897–1973)
The firm of Lowndes & Drury was founded in 1897 at 35 Park Walk, Chelsea, by Mary Lowndes and Alfred Drury (1868–1940). Their innovative 'Glass House', built in 1906 in Lettice Street, Fulham, enabled independent artists to make their own stained glass or supervise production of their windows, drawing on the expertise of Lowndes & Drury's artists and technicians. The enterprise supported artists that aspired to the Arts and Crafts ethos advocated by Christopher Whall, who was among the artists whose windows were made at the Glass House. Its studio space was rented by some of the most important stained glass artists of the twentieth century, including Karl Parsons and Wilhelmina Geddes, while other artists sent their work to be fired and assembled there.
Alfred Drury also taught at the Royal College of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His son, Victor (1899–1988), worked with his father at the firm from the mid-1920s and, after the death of Alfred Drury, ran the firm until its closure in 1973.
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St John the Evangelist and St David artist: Joan Fulleylove firm/studio: Lowndes & Drury 1932 Church of St Andrew, Narberth, Pembrokeshire south wall of the nave |
Further reading
Peter Cormack, Arts and Crafts Stained Glass (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 95–9, 248–53 and further references.
'Obituary: A. J. Drury' Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, vol. viii, no. 2 (1940), 82–3.
Joyce Little, Stained Glass Marks and Monograms (London: National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies, 2002), p. 81.
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