page_title: Lawrence Lee
section_title: Coventry Cathedral
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Lee / Post-war / Coventry Cathedral
caption_attribution_description: English: Coventry Cathedral 5. Panels of the nave windows are the work of Lawrence Lee, Keith New and Geoffrey Clarke. They are 22m(70 feet)high and the windows tell the story of human growth from birth through maturity and death to fulfilment, epitomized in the life of Jesus. The 10 windows are orientated eastwards so as to throw their light towards the high altar.
context_page_description: Lawrence Stanley Lee was a British stained glass artist whose work spanned the latter half of the 20th century. He was best known for leading the project to create ten huge windows for the nave of the new Coventry Cathedral. His other work includes windows at Guildford and Southwark Cathedrals as well as a great number of works elsewhere in the UK, and some in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
context_section_description: Sir Basil Spence was commissioned to design the replacement for Coventry Cathedral, destroyed during the war. Spence was determined that the stained glass should be an integral part of the design from the outset. About this time, Spence received an invitation from Lee to act as external examiner at the RCA. Spence was impressed by the experimental and abstract work he saw there. Spence abandoned his thoughts of inviting French artist Fernand Léger to bid for the Cathedral work and invited the College to tender instead. The college won the contract but the decision was controversial, seen by some as being unfair competition using cheap student labour.
  Spence's design brief requested some Christian symbolism and the use of green, red, multi-coloured, purple and gold, to represent “Man’s progress from birth to death and from death to resurrection and transfiguration”. The artists were allowed to exercise their own interpretations beyond that. The requirement was for ten 70 feet (21 m) high lights which posed a significant technical challenge for Lee. He enlisted two former students; Geoffrey Clarke and Keith New, to collaborate on the designs. They worked individually on three each and together on the tenth, using the mural studio of the Victoria and Albert Museum adjacent to the RCA. They treated the windows as pairs, Lawrence designing the red and gold, symbolic of early manhood. Jane Gray, Lee's assistant at this time, also worked on the project with him.
  The whole project took six years. After four years, in 1960, the first six windows completed were assembled for the first time and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum where they drew a lot of attention. They were then stored until the consecration of the cathedral in 1962. 
  Coventry established Lawrence's reputation, and with it came greater acceptance of a more modern, abstract style which Lee was able to develop through the 1960s.
caption: Lawrence Lee's windows in Coventry Cathedral
exif: {}