Dalle de Verre

Dalle de Verre in Ireland

Last week I introduced you to the modernist stained glass practice known as dalle de verre, and its beautiful realisation in St Augustine’s in Cork. It was the work of the world famous Gabriel Loire. To see what made him so renowned, just take a look at this project, or google the Symphonic Sculpture installation in Japan.

We have three more examples of Loire’s dalle de verre work in Ireland. In a now largely-unused church attached to the Dominican Convent in Belfast (above), we have his earliest Irish windows (1962) – 5 lights titled Resurrection, Redemption, Prediction, Nativity and Annunciation. They are hard to photograph and even harder to interpret – the titles were supplied to me by the Ateliers Loire. 

For those used to traditional stained glass, dalle de verre represented a radical departure from their expectations and we must not underestimate the courage and vision of architects and congregations in embracing this avant-garde medium. Rather than a familiar depiction of a Resurrection, Annunciation, or St Patrick, what faced parishioners were swathes of deeply coloured glass sometimes with recognisable iconography, but often with difficult-to-interpret motifs, as in the Belfast windows. 

And sometimes with nothing but colour variation to encourage a prayerful or contemplative mood. Gabriel Loire adopted the maxim, Arrange it so that in what you do, there is nothing, but in that nothing, there is everything each person seeks. His philosophy can be seen in action in the Holy Redeemer Church in Dundalk (above) (1965-68), an extraordinary modernist building with work by the best artists of the day. The success of the design can be credited to the architects, Frank Corr and Oonagh Madden, and the breadth of the art to Michael Wynne, who acted as advisor on the project. Works by Oisin Kelly (rooftop crucifixion), Imogen Stuart (exterior stations), Ray Carroll, and Michael Biggs adorn the exterior and interior, while floor to ceiling expanses of dalle de verre by Gabriel Loire provide, in Michael Wynne’s words, one great abstract symphony of colour.

Wynne goes on to say that the windows lend a rich mystical light to the whole interior and to comment on the splendid harmony that exists between the building and all the necessary adornments. Such a unity lends a dignity, a calm and prayerful mood to the building. *

In the Andrew Devane-designed church in St Patrick’s Campus of DCU in Drumcondra, also built in the mid 60s, the curved walls are punctuated by tall panels and a clerestory of dalle de verre. See the lead photo on this post (the one under the title) and the one below. While mostly abstract, some iconography has been incorporated by Loire into the windows.

Because thick lines of concrete are used to outline the images, they are semi-abstract rather than refined. The hand and the dove are clearly discernible in the tall central window, but it cannot be said that the dove is entirely successful – it looks to my eyes like a cartoonish dicky-bird – showing the difficulties of smaller-scale iconography with this medium. 

But the Irish dalle de verre story goes beyond Gabriel Loire: other mid-century artists mastered it and were employed by Irish architects. I will show you two examples first by non-Irish artists. The Church of the Sacred Heart in Waterford – it also is my featured image (above the title) for this post – contains glass by the distinguished British artist Patrick Reyntiens. Here’s a detail, below of that window.

The second church is St Bernadette’s in Belfast, with glass by Dom Norris of Buckfast Abbey. This church is well worth a visit for its many artistic treasures.

Irish artists got in on the act too – George Walsh brought the techniques of dalle de verre back with him from America in the 60s and, working with Abbey studios, introduced it as an ecclesiastical art form into Irish architecture. Here is his Crown of Thorns for St Mary’s Westport, designed by George Campbell and executed by George.

Other studios, such as Murphy Devitt, also used it, and quite close to me I have this charming example in Lowertown church. It’s the Dove of Peace/Holy Spirit, of course, but it became known in the studio as the Holy Gannet.

Although for the most part the churches I have shown you have retained their dalle de verre windows, in at least two cases (the Sacred Heart in Waterford and St Bernadette’s in Belfast) this has come at the cost of enormously expensive conservation projects. In other cases, dalle de verre windows have failed and churches have even had to be demolished. 

