“No bright child of Dunfermline can escape the influence of the Abbey, Palace, and Glen. These touch him and set fire to the latent spark within, making him something different and beyond what, less happily born, he would have become. […] All my recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped.”

These words of Andrew Carnegie perfectly encapsulate the fondness he felt towards the town he was born in, and especially its Abbey where one of his favourite heroes, Robert the Bruce, was buried. The Dunfermline Abbey of Andrew’s childhood would look somewhat unfamiliar to today’s visitor, mainly because of the lack of lively colour - reds, gold, blues, greens - that the stained glass windows both in the Abbey Nave and Church add to the building. Most of the stained glass windows that are visible in the Abbey today were placed there in the late 19th and the 20th century, the first one being the memorial window to Queen Annabella Drummond which was unveiled around 1864.

Carnegie Historical Window

In 1881, when Andrew Carnegie returned to Dunfermline with his mother Margaret to lay the foundation stone of the world’s first purpose-built Carnegie library, a thought came to mind to offer to the Abbey a commemorative stained glass window of his own design. Having consulted with the Abbey’s custodians, Andrew Carnegie wrote about his plans to David Octavius Hill, a pioneering photographer in Edinburgh:
“I should like to take something of Dunfermline’s greatest son, Sir [Joseph] Noel [Paton]’s. […] One son furnishing the money - a[nother] great son creating the thing of beauty to stand for centuries. If you think well of this you might sound him on the subject. […] There are four long windows - St Margaret & Malcom Canmore of course take two - the other two might be Bruce and Wallace”.

Hill was married to sculptor Amelia Paton, sister of Sir Joseph Noel Paton, and was thus the perfect person to pass on Carnegie’s request. Paton agreed to take the commission and drew a design according to Carnegie’s instructions. The four characters that are depicted on the principal lights - Wallace, Malcolm III, Queen Margaret and Bruce - all of whom have links with the Abbey’s history. The window was unveiled on 21 June 1884. Carnegie was unable to attend the ceremony, but visited the Abbey a few days later.

Similarly to the work of his Pre-Raphaelite friends, Paton’s design is brimming with symbolism. His depiction of William Wallace, for example, is very different from that at the National Wallace Monument. Paton depicted Wallace as a young romantic hero in the act of safeguarding a female figure (representing the fallen Scotland) who is lying defenceless on the ground, one of her wrists still in shackles and her sword broken.

Constructed during the high period of Scottish nationalism, it is not surprising that this depiction pleased Carnegie. “I have seen the window under various conditions - it is superb, I am more than satisfied - I am delighted,” he wrote to Paton. The so called Carnegie Historical Window has decorated the west end of the Abbey’s old nave ever since. However, this was not the case with Carnegie’s next gift.

Broken Plans

The news that Carnegie intended to commission another stained glass window, this time to commemorate his family, was first reported on by the press in May 1912. As the Carnegie Historical Window had been designed by a Dunfermline artist, Carnegie wanted an American artisan to undertake the work on the second. Permission was given by the heritors of the Abbey and joiners were tasked to take the measurements of a window in the south isle and forward them to the USA.

Andrew Carnegie chose the famous Tiffany Studios in New York to draw up the composition and carry out the work. While his wife Louise favoured a design depicting Gothic-style biblical figures, Andrew preferred a landscape scene. “God is in those rocks and rills. God is in all the great outdoors,” he wrote. For Andrew, the scene was also evocative of his family’s journey to Allegheny, Pittsburgh in 1848, taking them along rivers and mountain ranges. According to The Independent journal, on one of visits to the studio Carnegie suggested that perhaps Scottish thistles should be added in the foreground of the design, but as the artist was not familiar with thistles, rhododendrons were chosen instead. Describing the window in 1913, a New York journal stated: “The scene is typically American - a valley seen through a vista of stone pines, with rhododendrons and other flowers in the foreground. Few stained glass windows manufactured in America have attracted more favourable comment.”

Tiffany also produced a mosaic panel with the following inscription to be displayed below the window:

In loving memory of
Father, Mother, Sister and Brother
born in Dunfermline.
Erected by the sole survivor
Andrew Carnegie
and his wife
1913

The finished window, and commemorative wall panel arrived in Dunfermline in July 1913. They were unpacked and approved by members of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust and viewed by the representatives of the Abbey. However, in August 1913 in accordance with relevant procedures, a surveyor from the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments was sent to inspect the work prior to its installation. The newspapers reported how “the Crown representative felt himself under the painful necessity of disapproving of the design of the window in respect that it is quite out of harmony with the existing stained-glass windows”.

Uniquely to his studio, Louis Comfort Tiffany used Favrile glass (a type of iridescent glass with multi-coloured effects) which he had patented in 1880. “Favrile” derives from the old English word “fabrile” meaning handmade. The resulting glass looks fairly dull when viewed in reflected light, but comes to life in transmitted light. Tiffany’s window is evocative of the aesthetic of Art Nouveau, both in subject matter and material. The natural world was a central inspiration in Art Nouveau, and Favrile glass truly helped to bring the scene to life, since nothing in nature is in one colour.

The Dawn of a New Age

To Carnegie’s distress the Tiffany Window was laid in storage where it remained until 1937. Since then, it has had various homes - including Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline and the local headquarters building of the Carnegie Trusts. Carnegie never abandoned the idea of a memorial window dedicated to his family. Instead, another Scottish artist, Douglas Strachan, was chosen for the project and the finished window was unveiled in 1916. The allegorical composition depicts a seated prophet in the foreground. His spiritual vision above him symbolises East (carrying a lotus) and West (carrying a hammer) meeting within the encircling wings of Peace—the figure of Peace more impalpable than the other two. Coincidentally, Strachan also created a stained glass window for the Great Hall of Justice at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands (image below). In 1903, Andrew Carnegie had donated $1.5 million for building the Peace Palace which is still maintained by the Carnegie Foundation.

On Monday, 12 August 2019, the Tiffany Window that Andrew Carnegie had commissioned all those years ago will finally be dedicated in the Dunfermline Abbey Church, fulfilling his original wish for its location. The window will be the focus of a new contemplative space. Andrew Carnegie would be delighted! 

By Kirke Kook, Curator