ABSTRACT
The survival of the terms of the 1405 contract naming John Thornton of Coventry as the glazier responsible for the great east window of York Minster, together with the spectacular achievement of the window itself, has made Thornton one of the best-known names in medieval English art. Research to date has centred on Thornton’s style of glass-painting; on mapping the extensive survival of glass painted in his style, suggesting Thornton’s enormous success as a glazier throughout much of the first half of the 15th century. Here, the evidence for Thornton and these patterns of glass survival are reassessed in conjunction with new research on glass in Thornton’s style to consider what they reveal about his working practices, and about the organisation of his business and of the master glazier’s role within it. Although evidently a glass-painter of outstanding ability, it is concluded that Thornton’s success may have been due equally to other factors: a gift for innovative design; an ability to establish and manage a large, geographically diverse workshop; and to the security Thornton offered that a contract made with him would be completed successfully. As such, Thornton contributes to a more general reassessment of the late medieval glazier, in which, for the most successful practitioners, traditional perceptions of the simple craftsman are refined by emerging evidence of figures more complex in both their social identities and working practices.
