An Túr Gloine

An Túr Gloine which is Irish Gaelic for 'Tower of Glass' was a Dublin based glass making and designing co-operative established in 1903 having been conceived two years earlier. Founded by artist Sarah Purser she was inspired by the fact that the majority of stained glass used in Irish churches and elsewhere was imported from England and Germany. It is estimated that at the turn of the 20th century there were probably 100 stained glass artists living and working in Ireland. Her logical thoughts therefore were that these artisans were capable of filling the home market both religious and architectural. Very many artists worked alongside Purser and they included Michael Healy, Evie Hone, Beatrice Elvery, Wilhelmina Geddes, Harry Clarke and Alfred Ernest Child. So, in 1901 A. E. Childs, at the behest of Sarah Purser, poet W.B. Yeats and English stained glass doyen Christopher Whall, arrived in Dublin where he was appointed Instructor in Stained Glass at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. The co-operatives first commission was for at window in St. Brendan’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Loughrea, County Galway. So pleased were the recipients that the 'commission' lasted until the closure of An Túr Gloine in 1944.