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Full-size drawings used by one of Jersey's most pre-eminent artists to design stained-glass windows will be on display at St Mary's Church for islanders to compare to the final artwork.
Jersey-born artist Henry Thomas Bosdet is best-known for creating stained glass windows which adorn many churches in Jersey, Britain and St Helena and the South Atlantic.
Bosdet's vast pencil drawings, the basis of some iconic local stained-glass windows, were hidden away and rolled up in archives for over a century.
But an initiative from the Glass Rainbow Trust – a charity set up to preserve Bosdet's works – and funded by the Jersey Community Foundation has allowed for some of them to be restored.
Conservator Lisa Oxenden-Wray spent months lifting dirt, relaxing paper and repairing tears in the paper drawings – called "cartoons" – prior to the first exhibition in the series at St Martin's Church in December 2023.
Watch: Lisa Oxenden-Wray demonstrates how she restores a cartoon.
Now, it is the turn of St Mary's Church – which holds three Bosdet windows – to host an exhibition of the cartoons.
Glass Rainbow Trust Chairman, Frederick Benest, said: "We are delighted that funding for their preservation has been made available and that we have such a skilled conservator in Lisa Oxenden-Wray to preserve Bosdet’s exceptional works.
"Once again we are hoping that islanders will take another opportunity to see these original beautiful drawings and their final manifestations as windows commissioned by a St Mary family.”
Henry Thomas Bosdet was an artist, stained-glass designer and curator.
Born in St Helier in 1856, he studied at the Royal Academy and built a career as a curator, a painter, and creating stained-glass windows.
His art is visible in a number of island churches and buildings – and as far afield as Barbados' Parliament Buildings.
Bosdet died in St Lawrence in May 1934 and is buried in St Saviour's Cemetery.
A member of Société Jersiaise, he bequeathed his archives to the organisation.
The cartoons will be on display at St Mary's Church from Tuesday 14 May to Sunday 19 May, from 10:00 to 16:00.
WATCH: How do you restore 120-year-old sketches by Jersey's stained-glass master?
Rare Bosdet sketches on display next week
Rare Bosdet painting found in attic graces church for Holy Week
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