‘It isn’t a job, it’s a hobby, it’s a passion and that’s what makes it great," says master glazer Keith Barley

An expert in maintaining and restoring stained glass who carries out his time-honoured trade in an unassuming industrial unit near York is celebrating 50 years in business. Julian Cole meets master glazier Keith Barley.

Keith Barley has assembled an interesting life from pieces of stained glass. Mind you, it didn’t look like that when he left school. Other boys had their destiny laid before them while his was summed up thus: “Keith Barley, whose fate is yet undecided”.

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Not knowing what he wished to do, he applied in 1967 to be the first apprentice at the York Glaziers Trust. Years after that role at York Minster he still feels like the “luckiest person alive”.

“It isn’t a job, it’s a hobby, it’s a passion and that’s what makes it great,” says Keith, who set up his stained glass business Barley Studio at Dunnington, near York, 50 years ago.

St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Pictured Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Pictured Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.
St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Pictured Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.

From the outside this appears as unassuming as any other industrial unit, but the work carried on inside plays a significant role in conserving our visual culture and heritage. It is where miracles of preservation and restoration occur.

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Two older units are linked by a modern building with a huge light table beneath a mezzanine viewing platform, and a window against which glass can be stuck using beeswax.

Keith is in his 70s but has no intention of retiring – “They’ll have to carry me out of here”. He is now a leading man of stained glass, and also a master glazier, a medieval appointment handed to him after he completed major works at Ely Cathedral.

Keith has worked in notable churches and cathedrals in this country and abroad and has acted widely as a consultant, including to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His latest project is the studio’s involvement in the £8.5 million restoration of St Michael le Belfrey in York, yards from where he trained at the Minster.

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St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Picture: James Hardisty.St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Picture: James Hardisty.
St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio who are based at Dunnington, York. Picture: James Hardisty.

He points out he is not an artist. “I know an awful lot, but I don’t do it. I am more the technician, and I understand all the techniques and how they do it.”

That role falls to creative director Helen Whittaker, who did work experience with Keith when she was studying stained glass at Sunderland University. She has now been a key part of the studio for more than 25 years.

Helen, 50, is the artist while Keith is a practical fixer who understands the history of stained glass – although their roles overlay and overlap, and Helen works on restoration, too.

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At St Michael le Belfrey, Barley Studio is a sub-contractor in the restoration while Helen has been granted separate funding to create a new stained-glass window.

Barley Studios glazier Matt Nickels working on one of the windows in the South Elevation of the church closely watched Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.Barley Studios glazier Matt Nickels working on one of the windows in the South Elevation of the church closely watched Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.
Barley Studios glazier Matt Nickels working on one of the windows in the South Elevation of the church closely watched Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass. Picture: James Hardisty.

“I am doing a new window there to do with the Pentecost, for the west window. Above the door. It’s really exciting,” says Helen.

Her first main experience with the studio was working at St Mary’s Church at Fairford in Gloucestershire, a restoration for which Keith was awarded an MBE. The church has the only complete cycle of medieval windows designed as one concept.

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“All 28 windows have survived, they’ve survived all the Reformation, all the civil wars, everything,” says Keith.

Helen, just then starting out, was thrown in the deep end and encouraged to paint following the work of the original artists. She was entranced by their free glass strokes.

Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass looking at a stained glass window of the figure Saint Peter early 16th Century at St Michael le Belfrey church in York  Picture: James Hardisty.Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass looking at a stained glass window of the figure Saint Peter early 16th Century at St Michael le Belfrey church in York  Picture: James Hardisty.
Keith Barley, Director at Barley Studio Stained Glass looking at a stained glass window of the figure Saint Peter early 16th Century at St Michael le Belfrey church in York Picture: James Hardisty.

“As a young girl I was trying to recreate their style with the freedom to make it look convincing.”

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Helen has worked on many projects since, restoring and repairing ancient stained glass, and designing new windows, including one for Selby Abbey.

“This was Agony in The Garden, and traditionally you would have had the disciples falling asleep, and Christ in prayer. I didn’t want to do that scene but knowing it was the Mount of Olives, I did a huge olive grove, and within the dissected olive is the cross. It’s about bringing a new narrative to the story but it’s still very traditional,” says Helen.

Then there was David Hockney. Helen was invited to work on his Queen Elizabeth II window at Westminster Abbey in 2018 and visited him in California.

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“It was a joy to translate his ideas into stained glass, a real privilege, such a nice man. It was the most amazing experience. I stayed in his house. When I got there I thought I’ll be in a hotel. The next morning I opened my door, and I could see the blue balcony. Hockney was sat there having Marmite on toast.”

As for his window, Helen loved the way Hockey inspired people to talk about stained glass, to “look up at what usually is deemed as holy wallpaper”.

St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio Picture: James Hardisty.St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio Picture: James Hardisty.
St Michael le Belfrey church in York is undergoing major restoration work with one of the main features having it's stained glass windows conserved by the expert conservation and restoration team from Barley Studio Picture: James Hardisty.

Barley Studio employs eight people, plus occasional sub-contractors, and everything is teamwork. Keith sees their work as conserving the windows as they were made by medieval glaziers.

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“When I started we inherited the ethics of conservation from the 19th century which was very much antiquarian – you leave it as found. I was of the belief that I’d rather have the windows as the artists intended them to be seen. And have that emotion of the people who were looking at the window, rather than as objects of antiquity.”

Stained glass is named after the way yellow and white glass is contained in one piece of glass, something that didn’t happen until 1310. Any coloured glass installed before that was painted.

“What got people excited about this was halos and the golden glow of Christ,” says Helen. “You didn’t need to have a separation of colours; you could have two on one piece.”

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There is a difference between restoration and replacement. Helen puts it like this: “We’ve moved more into conservation. Restoration is replacing something that has totally gone, conservation is conserving what is still there.”

A book about the studio, entitled Illuminating Stained Glass, Creativity, Conservation and Craft at Barley Studio, is being published next May by Lund Humphries to mark the 50th birthday of Barley Studios. It has been written by Keith and Helen with their friend Juliette MacDonald, professor of craft history and theory at Edinburgh College of Art.

A tour of the studio, with its ordinary kiln and its super-sized kiln for huge sheets of glass, its stores of old glass and new glass, its lines of lead, reveals Keith is also now working on every window in Salford Cathedral.

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In the framing room there is a model showing his method for the protection of stained glass, thought controversial at first but since adopted at York Minster and other cathedrals.

This involves replacing the original stained glass with protective glazing that allows condensation to fall into a trough below. The original stained glass is put in frames and moved forwards.

Here’s a parting question for Helen and Keith: do you have stained glass in your own house?

Helen takes a perhaps surprising approach at home in York.

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“I’m a funny thing, really, because I had for years a B&Q screen-printed door, which was atrocious, pink and lime, and I couldn’t get round to doing it. It’s like a chef, you know, when they go home and have baked beans on toast. But I do now have a very simple door with clear roundels.”

Keith smiles, saying: “You can hardly see through my windows because there is stained glass on the outside and the inside as well.”

barleystudio.co.uk