Biography and current catalogue for
Sax Roland Shaw DA FMGP ATF (1916-2000)
Born at Berry Brow, near Huddersfield, 5th Dec 1916. Trained Edinburgh College of Art 1936-8 & Huddersfield College of Art 1938-40. Post-graduate scholar at Edinburgh 1946-7, where he studied stained glass under Herbert Hendrie with his friend Willie Wilson. Won a travel scholarship to France and studied tapestry at the Gobelin, Paris. As well as lecturing in architecture and interior design at Edinburgh School of Art, Shaw was a painter of continental scenes, local topography, still life and a stained glass window designer. His wool tapestry “The Lion and the Oak Tree”, a commission for Lord Colum Crichton Stuart for Falkland Palace, was chosen for the Textile & Design pavilion at the 1951 Festival of Britain. He was Director of Weaving at the Marquis of Bute’s Dovecote Studios 1955-60 and was responsible for driving the designs away from traditional reproduction of earlier paintings towards simpler, more colourful weaves, using larger and therefore quicker (and cheaper) stitching. He designed many stained glass windows for churches and cathedrals, including a whimsical pair of windows in honour of a retiring organist, to be found at Restalrig Parish Church (1979).
Exhibited Paris, Tours, Helsinki, America, Exeter, Sheffield, Bradford, Harrogate, London, and Edinburgh. He exhibited at the RSA(10) & GI(2); he also had a one man show at the Calton Gallery in 1985. He was elected a Fellow of Master Glass Painters in 1979 and is represented by a window in Edinburgh crematorium. His son, Christian Gerard Shaw helped Sax in later years and is himself an acclaimed restorer and designer of stained glass. Sax was a colourful, popular and eccentric resident of Howe Street for many years, in Edinburgh's New Town. He died in Edinburgh on 23rd September 2000, aged 83.
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