Joseph Edward Nuttgens

East window. St Etheldreda's Roman Catholic Church, Ely Place, London. Designed by Joseph Edward Nuttgens and installed in 1952.

Joseph Edward (Eddie) Nuttgens (1892 – 1982), in Germany spelt Nüttgens, was a stained glass designer in England who worked mainly on church windows.

Early life Nuttgens was born in Aachen, the eldest child of six born to a German tailor's cutter, Heinrich/Henry Nuttgens, and an English mother, Teresa Mary Canham. His father's cousins included the brothers Theodor and Heinrich Nüttgens, painters of largely religious subjects. The family moved to London in 1895. Nuttgens left school in 1906, aged 14 years, and learnt drawing in evening classes at Harrow Technical College and School of Art (now part of the University of Westminster). After a couple of jobs involving drawing and stencil cutting, and for whom he worked for five years. In 1911, aged nineteen, he began studying under Christopher Whall at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, now the Central School of Art and Design, and from Whall he developed the idea that the design and craftsmanship of a piece of art should be executed so far as possible by one person, within a 'living tradition'. In this respect, Nuttgens was influenced by the philosophy and style of Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris,

Chipping Campden was the home of many artists and craftsmen, and Piggott's Hill was associated with many artists who, like Nuttgens, were Roman Catholics. It was near the studio where Eric Gill lived in later life, and through Gill's influence Nuttgens developed an interest in Catholic Distributism, Nuttgens was also associated with the Art Workers Guild, based on the precepts of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the Warham Guild, which was dedicated to the production of church decorations and ornaments and was a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. and Gilbert Sheedy, who made a window for St Andrew's Church, High Wycombe in 1948 in the style of Nuttgens. Sheedy subsequently set up a studio in South Weston, Oxfordshire and made several windows in Holy Trinity Church, Prestwood in 1970.

Nuttgens had a long career, producing about 300 stained glass windows entirely by his own hand, as well as countless drawings, designs and glass work for other artists. and St Teresa's Roman Catholic Church, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire (1938-1944). During the Second World War there was little opportunity to work in stained glass and from time to time Nuttgens was obliged to take on manual labour. where Nuttgens made the large East window and his colleague, Charles F. Blakeman, made the side windows. When viewing its installation, Bernard Rackham (then curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum) described this East Window as an 'excellent illustration of the adaptation to modern ideas of a superb medieval art'. Some of Nuttgens post-war work, such as a window depicting the Pentecost in the south aisle of the parish church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Ormskirk in Lancashire (1953) and the south window in St Andrew's Parish Church, Soham, Cambridgeshire (1957) had a bold but colourful simplicity which indicated considerable progression from his pre-war style. Nuttgens gained an international reputation and made windows for a number of churches abroad including St John's Cathedral in Hong Kong (1958). and 41 further grandchildren, among them, artists, musicians, chefs, broadcasters, entrepreneurs, and naturalists.

After his father's death, a son, Joseph Ambrose Nuttgens, continued as a stained glass designer at North Dean and at Piggott's Hill.