Olive Henry was born in Belfast in 1902. When she was 17, she started to work at a studio that made stained-glass windows. Olive came up with the ideas for the patterns on the window by drawing them on paper first.
A stained glass window is where glass has been coloured and cut into different shapes to make a picture or pattern. You might have seen stained glass windows before, in important buildings like a church or town hall.
Olive also loved to paint. A lot of her paintings were inspired by her time working as a stained glass window designer.
This painting is made up of simple shapes, strong lines, and bold colours. You can see how the picture is made up of parts, like a stained glass window!
Olive worked as a stained glass designer for a long time. Over fifty years! During this time she was the only female stained glass artist in Northern Ireland.
Image source, Courtesy of Crown DfC Historic Environment DivisionOlive Henry was a Belfast artist born in 1902. She died in Crawfordsburn in 1989.
Olive went to school at Victoria College in Belfast. She also attended evening classes in Belfast School of Art.
Olive worked for a stained glass design company after her teacher recommended her for the job.
She was said to be the only female stained glass designer in Northern Ireland at this time. Olive did this for 50 years before she retired.
Image source, Courtesy of Crown DfC Historic Environment Division
Image source, Courtesy of National Museums NI, Ulster Museums CollectionsShe also enjoyed painting. She used watercolours and oil paints.
Boats were some of her favourite subjects to paint.
She showed her paintings in lots of exhibitions.
Olive also enjoyed photography, she won lots of awards for her photos and wrote articles about photography for a magazine in the 1930s.
What is stained glass?
To make a piece of stained glass, different colours of glass are cut into shapes and joined together to form a picture or pattern. The different pieces of coloured glass are put together like a jigsaw, connected together with soft metal like lead or copper.
Olive Henry's stained window designs
- Image source, Crown DfC Historic Environment Division
Image caption, This design has been attributed to Olive Henry
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