Design consisting of an elaborate vase with three flowers arranged symmetrically along the central axis. The two outer flowers cross the middle one two thirds of the way up. Two blossoms with five pointed petals backed with blue glass are set below the crossing point. The middle flower ends in three buds. The vase motif is surrounded on all four sides by eight rectangular panels with floral ornamentation showing symmetrically arranged buds and leaves, placed along a central stem backed with yellow glass. Four square panels with a cross-shaped blossom and four diagonally placed leaves are set in the corners. Three additional panels at the bottom of the window show a row of lilies. The flowers and buds of the centre and framing panels are depicted in a strongly stylized way. It is therefore only possible to identify rose-like blossoms, springing beneath the five-petalled flowers of the two outer stems.

The left half of the design has been executed in watercolour, whereas the right half is largely blank; only the right side of the main panel is indicated by fine black lines. In the bottom left-hand corner of the main field, small circles have been drawn in pencil to represent the perforated background of stucco and glass windows.

In the second-lowest panel on the right-hand side, a section is drawn in pencil showing the bevelled cut of the front or inner lattice (towards the bottom) and the way the pieces of glass have to be fixed between the inner and outer grilles (see IG_484 and IG_486, Technique).

Very torn

Full-size cartoon with section of the replicas IG_484 and IG_486, designed by the British architect William Burges (1827–1881) for the Arab Room of Cardiff Castle in Wales, executed between 1881 and 1882 on behalf of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute (1847–1900). A centre panel with flowers in a vase is surrounded on all four sides by smaller rectangular and square panels with floral ornamentation. The cartoon largely corresponds to the executed windows; only the bottom three panels show some variation: a row of stylized lilies instead of the circles.

The design is reminiscent of one of the standard types of qamarīya documented in the Ottoman empire. As with Islamic stucco and glass windows, the composition of the replicas is strictly symmetrical, which is why the blank spaces of this cartoon can easily be completed by mirroring. Burges based the design of the windows on his on-site observations, made during a trip to Istanbul in the summer of 1857, when he visited various mosques, among them the Süleymaniye Camii, with its refined stucco and glass windows (Burges, 1858, p. 89, see IG_189). During his stay, Burges made colour drawings of the windows. One of the drawings was published in 1904 by Burges’s friend George Aitchison (1825–1910) to illustrate the Islamic tradition of stucco and glass windows in his contribution on ‘Coloured Glass’, issued in the XIth volume of The Architecture Journal (Aitchison, 1904, fig. 1; IG_91). When compared with the cartoon, we find clear references to the depicted window.

In the 19th century, stucco and glass windows with the vase motif were much appreciated by Western artists and architects, as is attested by a significant number of book illustrations, sketches, and paintings (see for instance IG_43, IG_118, IG_149, IG_153, IG_437, IG_443, IG_461), as well as by replicas integrated into Arab-style interiors across Europe (IG_54–57, IG_64, IG_431, IG_264, IG_371–375).

The cartoon discussed here is part of a lot of five designs held at the Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff, which correspond to the replicas installed in the upper part of the Arab Room. Whereas IG_501, IG_502, IG_504, and IG_505 show the windows of the north and south side (IG_484, IG_486), IG_503 represents the centre panel of the windows located on the east and west side (IG_485, IG_487). Together with IG_501, IG_503, and IG_504, this cartoon has been classified among Burges' drawings. A comparison of the hand-written annotations on IG_501 and IG_504 with those on the signed construction drawing IG_505 seems to indicate that IG_501 and IG_504 were also drawn by the British architect and brother-in-law of William Burges, Richard Popplewell Pullan (1825–1888), who completed the Arab Room after Burges’s death in April 1881 (Newman, 1995, p. 205).