Background
Whistler, Laurence was born on January 21, 1912 in England. Son of Henry And Helen (Ward) Whistler.
Whistler, Laurence was born on January 21, 1912 in England. Son of Henry And Helen (Ward) Whistler.
Bachelor, Oxford University, England. Master of Arts, Oxford University, England, 1985.
He devoted himself to glass engraving, on goblets and bowls blown to his own designs, and (increasingly, as he became more celebrated) on large-scale panels and windows in churches and private houses. He also engraved on three-sided prisms, some of them designed to revolve on a small turntable so that the prism"s internal reflections complete the image. In 1935 Laurence Whistler became the first recipient of the King"s Gold Medal for Poetry.
However, he largely turned away from verse to concentrate on glass engraving.
His early works include a casket for the Queen Mother, and a hinged glass triptych to hold her daily schedule. Other engravings of his can be found, for example, in Salisbury, where his family lived during part of his childhood, including a pair of memorial panels with quotations by T. South. Eliot, and the Rex Prism Video on YouTube in the Morning Chapel, both in Salisbury Cathedral.
At the Ashmolean Museum. At Balliol College, Oxford where he was an undergraduate, and Street Hugh"s College, Oxford, where he also designed the Swan Gates leading from the college grounds onto Canterbury Road.
At Stowe House in Stowe, Buckinghamshire.
At the village church of Street Nicholas at Moreton, Dorset, where every single window was engraved by him over about 30 years. And in the Corning Museum of Glass (United States of America). In 1947, Whistler created one of the wedding gifts for Princess Elizabeth, a glass goblet engraved with the words of a 1613 poem by Thomas Campion, written for the marriage of Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I.
In 1975 he became the first President of the newly founded British Guild of Glass Engravers.
In 1939 Laurence Whistler married the actress Jill Furse (died 1944).
They had two children, Simon Whistler and Caroline (Robin) Whistler. In 1950 Laurence Whistler married Jill Furse"s younger sister, Theresa (1927–2007), but the marriage was later dissolved.
They had another two children Daniel and Frances. Whistler"s many honours included an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1955) and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1973).
In 2000, not long before his death at the age of 88, Laurence Whistler was created a Knight Bachelor.
Served to captain The Rifle Brigade, 1939-1945. Fellow Guild of Glass Engravers (president 1975-1980).
Married Jill Furse, 1939 (deceased 1944). 2 children; married Theresa Furse, 1950 (divorced). 2 children; married Carol Dawson, 1987.