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Hannah Gregory

@badassstainedglass

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Architectural and Autonomous Stained Glass Artist.
Australia, Wales, Belgium and Beyond.
Don't follow me, I'm lost too.

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👉 Niet elk project volgt de vertrouwde paden. ✨
Toen een klant ons vroeg een glas-in-loodraam met doodskoppen 💀 te realiseren, wisten we meteen dat deze opdracht op het lijf geschreven was van onze ontwerpster Hannah Gregory. Het resultaat liegt er niet om.

Met de hand getekende schedels 💀, strakke loodlijnen, veel kleur, unieke glassoorten. Een realisatie, volledig op maat, 📐 uniek. Precies zoals het hoort. ✅ Heb jij ook een bijzondere vraag voor een glas-in-loodraam? 💡 Wij denken graag mee. 🤝

#glasinlood #maatwerk #ateliermestdagh
@badassstainedglass by @badassstainedglass

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a day ago

🌀💥 Earlier this month I realised I have been working with stained glass for ten years (!!?) and I promised I’d share some of my story with you.

One of the most common questions I am asked is “How did you get into stained glass?” and I always wish I has some sort of romantic tale, but the truth is- your 20s are rough. I was hungover, fresh off a break up, living back at my parents and like a bolt from the blue I thought “I wonder how those are made?”. The problem was that outside of a weekend course, there was nowhere to learn a thing in Australia at the time, and I already knew I was ALL IN. I called and emailed every studio I could find in the country to take me on, and I moved across Australia after someone offered to teach me to build my first window (final pics) in return for some puttying.

From there, I worked for next to nothing across a bunch of studios, getting by from catering work in the evenings. I had some terrible times in some workshops, and kindness in others (did u know misogyny is real guys?). I went in weekends for 6 months to build my first original design (Bowie) only to have it burn down along with all of my belongings a week later.

Eventually, I was lucky to end up as Jeffery Hamilton’s full time studio assistant. His standards were meticulous (the crazy leading he had me doing too!) and my time learning underneath him was invaluable, (he also trained me to work without a grinder). About 2.5 years into this "apprenticeship" my Dad passed away suddenly, and I moved back home to be with my Mum.

It was difficult landing back home, like the past few years had all been a dream, and to process missing out on spending his last years with him because I was doggedly pursuing this thing, but it became my reason to throw everything I’ve got at it. To this day, when I am working with lead, I enter a sort of timeless spaceless place where I feel closest to him.

So before we jump into the highlights of 10 years in glass, I thought we'd start at the beginning, in the sad/ hyper chaos that is your 20s, and creating meaning around grief. His name was Greg and that is why I make under Hannah Gregory. ( Little pic of us at the end ♥️) by @badassstainedglass

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🌀🐦 Some shots as promised of my detour to All Saints in Tudeley last month to visit one of only two sites with Chagall windows in the U.K.

As I realised I passed ten years of working with stained glass sometime earlier this year, I am going to be taking on the task of sharing some highlights of those ten years over the next couple of weeks... Making pilgrimages to see the works of Chagall has definitely been a large part of that story.

Chagall is not neat, and being able to see the hand and where it has been in his work is what makes it his work. I think before I saw some Chagall's for the first time, I didn't realise that I had really felt a certain rigidity and exactitude in a lot of the architectural stained glass that I was consuming that filled me with tension. It's not just in the techniques that he uses and how he paints, but also in his intentional choices in his leadlines, that can at first seem random in relation to the rest of the piece, in some of his work. There's soft confidence there that resonates.

If you've enjoyed his windows and his paintings, you know they are at once folk art filled with merry, but also devastation. We have a piece of his in our bedroom of him kissing his dead wife as she leaves out the window. I am so grateful for his stained glass output and how often it reminds me that the mess, the mark making, the leadlines, the small flourishes showing where the hand has been is what makes it boundless. Perfection is no goal.

Happy Monday xx by @badassstainedglass

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4 days ago

💥🫪💥 I was very lucky to spend the end of last week on a concrete casting workshop at the London Sculpture studio to begin exploring this material for the first time and how I can apply it to my work moving forward.

I whipped up this window on my recent Belgium visit, and carried it through Paris and back to England with me, so it had already lived a life before arriving in London. It's part of an ongoing dialogue (pardon the pun) I'm having with myself, language and dual meanings of text. I'm particularly drawn to engaging concrete in the framing of these (text) pieces because of the historical connections to gravestones and tablets.

I would prefer to have a thicker frame surrounding both sides but due to time constraints on the course (and having to take the piece back on the bus 😂), we just played with moulding a smaller border on one side.

I'm feeling a lot of clarity about both my autonomous/ more experimental practice and my commissioned work and designs with clients - and how these two parts of the whole which is my career meet. I am feeling really excited about things to come, and playing with concrete I think is a big part of this. None of these thoughts may have been lit up in my skull if not for the inspiration of @rick_prigg and his approach to form and stained glass making.

