I was first introduced to Harry Clarke by a friend we were walking past John’s Lane Church on a busy Thomas Street on the way to her studio, something which feels like another lifetime now. The research in Dark Beauty is scholarly and thorough with an engaging passion and intimacy, examining the smaller sections in Clarke’s windows, minute details which are often overlooked it’s as much for the Harry Clarke expert as for people like me, who know a fraction about the artist but are drawn to beautiful, dark things, with a touch of magic. The intensity and intricacy of flowers brought me Rosetti’s poem, A Birthday, yet alongside this was a sense of the uncanny Clarke’s depictions have something of the fairy tale, the old kind where there is something malevolent in a pair of red dancing shoes.ĭetail from the widow’s son (1924). One book in the pile was different from my usual diet of literary fiction: Dark Beauty: Hidden Detail in Harry Clarke’s Stained Glass by Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen (Merrion Press).įlicking through this luscious, illustrated hardback, I found dazzling geometry, languid eyes, fabled animals and demonic faces in a glory of colour: purple and crimson canary and turquoise midnight blue. I had a pile of books to review but each time I opened one I’d get a few paragraphs in and my mind would return to its default setting – something between numbed idleness and dread: I felt like my ancient MacBook, unable to do two tasks at the same time without crashing. At the start of lockdown I couldn’t write and I found reading fiction impossible.

Stained glass design flower