The Creator of Our Stained Glass Windows

As part of the Preservation & Promise work, this parish's stained glass windows, designed by Willemina Ogterop (1881–1974), were recently refurbished. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in June: 

At Sunday Mass on the Hilltop, the morning sunlight streaming through the stained glass at St. Ignatius Church was so bright that they did not need to turn the lights on. That stained glass, 13,000 individual panes in 18 high clerestory windows facing east, was just back from being cleaned and re-pointed for the first time, in Chicago, and the parishioners took the rare fogless San Francisco morning as a sign from above.

In honor of her grandmother, Nadya Williams, the granddaughter of Willemina Ogterop, recently visited the Parish offices. Nadya Williams is a life-long peace activist deeply inspired by the peace activism, creativity and passion of her grandmother. As testament to this aspect of her grandmother's life, it is noteworthy, and recently learned, that she donated three works of art to India, two of which can be found on public display: the woodcarving "Satyagraha" in the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi and a stained glass plaque depicting a poem in Sanskrit by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, which is in the Tagore Museum at Visva Bharati University, in West Bengal, India. The third was sent to Nehru in 1946 by way of Nehru's sister, Vajaya Lakshmi Pandit, who was in New York while on a US national speaking tour for Indian independence, which came about in 1947. The stained glass plaque has yet to be located. Here then are some further details on this inspiring woman's life.

She was a Dutch-American artist and stained glass window designer of almost 500 windows in 80 locations and was the first woman west of the Mississippi to be inducted into the stained-glass artists’ union.

Ogterop was born in Maastricht in the Netherlands in 1881. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam before going to South Africa at the age of 21. In Africa she met her future husband, and they were married in Java, Indonesia where they lived before returning in 1907 to The Netherlands where their four children were born. The family came to California in 1918 and lived for ten years on a farm near Santa Cruz. She worked in the Cummings Art Glass Studio in San Francisco as their principal designer from 1928 to 1953, designing nearly 500 stained glass windows, and creating more than 200 works of art in other media.

There are more than 80 venues, primarily Christian churches, in six states of the US which contain her stained glass works; however, the great majority of her windows are in 40 cities and towns in California, in addition to a total of 9 churches in the states of Nevada, Washington, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Louisiana. 

Here is a recent photo of one of her works in St. Ignatius Church:


Here is the woodcarving of "Satyagraha" - Soul Force, or Non-Violent Direct Action by Willemina Ogterop as exhibited in the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi. A 6-foot tall replica greeted visitors at the entrance of the museum as well, photo on file.


And here is the letter, in Nadya's possession, from Vajaya Lakshmi Pandit. This letter is posted here, in part, to help document the history of the artist behind our stained glass windows, and so many stained glass windows, Willemina Ogterop.
 


Photo (top): colorized photo scanned by Nadya Williams. Second photo by Nano Visser. Third and fourth photos, a scan by Nadya Williams.