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Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

Window 20: The Sower.

Window 20: The Sower

The nineteenth window in the Creation and the New Creation series of windows at the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee.

Having viewed the Summer windows, we turn the final corner of the church to view the Autumn series of windows, the last of the four seasons. Learning the trade from Claude Price back in the late 1970s, Dad learned to always design a window to suit its location, taking into account what is beyond the window and how the background light would influence its appearance. In contrast to the Spring windows which are light and clear to reflect the openness and light of the big sky and Sidlaw Hills behind them, the Autumn windows are strongly coloured with lots of rich, autumnal golds, russets and reds as they look out onto a white wall.

In a sense they are the ultimate windows of the whole series in that they represent the priesthood of the laity and most fully reflect the teachings of Jesus and therefore of Christianity. In the centre is the window celebrating the sacrament of Holy Orders. It is flanked on either side by windows illustrating four of the many parables told by Jesus. These parable windows belong to the second theme that circulates the windows, the theme of the Ministry of Jesus (forthcoming). Before designing and making the windows, Dad gave Fr McInally, the parish priest at the time, a list of the parables he wanted to include and asked McInally to give them a Scottish flavour.

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The first is Window 20: The Sower. The Parable of the Sower is found in Matthew 13.1-23, Mark 4.1-20 and Luke 8.4-15. With a large crowd around him, Jesus tells the story of a sower who went out to sow seeds – some seeds fall on the path where birds come and eat them, some fall on rocky ground but have no soil to sustain them so they wither, some fall among thorns that choke them. Finally, some fall on good soil and produce grain.

The archetypal sower of seeds, a mother with her child. Detail from Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

The archetypal sower of seeds, a mother with her child.

The seed represents the Word of God, the sower is whoever proclaims it and the various soils represent people’s responses to it.

The focus of the main window is the children of the parish as the seeds of our future. Reading the window from the bottom up we start with a painting of the archetypal sower of seed, a mother holding her child. Dad loosely based his design on a 1921 painting of a mother and child by Picasso called Maternity which depicts a powerful and solid mother figure with a child on her lap reaching up to touch her face. He chose this painting because he wanted to portray a robust, strong image of motherhood, to emphasise the hard work the job entails, instead of the romantic ideal more often portrayed.

Moving up the window, and over to the left is the child, grown up into the ultimate cheeky schoolboy, Dennis the Menace. Dennis was chosen for a couple of reasons. First, he is a child of Dundee. He is probably the best-known character in the comic The Beano which, as Britain’s longest running children’s comic, is (still) published by DC Thomson, a media company based in the city.

Dennis the Menace of The Beano as an altar boy swinging a thurible. Detail from Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

Second, he represents Dad as an altar boy. Because Dad was very young at the time, he wasn’t allowed to carry the thurible (the container in which incense is burned) during the service of Benediction; the job was always given to his big brother Paul. Dad gets his moment in this window, as his alter ego swings the thurible with glee. Dennis is wearing a cotta (the little white garment) which has special significance for Dad who served as an altar boy in the small chapel at the Carmelite convent in Yardley, Birmingham (the convent closed in 1989). The hems of the altar boys’ cottas were crocheted by the Carmelite nuns who were a closed order. Dad learned from the lay sisters attached to the convent that the nuns had crocheted a special one for him. On reflection, he thinks the nuns were being indulgent of him following the death of his other older brother Kevin, who suffered a fatal road accident at the age of 8, when Dad was 6. Dad witnessed the accident. The specially crocheted hem of his cotta was an example of the love and care they expressed towards this traumatised little boy.

time the windows were made, representing the good soil of the Parable of the Sower. The top one is of the entrance of St Fergus primary school, which is still there. The bottom one is of St Margaret's primary school which closed in 2008. At the end of that year a new school called St Andrew’s, which is opposite the church, was opened. It was formed by a merger of St Margaret’s and a school from a sister parish, St Columba’s. Here is ordinary Dundee life, the schools playing their role in the nurturing of the citizens of the future.

Above the schools music and sport are represented, emphasising the importance of the arts and sport in the development of children as they grow into being fully rounded adults. In the middle is a woman playing the violin, painted in rapid, sketchy strokes to indicate action, and to the left is a little cartoon character playing a wind instrument. Both highlight the value of music education. To the right is a golfer, an expression of the importance of sport education and another link to Scotland in that golf is considered a Scottish sport. This golfer is either not very good or has been a bit unlucky. At the opposite side of the church, in Window 7: The Scottish Window, is a broken pane of glass, the result of a careless golf ball, and another golf ball is lost, hidden in the rough at the bottom of the window. The golfer also managed to break a pane of glass in Window 8: The Woman at the Well. A blue tit peers through the hole.

St Fergus primary school (top) and St Margaret's primary school (bottom). Detail from Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

Dennis the Menace of The Beano as an altar boy.

The main image in this window, split into an upper and a lower part, is of the two primary schools attached to the parish at the

St Fergus primary school (top) and St Margaret's primary school (bottom).

Two musicians and a golfer representing the importance of the arts and sport in school education. Detail from Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

Above these three characters is another Scottish sporting connection: two honeybees play football, each wearing their teams’ colours. The blue and white bee in goal is a supporter of Dundee F.C. and the orange and black bee supports Dundee United F.C. I wonder if the Dundee United bee scored … it has been deliberately left ambiguous …

W20 Sower detail 20 #4 LOW RES.jpg

Two musicians and a golfer representing the importance of the arts and sport in school education.

Finally, in a complete change of tone and underscoring the importance of bringing science and religion together, in the transom is Galileo, the American robotic space probe that was sent by NASA to study Jupiter and its moons. The photo we have selected to reproduce here is an original photo Dad took while the panel was still in the workshop, another example of the original photo being better than the digital ones we took when we visited the church in 2022.

 

The Galileo space probe represents space exploration,, the sowing of the seeds of the future scientific understanding of our universe. It links to Galileo Galilei, the 'father of modern astronomy' in Window 11: The Sun and the Planets, the middle window in the Spring series on the opposite side of the church. 

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The space probe was due to be launched in May 1986, but while Dad was working on these windows, the Space Shuttle Challenger disastrously broke apart, just over a minute into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which postponed the project for three years. Dad memorialised the Challenger disaster by writing an inscription on the 'arm' of Galileo that contained the magnetometer sensors and plasma-wave antenna. It is a little too difficult to read from the image, but it says, 'Postponed due to Challenger explosion 27.1.86' (space enthusiasts might know that the Challenger exploded on the 28th so we're not sure where the 27th came from - perhaps there was some confusion at the time?). The Galileo space probe was eventually launched on the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the 18th October 1989.

The American robotic space probe Galileo, sent by NASA to study Jupiter. Detail from Window 20: The Sower in the church of Saints Leonard and Fergus, Dundee, Scotland. Designed and made by AJ Naylor.

The American robotic space probe Galileo, sent by NASA to study Jupiter.

21 Coming Soon

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© Images Anthony J. Naylor 2020-25

© Words Rachel Kevern 2020-25

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