Tim Stead: Rood screen and furniture
Title: Rood screen and furniture
Artist: Tim Stead (1952-2000, Scottish)
Location: St John’s Chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen (ecumenical)
Date: 1989–90
In 1989, Stead was commissioned by the North Sea Oil Industry to design and make the fittings for a new memorial chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen: forty chairs, a lectern, communion table, a minister’s chair and a screen. The screen separates the chapel wing from the rest of the kirk. The rood screen with its double doors and vertically adjustable slats invoke the pillared trees of a forest, as well as the pipes of a church organ. In 1991 the project received the Saltire Society Design Award for Art, Craft and Architecture. The architects for the project were the Jack Fisher Partnership, St Andrews.
Tim Stead (1952–2000, British) was a wood artist, conservationist and furniture designer. Born in Cheshire he went to school at The Leys in Cambridge. He went on to study Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic where he discovered his passion for working with wood. Major commissions include the furniture in Cafe Gandolfi in Glasgow (1979), a papal throne used by Pope John Paul II during his 1982 visit to Scotland, as well as Peephole for the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow (1996) and a contribution to the Millennium Clock in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.
He was awarded an MBE for his services to the millennium forest of Scotland in 2000. His work is continued by Maggy, his widow, and his son and daughter.
Further information
Medium: Wood
Permanent display
See Stead’s Rood screen and furniture on the Ecclesiart map here.
Comissioner: North Sea Oil Industry
Other artworks in this church: Shona McInnes, Oil Industry Chapel window
Other artworks in churches by Tim Stead: Papal Chair, 1982, Blackburn, Scotland
For further comment on the stained glass see Visit Stained Glass, which is an online showcase for some of Britain’s finest stained glass windows.