Tamsin Abbott recalls standing in awe in Gloucester Cathedral one day as an art student. “It was cloudy and then a shaft of sunlight came through the stained glass and all the colours flooded across the ancient stone floors. You could stand in the colours, and it was like being washed in light; it was very powerful.
“Glass has an alchemical quality and has been used in different forms for celebratory, spiritual and magical purposes for centuries,” she says.
Stained glass windows, created from coloured and painted glass held together by lead strips, have been made in England for at least 1,300 years. In their medieval heyday, they were installed at huge expense in cathedrals like Gloucester, animating sacred spaces with their semi-divine light and bringing
