About Us
About 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 in 1995, and moved into our present light and airy studio in the Old Brewery in 1996. 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 Products and Designs
Our first products were round window decorations, framed with traditional lead and hung with trace chain, in various sizes. We call them Roundels, which is a word used for round stained glass pieces in times gone by. First we made 6" diameter Roundels, and then we brought out a range of very small pieces, 2.5" in diameter, which we called Roundelettes. Both of these products are still extremely popular and now we produce them in all kinds of designs from Flowers and Birds to Celtic and our lovely Cathedral Window reproductions.
In 2007, we brought our our first range of mirrors, mostly featuring Charles Rennie Mackintosh designs (very faithfully). They are beautifully gift boxed (apart from the very large mirrors). They have been extremely popular in our specialist shops, and on-line from us.
After the mirrors, we introduced our glass Paperweights. They are 7cm diameter round glass, again featuring a wide range of our designs, from reproductions of William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, to stained glass from Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, and, of course birds and flower designs too.
In addition to our glass and mirror products, in 2013-14 we brought out our lovely Static Cling products. These are very high quality prints of our designs on to transparent static material and are designed as less expensive window decorations. They are especially popular with tourists, who buy our Static Clings here in the UK in cathedral, museum and church shops, and around the World.
Just about everything you see in our finished products is done here by us here in the studio or finished by our associate craftspeople both locally and nearby over the border in Scotland. We cut sheets of glass into all shapes and sizes, and then print our designs on to transparency film by a fine art printing process.
on to the glass. The prints are very fine. Finally, the transparency prints are assembled by hand and framed with traditional stained glass lead. Everything is very attractively gift
boxed, as we find it makes a lot of difference. Our things are made by people, not machines!
You will find our products here in the UK in many cathedral gift shops and heritage outlets, as well as high quality gift and craft shops. We also send our work abroad to Europe, America, Japan and Australia.
People at Winged Heart
Apart from ourselves, Drew and Mara, we have a great team of people both in the studio here and in their homes. We are a true 'cottage industry'!
The office here is run extremely well by Gillian. Carolyn, our production manager, ensures that orders go out on time and looks after our production people in the studio and outside. They all make beautiful work.
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 medieval stained glass and enjoys designing imaginatively out of her head.
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.
Brampton
Brampton is a small unspoilt market town in North Cumbria - just by Hadrian's Wall. The people are friendly, and the pace is relaxed. Along the Wall, there are some of the best Roman remains in Europe, and Brampton itself has historic links, more recently with the famous pre-Raphaelite artists in the late 19th Century. Brampton church has beautiful pre-Raphaelite glass in its windows, and people like William Morris, Burne-Jones and other well-known artists were quite frequent visitors to our local castle, Naworth, where George Howard, the 9th Earl of Carlisle, entertained them and commissioned various works of art. Brampton is, therefore, a very pleasant place in which to have a stained glass studio.
Our Logo
Since our earliest beginnings we have used the 'Heart with Wings' as our symbol. It seems to sum up what we are trying to do. The heart, of course, suggests love and care, and represents the feeling we try to put into our products.
Take a look at the Winged Heart logo here on our Web-site and on our gift packaging, and you will see the little 'Heart with Wings'.
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