John Egerton Christmas Piper CH (13 December 1903 – 28 June 1992) was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets.

His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics.

[9] He drew a series on Welsh nonconformist chapels, produced articles on English typography and made arts programmes for the BBC.

[8] As the art critic for The Listener, through working on Axis and by his membership of the London Group and the Seven and Five Society, Piper was at the forefront of the modernist movement in Britain throughout the 1930s.

[13] Piper was one of only two artists, the other being Meredith Frampton, commissioned to paint inside Air Raid Precaution (ARP) control rooms.

The terms of this commission meant Piper would be visiting bombed cities, and other sites, as soon as possible after an air raid: often "the following morning, before the clearing up".

Piper made drawings of the cathedral and other gutted churches in the city which he subsequently worked up into oil paintings in his studio.

[2]In 1943, the WAAC commissioned Piper to go to the disused slate mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog where the paintings from the National Gallery had been evacuated for safety during the Blitz.

He also toured North Wales by bicycle, cycling and climbing to photograph and sketch buildings and views in Harlech, in the Vale of Ffestiniog, on Cader Idris and on Aran Fawddwy.

[20] In July 1944 the WAAC appointed Piper to the full-time artist post vacated by John Platt at the Ministry of War Transport.

[2] Throughout the war Piper also undertook work for the Recording Britain project, initiated by Kenneth Clark, to paint historic sites thought to be at risk from bombing or neglect.

[12] The King, George VI was unimpressed with the dark tone of the pictures and commented, "You seem to have very bad luck with your weather, Mr Piper".

Setting the pattern for a partnership that would last into the 1980s, a closely collaborative process in which Piper provided the designs that Reyntiens would realize in glass.

[27][28] Between 1955 and 1962, in collaboration with Spence, Piper and Reyntiens produced an original curtain of glass and reinforced concrete that climbs the full 26 meter height of the bowed baptistry wall.

Architecturally integral to the building, it comprises 198 panes of glass, each combining to form an abstract design in a spectrum of colours ranging from white to deep blue.

Piper's depiction of Jesus at Emmaus was installed above the high altar at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff in 1962, a commission received while working on the Coventry window.

[31] Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, built between 1962 and 1967 by the architect Frederick Gibberd features, as an integral part of its design, an innovative stained glass lantern.

[32] The idea for the design came from Reyntiens, who was inspired by a description from Dante's Paradiso of the Holy Trinity as "three great eyes of different colours each one winking at the other."

Once in situ, Piper poured resins onto the panels creating large coloured sections without the use of ‘leads’ used in traditional stained glass.

It was unveiled in September 1974 as part of the dedication of the narthex beneath the Cathedral's south-west tower to the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.

The title given to the window is The Land Is Bright, taken from the final stanza of Arthur Hugh Clough's 1849 poem, Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth, which was quoted by Churchill in a 1941 radio broadcast.

Piper's last major commission - though not his last to be manufactured and installed - was his 1984 memorial window to John Betjeman in All Saints Church at Farnborough in Berkshire.

[39] He also designed a number of dust jackets for books, frequently depicting both natural and architectural forms, often in a state of decay, within theatrical framing.

The first was installed in the main lobby of Graham Dawbarn's newly built BBC Television Centre in White City, London in 1960.

At the same time Piper worked on a second vivid abstract mosaic commissioned for the foyer of John Madin's newly constructed Chamber of Commerce in Birmingham, completed the same year.

In 1961, Piper finished his mural of the Meeting at Emmaus for the east wall of the newly built church for Harlow New Town in Essex.

[42] In 1962, Piper's 250ft mural for the porte cochère of Watson House, a laboratory complex in Fulham built 1959-1961 for the North Thames Gas Board, was unveiled.

They permit a contrast between opacity and translucence that allows for a closer interpretation of Piper's abstract designs in gouache than more traditional materials might.

[11][47] Although the tapestry received a mixed, mostly negative, reaction from the public, Piper was commissioned to create a set of clerical vestments to complement the work in 1967.

At Fawley Bottom for many years, Piper shared a studio with the potter Geoffrey Eastop, who helped him with technical aspects of the process.