Also, a nod to my fellow participants in the workshop who were all kind and collaborative males with a genuine desire to help me with my project and offered a really gentle filter to a hard news week. HG XO by @badassstainedglass

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8 days ago

🎼🎶 A new and welcome challenge for me..

Earlier this year, I was asked by a client in Belgium for @atelier_mestdagh to create a design based on an organ piece composed by Bach. They really wanted an interpretation of these movements of the 'Passacaglia' (playing with this post - but it's a million years long so you're only hearing a snipper) into a stained glass balustrade for a mezzanine. The joy is that the light shines down through this mezzanine & onto some beautiful old instruments (pictured) while some informal concerts will take place in the space. The piece was installed & I was able to visit on my last work trip to Belgium recently.

I do enjoy hearing the odd bit of organ music in the right atmosphere but I wouldn't say I listen to it "recreationally" so it was a real hoot to put my headphones on and get in the "zone" to compose this design.

The clients were very happy immediately with the proposed design (pic 3). I knew what I liked about the piece, and what resonated with them also, was how the music builds and builds into some sort of chaos, but the chaos is so anchored by this formal, repetitive structure - almost as if one is weaving in & out of the other. Something about the design also makes me think about warning signs coming from a town far away, smoke rising across the landscape. The first 2 photos are viewed from atop the mezzanine & pic 4 shows it true to its design and how it will be viewed from below. Unfortunately, I didn't come at the best time of day to get pics with the light coming through. But I did come on the same day that the plaque arrived in the post just as I was leaving! Another first for me - having a client order a plaque for a piece of work, very sweet indeed.

My final "first" in this lot was that this was my first piece signed as designer of an architectural glass work for a European studio. It is still a major shift for me to be designing work that isn't made by me. I leave many, many, many instructions (second last picture) & still do everything by hand, very thankful to work with a studio that honours my tech free process. Great job to the team at @atelier_mestdagh for their execution on this one ♥️ by @badassstainedglass

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10 days ago

The party. The point. An early diagnosis. Your last days. The train. The plane. The bus. A chance to apologise. The space growing. My shot. The story. The punchline. A silent nod. The deal of a lifetime.

The chance to be free. The chance to be known.

The storm turning. A shooting star. The whales breaching. A red light/ amber/ green. The 9am call. My chance to come clean. The opportunity to start again. The time to come home. When you needed mercy. The sunrise. The sunset. Last orders. Your breath quickening. The scary bit. Smoke coming in under the door. The alarm. My medication. Your appointment. The time to be tender. A good night's sleep. Our rituals. Your ordinary beauty. The change of season. A faint accent. The tide going out. All the signs. The beginning. The end. My life. My whole fucking life.

Can you repeat that? by @badassstainedglass

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12 days ago

🔥🤤 Recap of another big week in Belgium including a million things that make me light up and thank the glass deities..

- The arrival of two perfect gallery sheets from @lambertsglass for a big project I designed. Things got suitably sensual at this point

-Meetings with kind and excited clients, choosing glass for projects, cutting some of the most beautiful glass relics for some euphoric flowers.

-Never letting the computer win and being overly pedantic about designs at every scale. Continually making edits in pen and pencil to get things "just right".

-Stoopwafels, all Belgium sweets generally, friends eating chocolate sandwiches for lunch.

-Checking out some of the beautiful conservation and restoration simultaneously happening in the Atelier during my visit, sunshine, abandoned bikes reclaimed by the earth.

-My favourite chimneys, working on the Eurostar en route to Paris and seeing my big biggest project in Europe to date installed (pictures and separate post to come)

Thanks as always to @atelier_mestdagh for having me ♥️ by @badassstainedglass

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15 days ago

👋🏼 Hi! I'm still here!

Back from a couple of weeks road tripping around the UK that finished with a bang in Ramsgate with the annual little meet up of my UK glass family ♥️ and this year was a doozie 🫪😵‍💫🤤😅

Big highlight and first few photos dedicated to the life's work of John Trinick hidden in a small chapel near Margate. Such obsessive windows, so many brilliant unhinged details. Spicy stuff.

I finally got my butt to Canterbury cathedral- having actually tried quite recently but our car broke down (RIP). Highlights were obviously those special pieces made by @graceayson_artandglass in photos 8-10 and some mediaeval seed throwing and jumble cities - also always a shout out to a fragment window. The bigger the better! Big thanks to Fernando for guiding us through on this occasion ❤️❤️❤️

We were so lucky to visit Grace's studio and see some of her lovely sunflower pieces in real life and all be entirely envious of her huge space and everything she creates in it.

