About us
Winged Heart
Winged Heart is a small studio workshop based at Brampton in Cumbria near Hadrian's Wall and the Lake District. Such surroundings encourage and inspire our wide range of innovative products and designs. We started up Winged Heart at our home twelve years ago, and moved into our present light and airy studio in the Old Brewery in 1997. It is a beautiful old pink sandstone building with exposed wooden beams a few minutes walk from the centre of our small market town.
Our Designs
Just about everything you see in our finished products is done here by us or by our home painters and assemblers both locally and nearby over the border in Scotland. We cut sheets of glass into all shapes and sizes, and then hand-print the black outlines of the designs on to the glass. The prints are very fine, and we use a silk screen method. It is a skilled operation. Our hard-working ladies in their homes then hand-paint the colours on to the glass.
Finally each glass item is assembled by hand and framed with a traditional stained glass finish of lead.
Everything is very attractively gift boxed, as we find it makes a lot of difference. We prefer to hand-paint our glass using our non-fired lacquers, because we can achieve much lovelier colours than we could if we used fired enamels, which are generally very dull and uninspiring. It also allows us to offer our gifts at less expensive prices. Please forgive the odd blemish, as our things are made by people, not machines!
People at Winged Heart
Mara Eagle
Mara studied Classics and read Greek and Latin at Bristol University where she gained a B.A. (Hons.) degree. She then worked in London at the Tate Gallery as Personal Assistant to Sir Norman Reid. She married Drew Landsborough in 1975. After spending some time travelling, she worked with Drew designing and making stained glass gifts. They started up Winged Heart Stained Glass in 1995. Mara has a great interest in producing ‘formal’ style designs. She loves the art of the Ancient Greeks, Celts and Egyptians and enjoys designing imaginatively out of her head. She is responsible for our Decorative Art collection, as well as Suns, Celtic themes and an extensive Charles Rennie Mackintosh range (a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright in the USA). She looks forward to continuing design work.
Drew McClamroch Landsborough
Drew gained a degree in Philosophy and English at the University of Lampeter, Wales, and then obtained a post-graduate DMS diploma in Management Studies. It was Drew's contact with the ancient stained glass of Canterbury Cathedral which started him and Mara off on their present career. He began by teaching himself the old ways of making fired stained glass, rediscovering original medieval techniques. Drew still loves looking at, and reproducing, ancient stained glass, and his re-drawings and re-interpretations of some of the most famous cathedral windows in Britain are extremely popular. They make ideal decorations and reminders of these wonderful buildings which are an important part of our cultural heritage.
Stained Glass Paperweight Ranges
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