Author: Rachel kemp
changed since the medieval times.... there are windows that have stood the test of time for 1,000 years - quite extraordinary! And did you know glass is really a liquid? In the slowest of flows - bu I am Rachel Kemp and I am based in north London. I have been designing, restoring and making bespoke stained glass windows for the last 17 years.
I was trained in the traditional techniques for making leaded lights and it gives me great pleasure to think I am continuing a skill which has hardly t when you see those really old windows, they are thicker at the bottom now, demonstrating the movement!
After studying stained glass in Camden, North London, I started to receive commissions from friends and people locally through word of mouth and realised I had a passion for it - there is nothing more pleasing than the ever changing lights through one that you own - I delight in receiving different images, from clients, of their windows and the reflections on floors and walls, that I would never see without living there ...
So from those humble beginings, I now have a full blown business
and a studio in the cultural quarter in Wood Green.
I take great care to design a style that will blend comfortably with the surrounding character, or to create a new window that looks like it was made in the same era as the house.
It also gives me great satisfaction to bring a window back to life, if it is in need of repair or restoration, matching any broken glass as closely as possible to the original glass. And sometimes it's just the lead that has gone and replacing that gives me the opportunity to clean all the pieces, and with the fresh lead, has it look like it was built yesterday!