The real high of the weekend, all beautiful glass aside, is spending quality time in the air bnb with a group of women who have always gone above and beyond to support me from near and far, and who have some of the most exciting work out there, which always keeps my brain ticking. Bananagrams nearly tore us apart but I think we're all already looking forward to next year.

Thank you, Ramsgate! Nice beach, good swim, cool architecture, real people. And thanks to Grace for organising this year's meet ❤️❤️ I was very lucky to head back into Wales with @rachelphillipsglass via the Chagall windows in Tudeley, but they're going to get their own post entirely! (Dur!)

I've been busy behind the scenes in the studio on much and many designs and project managing a bunch of things going on or going to go on but looking forward to sharing some things with you soon.

Off to Europe tomorrow for a wedding in Spain and work in Belgium @atelier_mestdagh coming back via London for a workshop in concrete casting... Usually I can get away with taking just a backpack for a couple of weeks but I think the different fashion requirements of this coming fortnight may require a larger bag.

See you from the road! by @badassstainedglass

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a month ago

'Clown for your Love/ All things go"

Wet Plate collodion photography and stained glass, Hannah Gregory and Kristian Roosmalen, 2026.

It's nice to share the second finished experiment/ collaboration from Kris and myself that combines his photography practice with my stained glass mayhem.

For this piece, we wanted to nod to, and play with so many things. Taking the traditional quarry pattern (diamonds) seen in stained glass everywhere forever, and adapt it in such a way that it mimics its other historic usage; in the circus, and clown costumes specifically.

You sort of feel like a vulnerable idiot being in love, and I learnt a lot about vulnerability from Kris, who it comes to much more naturally than myself. Using an offering of flowers as a prop "offering" of vulnerability during the photography process, is really what got my cogs whirring about giving the piece some real "clown character", and that, in addition to the piece of blue @bullseyeglass glass with its alive little movement of white/ grey streaks guided it into its final form.

It was hard to land on a title for this work because it is at once something a bit silly (being in love is a bit silly) but also alludes to the necessary risk we must take to be vulnerable with at least SOME people, because life is so very short. We ended up saying both things at once, borrowing from the Chicago demo track from Sufjan Stevens that we often listen to and sing together in the car. Life is not long, all things go, be a clown for your love.

Also featured in this piece are some special @blowfish_gallery off cuts, and some really fun mirror. The piece looks so different in different light, and it's fun to play around with the challenges of creating a window around a photograph on opaque black glass.

We hope you enjoy X by @badassstainedglass

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2 months ago

🌹"Why won't you take what I am trying to give you?"🌹

- Hannah Gregory and Kristian Roosmalen, 2026.

💥 On our second date, Kris asked me if I had ever explored wet plate collodion photography on glass, to which I replied "no" and he said it was something that he has always wanted to try, so I immediately booked him a workshop with the incredible @ds_wet_collodion

Move forward 5 years, we are now married, Kris has had a solo exhibition in Wet plate collodion photography in Australia, we have studios next to one other in Cardiff and we are finally beginning to meaningfully explore a collaborative process and creating artwork together.

Kris capturing imagery on black glass with his 1900s camera, often various interpretations of me and how he sees me, to which I take his pictures, his interpretation of our little world and of me, and I collage outwards with glass, building out of his world and imposing my own.

I think often about how relationships are nothing more than a continuous cycle of offering and accepting - we give softness, we give vulnerability, but we also share self destructive patterns and historical trauma.

"Why won't you take what I am trying to give you?" reflects on the ways in which we've succeeded, and failed, to share fragility, defensiveness, excuses and romance with one another over the first 5 years of our marriage. Our creative process being yet another play on this "call and response" nature, offering and accepting but always altering in the process.

Please enjoy the final two pictures- one of our first ever together, and our most recent photo together, in Kris' dark room capturing these photographs. (And a song by one of our favourite bands!)

Looking forward to sharing more of these with you. Hannah & Kris. by @badassstainedglass

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2 months ago

💓👀💥 Recently completed fan light design for @atelier_mestdagh .

Always such a joy to explore the glass archive in Belgium and labour over selecting every single piece. I've been in a real Opal mood this past year or so. In this, you'll find green and blue opals of all varieties, and the most stunning red on clear flash fades. Great job to the team for construction and installation. A bunch of super⭐s! ❤️ HG by @badassstainedglass

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2 months ago

💘🙃 I often say if you figure out what you want to do with life ever, you're lucky, if you have the ability/ privilege/ time to pursue it - you're even luckier, and if you figure out a way to survive in this world by doing it - I can't think of better luck.

Thankful every day that stained glass found me! It would have been enough to know I could do these things with my hands, but to have created a whole life around it is nothing short of winning a bizarre cosmic lottery.

okay! Back to work - HG XO by @badassstainedglass

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2 months ago