John 'Jack' Baker (1916-2007) was a British stained-glass artist, teacher, conservator and author.
Contents
Biography
He was a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in the late 1930s, where he was a contemporary of Monica Walker and the artist, illustrator and children's author Hilary Stebbing, whom he married in 1946. He worked under James Hogan at the Whitefriars Glass before joining Samuel Caldwell junior at Canterbury Cathedral in 1948 to help reinstate the medieval glass removed for safekeeping during the Second World War.
Teaching
Baker taught stained glass at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1951, where in 1953-54 he ran the stained glass department with Tom Fair, and his pupils included Robert Sowers and Margaret Traherne. From 1963 he taught at Kingston College of Art.
His work was exhibited at The Architectural Association in January 1956.
Stained glass, mosaic & sculpture
1957, Church of the Holy Name, Bow Common Lane, Mile End: 11 windows
1958, St Michaels Convent, Finchley: large mosaic in entrance hall
1958, Little St Peter, Cricklewood: two windows and a brick sculpture (The church no longer exists.)
1959, St Anne's, East Wittering: eighteen windows
1959, Broomfield Chapel, Abbots Langley: two large abstract windows
1959, Austin Reed, Regent Street, London: six glass and aluminium panels
1960, Our Lady, St Mary of Walsingham, London Colney: 10 large concrete and glass windows
1960, St George, Britwell: Tree of Jesse (The 1960 church was replaced in the early 2000s, but some of the side panels of the Jesse window are incorporated in the new church.)
1964, Holy Cross Church, Gleadless Valley: 10 large concrete and glass windows, including full height windows of the Virgin Mary and St John
1965, Chapel, St Michaels Convent, Finchley: 22 concrete and glass windows—the school website includes photographs
1965–1973, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, New Zealand: windows for the Marsden Chapel and large window in the transept
Canterbury Cathedral: St Stephen's Chapel, in memory of Lang Fisk-Moore, Canterbury
St Mary, Ide Hill, Sevenoaks: Nativity, east window
Dalle de verre
From 1960 to 1965, Baker created a number of dalle de verre windows in churches and chapels, setting slab glass in concrete or resin: Our Lady, St Mary of Walsingham, London Colney (1960); St George, Britwell (1964); Holy Cross Church, Gleadless Valley (1964); St Michaels Convent, Finchley (1965).
Publications
'Secular stained glass', The Architectural Association Journal, December 1955, p. 120
English Stained Glass with an introduction by Herbert Read and photographs by Alfred Lammer, Thames & Hudson, London, 1960
English Stained Glass of the Medieval Period (revised edition of the above), Thames & Hudson, London, 1978