Recently I have been looking at stained glass window designs for my research as I have been designing a book cover for the Penguin competition. I came across some lovely examples whilst I was busy looking for stained glass knights, damsels in distress' and orchids... but these designs by William Morris were particularly enchanting. The pictures are not mine of course as I found them on this "Stained Glass" group on Flickr. The pictures seem to have been taken by a Flickr user called Kotomicreations at the Birmingham Museum.
The brief was to design a cover for The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. In the first part of the book the Detective Marlowe notices a stained glass window with a knight rescuing a naked woman who is tied to a tree - Detective Marlowe is playing the role of the knight in this novel. Later on, he also says this line to himself while Carmen is laying naked and uninvited in his bed; "Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights...". There is also a symbolic meaning for the orchids in the story which are meant to represent the two Sternwood sisters who are deceptive like the orchid and are much more evil than they appear to be.
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