This replica of a stucco and glass window, located in the east wall of the Studio extension of Leighton House, forms a pair with IG_59. Both windows have largely identical design and dimensions. They are composed of two zones. The lower zone is reminiscent of one of the most popular motifs of Islamic stucco and glass windows during the Ottoman period: flowers in a vase. This motif is widespread in Islamic decorative arts and can be found in numerous other media, such as ceramics, wood panelling, wall paintings, and textiles, over a long period of time, and in both sacred and profane contexts. The upper zone shows the Arabic inscription yā Muḥammad (‘O Muḥammad’). The saying is an invocation of Muḥammad, the prophet of Islam.
Whereas stucco and glass panels with inscriptions are rarely represented in museum collections (IG_174, IG_292, IG_493–IG_496), the flowers-in-a-vase motif is found in several stucco and glass windows in the collections studied (see for instance IG_7, IG_166, IG_176, IG_255, IG_261, IG_356). They also aroused the interest of Western artists and architects, as is attested by a significant number of book illustrations, sketches, and paintings (see for instance IG_43, IG_149, IG_153, IG_437, IG_443, IG_461). As of the 1850s, replicas with this motif were installed in Arab-style interiors across Europe (IG_64, IG_431, IG_484–IG_487).
Some differences from traditional qamarīyāt, such as the inscription being backed with green instead of yellow glass and the perforations with coloured instead of clear glass, as well as the way in which the petals extend into the uncarved edge area of the stucco panel, suggest that this window was the work of a Western designer. This contradicts Melanie Gibson’s assumption that it is an Egyptian qamarīya, acquired by the Victorian artist and collector Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) during his trip to Cairo in 1868 (Gibson, 2020, p. 3). Thanks to an annotation on the window’s design conserved at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and dated 15 February 1870 (IG_50), it can be confirmed that this window is a replica made by the British architect George Aitchison (1825–1910). Aitchison was one of Leighton’s close friends, for whom he designed Leighton House at 12 Holland Park Road in Kensington (London), executed between 1865 and 1895 in five construction phases.
Leighton House is one of the most famous 19th-century artist’s homes, combining living, working, and exhibition spaces, designed according to Leighton’s needs and aesthetic visions (Sweetman, 1988, pp. 189–192; Robbins/Suleman, 2005; Robbins, 2011; Anderson, 2011; Droth, 2011; Vanoli, 2012; Roberts, 2018; Gibson, 2020; Robbins, 2023). Leighton’s studio-house reflects the exotic taste of the time (Walkley, 1994, pp. 52–56), which finds close parallels in the now-lost studio of the British painter Frank Dillon (1832–1908). Dillon, who visited Cairo on several occasions in the 1850s – 1870s, recreated a Cairene interior with wall tiles, wooden furnishings, and two stucco and glass windows in his studio in Kensington (Conway, 1882, p. 196; Walkley, 1994, p. 70), as attested by a wood engraving published in the second volume of Georg Ebers’s Aegypten in Bild und Wort (Ebers, 1880, p. 96, see IG_117).
Although executed almost a decade before the famous Arab Hall (1877–1881), the Studio extension of Leighton House, constructed in 1869–1870, can nevertheless be seen as a prelude to the Arab-style interior that was to follow. While Leighton was familiar with Islamic art and architecture through his travels to Sicily, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Spain, and Morocco, Aitchison was acquainted with Cairo, among other Islamic cities, where he examined traditional houses. He shared his observations during the discussion following the paper on ‘Persian Architecture and Construction’ given by Caspar Purdon Clarke (1846–1911) and Thomas Hayter Lewis (1818–1898) at the Royal Institute of British Architects on 31 January 1881. On this occasion, Aitchison described the iconographic and technical characteristics of Egyptian qamarīyāt and their sparkling light effects and added that ‘many [were] executed for me in London’ (Purdon Clarke & Hayter Lewis, 1881, pp. 173–174) – most probably referring to the Leighton House replicas. More than 20 years later, in 1904, Aitchison returned to the subject of stucco and glass windows in his essay ‘Coloured Glass’, where he compared Western stained glass with qamarīyāt and mentioned Leighton House with its ‘windows of pierced plaster’ as an example illustrating the Islamic tradition (Aitchison, 1904, p. 57, see IG_91).
Aitchison seems to have been intensively involved with stucco and glass windows and their execution in Britain at the time the Studio extension was carried out, as a design for the Knoyle Schools in Semley (Wiltshire) conserved at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) attests. In this design (RIBA69211), also dated 1870, he envisaged the crowning element of a three-lancet window with the flower-in-a-vase motif, which clearly shows Aitchison’s familiarity with the foreign vocabulary, although, in this case, he translated the Islamic prototypes much more freely than in the two replicas of the Studio extension.
The British architect William Burges (1827–1881), who was a long-time friend of Aitchison and Leighton, must have been aware of these replicas when he planned the slightly later windows of the Arab Room at Cardiff Castle in Wales (IG_484–IG_487). However, Burges opted to execute the replicas at Cardiff Castle in glass, lead, and wood, whereas Aitchison stuck more closely to the Islamic prototypes – at least as far as the material was concerned. According to contemporary sources, Leighton acquired various stucco and glass windows during his travels to Cairo (1868) and Damascus (1873) (see for instance Anon., 1880; Wright, 1896; Rhys, 1900). Unfortunately, the Egyptian windows were heavily damaged during shipping (Rhys, 1900, p. 100). Such transport damage was apparently not uncommon (see for instance IG_43). As none of the latticeworks had survived the journey, the window openings were closed with ‘English imitations’ (Rhys, 1900, p. 100). Only part of the glass could be reused. These original pieces were used in the replica installed in the west wall of the Arab Hall (IG_56).
William Wright (1837–1899), who procured qamarīyāt ‘from a mosque in Damascus’ (Wright, 1896, p. 184) for Leighton during his visit to the city, adds that the Syrian stucco and glass windows ‘have also been supplemented and matched by coloured glass made in London’ (Wright, 1896, p. 184).
