Light, made to colour.
A working studio in York — restoring church windows, drawing bespoke panels, and teaching the old craft to anyone who wants to learn it.
A stained glass studio in the shadow of York Minster, drawing, cutting and leading by hand since 2008.
Saint & Lead was founded by Eleanor Saint after a decade working alongside the conservation team at York Minster. The studio takes on ecclesiastical commissions across the north of England, restores fragile medieval and Victorian glass, and draws new panels for private homes.
Everything is made in the workshop — designs cartooned by hand, glass cut on the bench, paint kiln-fired, and lead came soldered the way it has been done for eight hundred years. We work slowly, properly, and to the standards set by the British Society of Master Glass Painters.
Churches, homes, and chapels.
Selected commissions and conservation projects from across Yorkshire, Durham and the East Riding. Each piece catalogued, photographed, and recorded for the studio archive.
St Cuthbert's, Ripon
Private Residence, Harrogate
All Saints', Pavement
Georgian townhouse, Bootham
Five disciplines, one workshop.
From small repairs to whole-window restoration, from a single door panel to a chancel commission spanning months on the bench.
Church Window Restoration
Full removal, cleaning, releading and reinstatement of ecclesiastical windows — to BSMGP standards.
Domestic Panels & Doors
Bespoke fanlights, front-door panels, hall lights and bathroom screens — drawn to suit the building.
Bespoke Commissions
Original designs in clear, antique or hand-painted glass. Memorial panels, family arms, contemporary work.
Heritage Conservation
Survey, condition reporting, isothermal glazing and protective grilles for Grade I and II* glazing.
Workshop Courses
One-day taster sessions and weekend intensives in our York studio — small groups, real glass, real lead.
St Cuthbert's, Ripon — 1872 chancel window.
A four-light Hardman window installed in 1872 had developed buckling across the lower panels, with lead fatigue, paint loss in the central figures, and water ingress around the apex. The PCC commissioned a full conservation report and treatment.
Over eighteen weeks, panels were removed in sequence, documented against the original cartoons, cleaned with cotton-wool swabs and de-ionised water, releaded in matching-section came, and re-fired where paint had failed. A new isothermal glazing system was fitted behind the restored panels to slow further weathering.
The window was reinstated on All Saints' Day 2024. The work is expected to remain stable for a further century.
Learn the craft. In the studio.
Small groups, no more than six. Real lead, real glass, real kiln. By the end of a weekend, you will have made a panel to take home.
“Eleanor and the team treated our Hardman window with the patience and reverence it deserved. The colour through the chancel on the morning it was reinstated is something the congregation will not forget.”
Bring your
commission.