Karl Parsons - Career 1914 To 1930 and Move To Northwood

Career 1914 To 1930 and Move To Northwood

The Great War saw many of the Glass House staff leave to do military service and in 1916 Parsons himself was conscripted into the Army but was not posted overseas.

Demobilised in 1918, he resumed work at the Glass House and went back to teaching at the Central School. As a teacher, Parsons was, like Whall before him, to inspire several of his pupils to become notable stained glass artists, these including Lilian Pocock, Joseph E.Nuttgens and Herbert Hendrie.

After the war there was a boom in demand for stained glass, particularly with many memorial windows being commissioned and Parsons appointed Edward Liddall Armitage as an assistant and later Leonard Potter. Both were ex-pupils.

1924 saw Parsons make what was to prove a seminal visit to Chartres where, with his brother Ambrose, he carried out a detailed study of medieval glass. Parsons wrote “So far as my knowledge goes, this world cannot show anything made by men so amazingly beautiful”.

In 1927 he was commissioned to make the apse windows for the new St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg.

1929 saw a collection of poems that he had written published by the Medici Society under the title Ann’s Book. His daughter Jacynth provided the illustrations. (The previous year she had illustrated Forty Nine Poems by W. H. Davies, also for Medici). Over the years Parsons had several of his poems published in anthologies and periodicals. In the same year he resigned from his teaching post at the Central School.