Item 1913/1 - 'Blue Bird' Tapestry Design Plan of Alter Curtains

Frederick Leach started F. R. Leach & Sons, artist-decorators who worked with the best-known Victorian architects/designers including William Morris, Charles Kempe and George Bodley, in 1862. In that year, at the age of 25, with the help of loans from his brothers, Barnett and John, and his close friend from the Church of England Young Mens’ Society and East Road Sunday School, Patrick Seekins, Frederick purchased numbers 35-37 City Road for £300. 36 City Road had been a public house – The Flower Pot – and Frederick converted the three separate buildings into new living accommodation and built wooden workshops in the yard behind the former pub. There was a paint shop, a stained glass works and a gas-fired kiln as well as a metal and wrought iron workshop. Wall and ceiling decoration by the firm at All Saints', Jesus Lane (1864-1879). Ceiling decoration of Jesus College Chapel by Frederick Leach for George Bodley under direction of William Morris (1866-1869). Walls and ceilings of St Michael's, Trinity Street painted free of charge by Frederick Leach, and reredos painted to a design by George Gilbert Scott (1872-1874). Frederick Leach painted chancel, roof, and organ loft of St Botolph's, Trumpington Street (1872) to Bodley designs. Frederick Leach charged £345 18s 2d for the painting of the roof and walls of the Queens' College Old Hall and Chapel (1875). In the 1871 census he is described as a ‘Church Ornament and Glass Painting master employing 12 men and 2 boys’, and in the 1881 census as ‘Painter: Designer and Art Worker employing 28 men, 2 women and 6 boys on painted decorations, stained glass and making furniture’. Between 1871 and 1881, as the census shows, F R Leach & Sons more than doubled its workforce to meet growing demand for their intricately detailed and high quality interiors. In the 1880s, at the height of its success, the firm worked on the staircase of St James's Palace, London with William Morris and opened an office in Great Ormond Street. Coloured decoration of the chancel roof of St Edward King and Martyr, St Edward's Passage done by Frederick Leach (1895). The firm cleaned and redecorated St. Botolph Parish Church c. 1902. Founder Frederick Leach died in 1904. The firm redecorated the Guildhall "in the Italian style" in 1916. Three of Frederick’s sons - Barnett, Frederick and Walter - continued the family business as artist-craftsmen, but financial difficulties during the First World War led to the company being placed into liquidation in that same year.