HEIRLOOMS OF THE FUTURE - FLORA JAMIESON

The stained glass artist talks to Dominique Corlett about the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and capturing the English countryside at its best

Flora Jamieson's studio in Bridport, Dorset, may not actually be outside, but it's hard to imagine another space that does a better job of bringing the outside in. Wherever you look in her light and airy whitewashed workshop, it's a fleeting moment in nature that catches your eye. Here, for example, is a little wren that has just landed on a willow branch, where it has spied a juicy caterpillar. While over there sits a tiger moth on a hawkbit while a tiny ladybird creeps by. Elsewhere, there are frogs and dragonflies, lily pads and tangles of wildflowers, the familiar sights of any early summer stroll along a towpath in England, all captured on a piece of glass where Flora has painstakingly painted them.

"To me, this is what stained glass does so well,' Flora explains. 'It captures that snapshot when the English countryside is at its peak, those moments in nature where everything is perfect. It's that spring day in May when everything is bursting forth, before it all starts looking a bit past it; or that moment when the rose is in bloom before the petals start to wilt and fall off. It's a way of bringing those outside moments into the house and of holding on to them."

Flora has spent the last 20-odd years perfecting her art of painting such scenes on to glass roundels, or rendering them in stained and leaded glass, to create enchanting door and window panels for people's homes. They are works of art that bridge the space between inside and outside and capture rays of sunlight that light up the colours, splashing them onto surrounding walls and ceilings.