For example, the original Edmund Rice chapel in Waterford (above) had to be replaced but George Walsh’s dalle de verre windows were partially saved and displayed in the new church (below). George had combined dalle de verre in these windows with the innovative use of painted glass panels, and even some painting on the dalles.

Dalle de verre windows failed because glass, concrete and steel (used to reinforce the concrete frames of the panels) expand at different rates, and external glazed walls are subject to all the effects of weather. Over time resin was substituted for concrete but this brought its own problems – the epoxy mix had to be just right (and this was all still experimental) or it could, and did, twist and crack as the building settled. The Irish climate – high humidity, temperature fluctuation, driving rain – exacerbated all of these mechanisms, both for cement and resin mixes.

I recently visited a church in Keenaught Co Derry (or Londonderry for my NI readers). It has a soaring wall of dalle de verre windows designed by George Walsh and executed in the Abbey Studios in 1973. The likeness to the work of Gabriel Loire is obvious and indeed George credits Loire as a significant influence on him. The church is enormous and the tall narrow windows lend a beautiful ambience to the interior. However, the windows are buckling at the top and will need conservation work at some point. 

On the same trip I visited a much smaller dalle de verre installation in Swanlinbar, also by George, still looking colourful and rock steady in a side chapel. 

I’d love to hear from readers who have come across other examples of dalle de verre work. As an architectural material it held such promise and it is a tragedy that much of it is no longer standing. The Gabriel Loire window below is from Vancouver, part of a series in St Andrew’s Wesley on Burrard St, viewed on a visit there. I had been in that church for events on numerous occasions when I lived in Vancouver, but knew nothing about these fabulous windows at that point.

By the way, Ateliers Loire is still going strong in Chartres, now run by Gabriel’s grandsons, Bruno and Hervé. Take a look at their recent work. And for anyone looking to learn more about Gabriel Loire I recommend this book which is in French and English. [Update – see comment below re the cost of this book!]

Finally, some of the text (now lightly edited) in this and the previous post on dalle de verre was originally written for a 2021 article on Dalle de Verre in Ireland in Glass Ireland, a publication of the Glass Society of Ireland. The full article is available here.


* Wynne, M, The Church of the Redeemer, Dundalk, THE FURROW, vol. 20, no. 8, August 1969, pp.411- 414

St Augustine’s Church in Cork and Gabriel Loire

This week the Augustinians in Ireland announced that they were permanently closing their Cork Church, St Augustine’s at the corner of Grand Parade and Washington Street. The decision, as far as I can see, is based on the inability of the order to attract more vocations – they no longer have the priests they need to keep the church going. 

Why am I writing about the closing of a church in Cork? It’s because this is one of four buildings in Ireland (all churches) that contain the work of the internationally recognised dalle de verre master, Gabriel Loire, of Chartres in France (below). Let’s start with  – what is dalle de verre? 

Dalle de verre, sometimes simply called slab glass, is a stained glass technique that uses thick slabs (dalles) of coloured glass, arranged to form patterns and embedded in concrete or resin. Each slab is faceted by knocking spalls off it with a hammer. This is the same technique, by the way, used by flint knappers to make prehistoric tools. Due to the nature of conchoidal fracture, the spalls come off in concentric ripples, enlivening the colour through the layering and refracting of the light coming through from the outside. You can see how dalle de verre is made in this video or alternately in this one (which made me smile with that Pathé voice).

Figures and icons in dalle de verre windows are not normally painted as they would be in classic stained glass, but formed through the arrangement of the dalles and the cement lines. They are, by necessity, minimally detailed and windows are often non-figurative, relying on arrangements of colour and flow to suggest subject matter and create interest and atmosphere: thus, they also suited the mid-century artistic movements of abstraction and cubism.

