Whanganui glass engraver Claire Bell restoring John Hutton's Guildford Cathedral work in Guildford, England. Photo / Andrew McLeod
Inheriting John Hutton’s old tools was not what Whanganui-based artist Claire Bell expected after a nosey knock on her neighbour’s door in her home town, Ipswich.
Glass engraving lies at the centre of Bell’s artistic work but the scale she worked in made her practice unusual today, she said.
“I think there’s probably five or six of us left, globally.
“I’m the only one who, perhaps, works with these old stones anymore. I’m not 100%, but we’re quite a rare breed at this point.”
Bell engraves glass murals using peculiar tools, such as those used in the dental and automotive industries, to mimic traditional methods.
“It’s like shading with a pencil,” Bell said.
“It’s not taught anymore.”
She was recently approached to recreate a piece by prominent glass engraving artist John Hutton, known for his restoration work on old cathedrals.
“Post-war, a lot of the cathedrals were bombed in Europe. They were starting to rebuild,” Bell said.
Born in Clyde in the South Island in 1906, Hutton attended Whanganui Collegiate School and spent most of his professional life in England.
From painting and murals for cinemas to dabbling in cruise ship work - designing glass panels for bars onboard - Hutton was best known for his ecclesiastical glass mural engravings.
Hutton’s largest commission was Coventry Cathedral, designed by Scottish architect Sir Basil Spence, who created the original Beehive design in 1964.
His works are also displayed in Wellington Cathedral, William Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon and the Dunkirk Memorial.
Bell first saw Hutton’s work “inadvertently” as a child while helping her father clear out a business in Ipswich.
“There were some panels in the wall and they said, ‘remove everything’. I was like, ‘what are these, dad?’
“He said, ‘I really like them. We probably should remove them. I will just ask’.”
When they came back the next day, the panels had been removed.
“I later found out it was [Hutton’s] wife. She had rescued them,” Bell said.
She never followed up, later moving to Aotearoa and studying painting at art school.
“I got a job in a hot [glassworks] shop in Auckland, working for Garry Nash.
”I learned how to be a glass blower but one thing Garry did was a little bit of engraving and I got interested because I could draw," Bell said.
She found comfort in making smaller glass engraving works before moving into murals.
“I was like, who did it on a large scale? Can it be done?”
After an engraving course and a move back to the United Kingdom, she “lucked out”.
“My neighbour was the only person who learned from John Hutton.”
Jennifer “Jenny” Conway lived opposite Bell’s great-grandmother’s garden gate.
“I’d seen her as a child. I didn’t even clock what she did,” Bell said.
“I just door-knocked, and she was like, ‘who the hell are you?’
“I borrowed some tools off her. I was engraving in the backyard in the snow. Just wanted to do something. I had no TV. I had no internet.”
She returned to New Zealand and moved into her parents’ old studio where she decided to focus on glass mural engravings.
Her first major commission was artworks for Whanganui bus shelters, which led to projects nationwide.
“[Jenny] passed, so I’d inherit quite a lot of her tools, which her sister had shipped to me,” Bell said.
Among them was an entire box of Hutton’s original wheels.
“I use them carefully, as the UK company that they are from no longer exists.”
Hutton engraved nine large angels for the doors of Guildford Cathedral, England, in 1961.
When one of the doors was broken by an apparent vandal in 2024, Bell was commissioned to remake it because of her connection to Hutton.
Bell visited Guildford on her honeymoon, taking rubbings of the doors.
“It’s very beautiful. It’s quite austere,” she said.
Each pair of doors showed angels playing different instruments.
She recreated the waist of the trumpet-playing angel.
It was hard to recreate someone else’s work, especially given the size of the piece and that the tools Hutton used were not produced any more, Bell said.
“It was a detective thing.”
Hutton used an old technique called brilliant cutting to cut a silhouette under his image.
“You’ll see it in a lot of traditional Victorian pubs, there’ll be glass on the side with fruits and vegetables and whatever cut into it.
“I was really glad I actually had a shard to guide me.
“I also went down to Wellington a couple of times to see what they looked like, and hold things up, just to try and match it out.”
A vase made by Hutton, Two Flying Angels, Blowing Horns (1960), is on display at the Sarjeant Gallery.
Bell sent the completed piece for Guildford Cathedral last week. She will be featured in a talk for London Craft Week.
Bell works part-time at the Whanganui District Library and at New Zealand Glassworks at 2 Rutland St on Saturdays.
Noam Mānuka Lazarus (Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara) is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle.