Necessarye Coniunction

We're putting the finishing touches to our house, now that the builders have fled.  Downstairs, we have an interior window looking in to a little snug which doesn't get much natural light.  To remedy this we commissioned glass artist Simon Howard to make a panel for us - cue drumroll, cymbals, fanfare...

The inspiration for it came from East Coker, part of the Four Quartets by TS Eliot.

The association of man and woman 
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Simon took the text from the last line and abstracted it - the coloured glass represents the negative space between the letters.  The panel has been acid-etched and sandblasted and my picture doesn't do justice to the shimmering texture of it.

As a writer and avid reader, I'm interested in the gaps between words.  Perhaps it goes back to a childhood fascination with the cracks in the pavement and the terrible fate which might befall you if you stepped on one. These gaps, these creative spaces, are freighted with the possibility that something unexpected might materialise, or that everything could fall apart. I love their ambivalence, their mystery.  I've already spent ages staring at Simon's opalescent panel. What he's created for us out of glass is as delicate and fleeting as breath on cold air.