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Alexander Gibbs (c. 1831–1886)

Alexander was one of three sons of Isaac Alexander Gibbs (1802-51) who became stained-glass designers. The family firm was established c.1848, but split 1855. Alexander Gibbs’ own company was still functioning as late as 1915. Among his major commissions was the west window of St Mary Magdalene, Taunton (1862) and that for All Saints, Margaret Street (1877). He was a close collaborator of William Butterfield, whose favourite stained glass designer he became about 1860 after a quarrel with John Hardman Powell over a design for Rugby School Chapel. The earliest commission Butterfield seems to have entrusted to Gibbs was c.1860, St John’s, Newbury, Berks., now destroyed. Martin Harrison described some of his 1860s windows for Butterfield as “mosaic-like” which “often combined superbly with the tiles, mosaics and variegated brick and stonework of Butterfield’s interiors” On his own, however, Harrison says he showed ‘little sensitivity to…architectural setting’ and rarely rose ‘above the mediocre in design’. The conclusion must be that Butterfield provided him with specific guidelines. Gibbs’ work showed little sign of evolution, and only ten years after his windows for Butterfield’s Keble College, Oxford Chapel were installed, they were criticised by members of the Century Guild of Artists – the heralds of the Arts & Crafts Movement.

At All Saints, Margaret Street, Butterfield commissioned Gibbs to replace the original west window of 1853 by Alfred Garanta of Paris, which was adjudged a failure – the colours clashed with Butterfield’s polychromatic interior. Gibbs closely followed Garanta’s design (a copy of the medieval Jesse Tree window in Wells Cathedral) but used a different colour-scheme to harmonize with Butterfield’s work. He subsequently replaced the other Garanta windows – one of which, of St Athanasius, is now in the chapel of Llanfrechfa Grange in Monmouthshire. Gibbs was also to work with Butterfield on St Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth.

Stained glass by Alexander Gibbs.
Alexander Gibbs, The Mocking of Christ, c.1877, Church of St Peter, Elerch, Ceredigion

There are further examples of his work in Wales. The 1877 west window at Llandyrnog is attributed to him, and the 1868 window at Elerch is another example of his collaboration with Butterfield. (If Harrison is right, then the high quality of the design here may well show Butterfield’s own guiding hand.) Work by the artist, or at least by his workshop, may also be found at Wrexham, Llangollen, Nantglyn and Llangwyfan.

Gibbs was also a talented artist on tile. In 1874 he executed tile panels for the north wall of All Saints, Margaret Street, and c.1865 had executed a wonderfully colourful set known as ‘The Shakespeare’, possibly for a Manchester pub. His own workshops, The Bloomsbury Stained Glass Works, was originally in London at 38 Bedford Square, but moved in 1876 to Bloomsbury Street.