Lawrence Stanley Lee (18 September 1909 – 25 April 2011) was a British stained glass artist whose work spanned the latter half of the 20th century.

[4][5] His family moved to Weybridge where his father, William, a chauffeur and engineer, had a garage near to the Brooklands Race Track.

Lawrence's mother, Rose, was deeply religious and it was this influence that gave him the appreciation of biblical symbolism that became an important feature of his work.

A further award in 1927 enabled him to attend the Royal College of Art, where he studied stained glass under Martin Travers, graduating in 1930.

[8] He subsequently served in North Africa and Italy, seeing action at the battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943 and in the Allied landings at Salerno later that year.

He was transferred to the Army Educational Service in Italy in February 1945, maintaining his rank of Lieutenant, and ran courses in art and culture.

[3] On leaving the army, Lee returned to Travers' commercial studio as a chief assistant alongside John E Crawford.

Whilst respecting the historic traditions of the craft, Lee was also interested in the new possibilities afforded by improvements in adhesives.

[1] Coventry established Lawrence's reputation, and with it came greater acceptance of a more modern, abstract style which Lee was able to develop through the 1960s.

[3][13] Lee's large three-light window in the retrochoir of Southwark Cathedral, completed in 1959, depicts a dove in the top light, the Virgin with the child Jesus carrying a set-square in the centre and, in the lower light, stonemasons, carpenters and a glazier on a ladder commemorating the donation of the widow by the family of Thomas Rider whose firm had rebuilt the cathedral's nave in 1895.

Lee is alleged to have insisted to his RCA students that "doves representing the Holy Spirit should not resemble stuffed pigeons".

In 1967 Lee created an east window for St James Church, Abinger, Surrey, comprising three lights depicting a cross as a living tree, riven by lightning & distorted.

[1][3][11] Other work completed about this time included in 1969 the east window of St Giles' Matlock, Derbyshire - the Incarnation expressed in symbols and, in King Charles the Martyr, Tunbridge Wells; Ruth "amid the alien corn".

[3][11] A pair of small west windows in the Church of the Holy Cross at Binstead, Isle of Wight, date from the early 1970s—part of restoration work following fire damage to the nave.

[2][13] In 1971 Lee's semi-abstract Iveagh memorial was installed in the south aisle of Saint Andrew and St Patrick, Elvedon.

[3][11] Lee's 1975 window commemorating local JP, Arthur Darby, in St Andrew's, Sutton-in-Ely has an accompanying description written by Lee himself in which he not only describes the window, a theme of Man ascending and God descending, but also some of his philosophy on the role of stained glass in worship.

[3][13] Both in his role at RCA and in his commercial work, Lee was generous in passing on his knowledge to students and more than a dozen assistants that apprenticed to him over the years.

[1] This support continued into later life, Lee contributed the foreword to Jane Gray's autobiography; Playing with Rainbows, published when he was one hundred years old.

His last window is in the library of Chew Valley School, Bristol, in memory of his grandson, killed in a car crash in 1994.