Brian Clarke, Stained-Glass Innovator, Is Dead at 71

New York Times

11-07-2025

Brian Clarke, one of the world's leading practitioners of the centuries-old art of stained glass, who pushed the form's boundaries from religious to secular settings, died at his home in London on July 1, one day before his 72nd birthday.
The cause was cancer, according to HENI, an art services business that represents Mr. Clarke.
'When I started working in the medium of stained glass, it was a dying art,' he told the British newspaper The Independent in 2010. 'I knew from a very early age that the future of the medium would only be assured if it had an application in public buildings and was not limited to ecclesiastical architecture.'
While Mr. Clarke did create stained-glass windows in religious locations, his work was also found in places like Pfizer's headquarters in Manhattan; Victoria Leeds, a shopping district in England; and the Lake Sagami Country Club in Yamanashi, Japan. He worked on projects with the architects Norman Foster, Arata Isozaki and Zaha Hadid.
This year he completed 'Concordia,' a colossal wall of 127 vibrantly colored stained-glass panels installed at Bahrain International Airport that depicts, among other things, jasmine flowers, dragonflies and hawks; incorporates Islamic geometric patterns; and makes reference to medieval European tapestries and illuminated manuscripts from the Book of Hours.
At 112 feet wide and nearly 56 feet tall — and weighing more than 30 tons — it is one of the largest stained-glass installations in the world.
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