Meeting the stained-glass makers Caroline and Tony Benyon at their studios in south-west London was fascinating in so many ways.
Caroline and her father Carl Edwards worked at the legendary Glass House studios in Fulham until it closed in 1992. Margaret Rope worked there too of course, probably between 1910 and 1923.
By being ‘last out’, Caroline thus inherited many of the fixtures and fittings of The Glass House… some of them over one hundred years old.

Sensing my interest, Caroline suddenly pulled out an ancient glass-plate (a measuring tool used by glass artists)… which clearly had once belonged to Margaret Rope – for, on one side, was carved in the letters R-O-P-E.

Amazingly, a little down on one side of the same frame was Margaret’s monogram, also carved into the wood.

Being so utterly unexpected a find made this discovery almost… spooky!
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Margaret Agnes Rope only signed one window, to my knowledge: the memorial window to her grandparents in Blaxhall St Peter’s, Suffolk.
See http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/blaxhall.htm and https://www.flickr.com/photos/norfolkodyssey/2633524520/
Arthur Rope
http://www.arthur.rope.clara.net
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I should have added that in uniquely signing the Blaxhall window she used the same monogram as the one carved into the wood shown above.
In her early years as a nun, she was expressly forbidden to identify herself as the maker of any window – and she passed on this prohibition to others, e.g. her brother Harry
Arthur Rope http://www.arthur.rope.clara.net
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