Orkney Stained Glass

Glass Mosaic Panel

Orkney Stained Glass is based on the beautiful island of Shapinsay, a short ferry trip from Kirkwall. Located in Monquhanny, this former manse is set in two acres of walled grounds and offers accommodation, residential craft courses, and a remarkable range of beautiful stained glass objects. Contact information is on the right.

Monquhanny Dining Room Comfortable Living Room Lamps and Glass Boxes Whales

Monquhanny has been recently renovated and offers comfortable accommodation in a peaceful setting. It is not just a house, it is an experience: a place to relax, unwind, learn new skills or practice others, enjoy good food and generally be spoilt a little. There is a large walled kitchen garden which provides the fresh vegetables, herbs and flowers for the house.

Glass work is displayed in the house to make the decor unique and personalised. The lilac room has a continental double bed which can convert to a twin. A feature of the lilac room's en-suite shower room is a series of glass panels designed as part of an exhibition of folk legends and myths of Orkney. The yellow room offers double accommodation with use of a private bathroom. Both rooms have TV, tea and coffee making facilities and hair drier. Single accommodation may be available and babies and small children can be catered for.

The Lilac Room

The Yellow Room

Brooch

The dining room is a place to relax and socialise, the large table seats twelve and often doubles up for design work. On offer is freshly prepared high quality food using home grown or local produce wherever possible. A large range of special dietary requirements can be catered for, and Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking is a special interest. The comfortable living room area offers a place to relax, the open fire is cosy on those chilly nights and there is an extensive library and music collection. Dinner bed and breakfast costs £30.50 per person per night and bed and breakfast is £18.50 per person per night.

The residential courses are an opportunity for the beginner or the more experienced to try something new or improve existing craft skills and techniques. On offer are courses in glass crafting, watercolours and pastels and papermaking. The cost of a two day course including bed and breakfast, light lunch and evening meal, tuition, detailed handouts and all materials for beginners and intermediates, is £194 per person. Courses take place in new purpose built accomodation comprising a workshop, library drawing area, gallery and shop.

Orkney Stained Glass seeks to: "work with what we see around us and the colours of the sea and sky, the shapes and patterns of the waves and tangles." This is reflected in their product range, which wherever possible draws on material as well as inspiration from Shapinsay itself.

Fish and whales feature broadly widely in the collection of hanging ornaments. These use glass from Poland or China which is blasted and copper foiled. The silver wires give each its individual personality. Driftwood used to suspend some of the ornaments comes from the shores of Shapinsay itself.

The glass boxes represent the sea, the sky, or the weather. The sea box was created to reflect the turquoise of the seas around Orkney, the top blasted with wave patterns and finished with swirling silver threads of wire and glass beads. The deep blue sky boxes are blasted with cloud shapes, some with tiny rain drops while the sun boxes are vivid reds streaked with ambers and the lids blasted with the shafts of light seen in Shapinsay sunsets. A range of lamps are available, from the highly colourful to the more traditional seen here.

Brooches are made with mirror glass, silver solder and wire and reflect the patterns of the sea and the myriad of pebbles on the beach. The finished pieces are delicately bound with silver threads. The smallest designs are worked into earrings. These display the uniqueness of the craft and include fishes, suns and moons and Viking galleys in the blue glass range and sunsets and spirals worked from red flash glass.

A range of mirrors is crafted in May colours of opalescent glass, the pieces chosen to get the patterns and swirls in the glass before the mirrors are blasted with a wave pattern and finished with silver wire. Commissions are accepted for window and door panels in lead or copper foil work, using a range of traditional styles and blending old techniques with modern innovation. Each unique panel is designed specially for the client and the location.

An unusual technique employed by Orkney Stained Glass is glass mosaic. This gives great freedom in the design work and allows a greater flexibility in the composition of the panel. It has been used successfully for internal and external doors and windows and for both free standing and hanging panels. Each shard of glass is individually cut and filed before being set into place in the finished design. This technique lends itself particularly well in sea panels.