The great advantage of dalle de verre is that it can be used as part of the integrated fabric of a building: that is, as a building material rather than a decorative detail. It lends itself to enormous expanses of glazing and to soaring verticality and this made it very attractive to twentieth century modernist architects. In Ireland several architects championed this new material and incorporated walls of dalle de verre in their churches from the 1960s on. 

St Augustine’s church was designed by the Cork architect Dominic O’Connor and opened in 1942, on the site of a former church about which I can find no information. That’s what it looked like (above) when it opened (courtesy of the Echo). Thirty years later it was extended and refurbished (spot the difference!) and it was at this point, in 1971, under the supervision of the architect Patrick Whelan, that the Gabriel Loire windows were installed. Whelan turned to Gabriel Loire as the natural choice – not only was this his fourth (and final) Irish window, but by then he was acknowledged as the leading practitioner in the world of this art form.

The windows are enormous, floor to ceiling. From the outside (thanks to Piotr Slotwinski for the image above) the form of the artwork can be clearly seen as a complex swirl of patterns, delineated by the concrete lines.

Inside, the two windows are across from each other on either side of the altar. To see them properly you have to go right up to the front. At first, they look pretty much as they do from outside – a complex swirl of patterns. You immediately notice the dominance of a rich blue – stained glass artists know this as Chartres Blue. It was a favourite of Harry Clarke, and of course of Gabriel Loire, whose atelier was in Chartres, in the shadow of the Cathedral. The actual iconography is hard to pick out at first, but obvious once you see it. The street (or south) side is the Eucharist window (above). An enormous chalice in shades of gold against a ruby red background occupies the bottom third of the window above the doors.

Various sunburst motifs fill out the window (see the feature image, the one above the heading). The sunburst — or solar radiance motif — has layered meanings in Christian iconography. At its most fundamental it represents Christ as The Light of the World but it also becomes a metaphor for divine presence, grace, and the Transfiguration. The only other recognisable icon is an anchor. The anchor also functions as a cross around which a rope winds – a traditional image meant to convey that Christ is our anchor, but which could also be an homage to Cork’s great maritime heritage. 

The north side window is the Alpha and Omega window. The Alpha and Omega symbols are clear, and above them is an enormous mandorla, which takes up most of the window. There is also a star (my lead image at the top of the post under the heading) – indicating a contrasting nighttime theme across from the sunburst of the south window. The mandorla in Christian iconography is highly significant. It is the form used to frame Christ in Majesty and also the Virgin in Glory. Taken together with the Alpha and Omega, this window can be interpreted as concerned with Christ as beginning and end, first and last, the eternal sovereign. 

That’s actually a very deliberate and sophisticated arrangement – the altar sits between the two windows, with the congregation facing west. Thus, one could see it as the celebrant and congregation being held between the Eucharistic presence (south) and the cosmic Christ in Majesty (north).  In this reading, the windows are doing active liturgical and theological work in relation to the altar and the gathered community.

The architect, Patrick Whelan, (that’s him below with Des O’Malley) was working in the post-Vatican II era which set off a renaissance in how art and architecture was to come together to modernise the liturgy and glorify God. It is obvious he thought carefully about the integration of art and architecture, resulting in a unified modernist sacred space, not just an extension with some windows added. In this, he had the perfect collaborator in Gabriel Loire.

If St Augustine’s is lost (and I have no idea what is to happen to it) we are losing a coherent ensemble where architecture, liturgical arrangement, and art were conceived together, very much the spirit of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform movement. The altar brought forward, the community gathered around it, art serving the liturgy rather than decorating the walls: Loire and Whelan were clearly working in that spirit. The closure of the church therefore represents not just the loss of two windows but the loss of a complete and largely intact example of that mid-century liturgical vision.

I said at the beginning that this was one of four Gabriel Loire Churches in Ireland. Next week I will show you the others, and say a little more about dalle de verre – its advantages for architecture and what led to its ultimate decline.