Alexander Gibbs (c.1831–1886) was one of three sons of Isaac Alexander Gibbs (1802-51) who became stained-glass designers. The family firm was established around 1848, but split in 1858. Alexander Gibbs' studio was still functioning as Alexander Gibbs & Co. until 1915. Among his major commissions was the west window of St Mary Magdalene, Taunton (1862) and that for All Saints, Margaret Street (1877). He was a close collaborator of William Butterfield. The earliest commission Butterfield seems to have entrusted to Gibbs was about 1860, St John's, Newbury, Berkshire, now destroyed.
Gibbs was also a talented artist on tile. In 1874 he executed tile panels for the north wall of All Saints, Margaret Street, and c.1865 had executed a wonderfully colourful set known as 'The Shakespeare', possibly for a Manchester pub. His own workshop, The Bloomsbury Stained Glass Works, was originally in London at 38 Bedford Square, but moved in 1876 to Bloomsbury Street.
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John Morgan-Guy, Alexander Gibbs (c.1831-1886) (Lampeter: 2007).
Molyneux Kerr Architects, All Saints Margaret Street Conservation Management Plan (2006).
'Glass Painters 1750–1850' Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, vol. xiii, no. 1 (1959–60), 337.
Birkin Haward, Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 159–60.
Joyce Little, Stained Glass Marks and Monograms (London: National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies, 2002), p. 54.
Martin Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass (London: 1980), pp. 27-8, 63, 77.
Paul Thompson, William Butterfield (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 461–2, 468.
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