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by Karla Whitmore

Stephen Moor came to Australia in the postwar reconstruction years when European migrants were recruited to augment those from Britain. Moor, who was born in Hungary of German parents in 1915, studied for an art diploma at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest followed by a postgraduate course in art history in that city. After five years in the Hungarian military he and his family went to Vienna in 1945.  For the next five years he worked in a stained-glass studio in Stuttgart, Germany and lived in the nearby small town of Nürtingen. Moor later noted that before coming to Australia he taught art in Budapest and worked in stained glass, mosaic and murals in Germany and Hungary.[1] He arrived in Australia in 1950 as a contracted worker, being assigned as a painter at a gear box factory on Sydney’s Parramatta Road. After several months he joined P.O. Barnard’s Standard Glass studio before establishing his own studio in 1952 in Spencer Road, Mosman, then in Burwood Road Burwood the following year, and then Liverpool Road, South Strathfield.  Leadlighting firm Bolton Glass, which rented space in the Strathfield studio, manufactured his designs throughout his career.[2]The studio, called Ars Sacra, advertised mostly in the Catholic press.[3] 

Ars Sacra means sacred art including architecture and interiors and in addition to stained glass Moor was a painter, designer of church fittings and sculpture, and architectural glass walls.  While Moor believed that stained glass was integral to architecture, postwar Australia had not embraced a modernist approach to architecture as had Europe. He noted ‘one has to adapt oneself to the possibilities and it is largely a life of compromise’.[4]There were exceptions: the since demolished chapel at Vaughan College, Balaclava Road, Eastwood and St Peter Julian’s Church in George Street, Sydney which was designed by architect Terence Daly and opened in 1964.  For the former he designed the interior fittings and stained glass and for the latter the dalle de verre reredos behind the altar, stations of the cross in stained glass and clerestory windows. The window made for Vaughan College chapel in the 1970s was a totally abstract design depicting Old and New Testament themes.  That Moor considered the work for this chapel to be among the best, points to the range of his design interests.[5]

Moor’s artistic influences were German expressionism, the simplified shapes and planes of Picasso, abstract expressionism and ethnic art.[6]  His windows often employed symbols of the dove and crucifixion and his colours were vibrant with a predominance of reds, blues and yellow.  His drawing style was bold and definite and his brush strokes artistic. He imported antique glass from France, Belgium and England, and thick 25mm (1 inch) Loire slab glass known as dalle de verre from France.  An undated brochure promoting the use of stained glass for residences in the State Library of New South Wales points to enhancing atmosphere, creating privacy and use of light to improve views. He favoured the use of dalle de verre, which could be naturally or artificially lit.[7]  His windows were rarely signed.

Moor’s stained glass is found in all states and territories and also Papua New Guinea and Thursday Island.[8] His figural windows adapted traditional designs with an emphasis on placement of figures to form strong designs and vibrant colours.  The Bellarmine window in the chapel at St Ignatius College, Riverview, Sydney was installed in 1955. A number of figures are depicted below an enthroned St Robert Bellarmine with the vertical axis leading to religious symbols and the Mother of Christ.[9]  The window commemorates twenty five Old Boys who died while serving in the RAAF during World War II.  The triple-light east window at Scots College, Bellevue Hill, Sydney dates from the same year.  It shows Christ in a radiant medallion in the central light with the apostles arranged horizontally against a background of layers of blue sky and green to brown earth. The Gothic pointed window at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Waterloo, Sydney  (Fig. 1) is dated 1957 in the inscription.  It combines horizontal and vertical design with Christ and figures beneath a simple canopy below the Virgin and Child in a medallion flanked by symbols of the Flood in roundels. 

Fig. 2. Stephen Moor, Stations of the Cross, St Peter Julian Church, George Street, Sydney (NSW) c1964.

Fig. 1. Stephen Moor, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Waterloo (NSW)1957

The figures in the small Stations of the Cross windows (Fig. 2) at St Peter Julian’s Church, George Street, Sydney from c.1964 are recessed in concrete with elongated figures and strongly defined brush strokes reminiscent of expressionist painting. Moor also made the slab glass reredos behind the altar and abstract style clerestory windows which complement the interior architecture. A memorial window of the Ascension and ten with religious symbols were installed in the 1960s in St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Wagga Wagga. Moor designed windows of saints for St Christopher’s Catholic Cathedral in Canberra in 1976, and in 1986 completed fourteen windows of Old Testament and other scenes for St Paul’s Cathedral, Rockhampton.[10] 

Moor’s non-figurative windows range from geometric to expressionist and abstract.  The chapel at the former Prince Henry Hospital, Little Bay on Sydney’s coast is now administered by the nursing and medical museum.  The A-frame building has a triangular window overlooking the sea from 1962 (Fig. 3) with wave pattern and symbols of the Trinity in blue, red and yellow.  The Victorian Police Academy opened in 1973 with a double row of tall narrow two-light windows beneath a cupola over the altar and in the nave.  The altar windows are of abstract design in red tones representing the Crucifixion and blue representing the Virgin Mary and the nave windows are pale leadlight quarries.  Religious motifs in the upper lights represent the Old and New Testaments.  St Mary’s Cathedral in Hobart, Tasmania has three windows by Moor, the western rose window installed in 1981and two nave windows in 1989 and 1995.  The rose window has eight ogee shaped lights with a swirling blue design and a red cross in the central quatrefoil.  The window, considered one of his best by Beverley Sherry, has the effect of a burst of spiritual energy.[11] 

Some of Moor’s work verges on the monumental in scale.  A window made for the Seaman’s Mission in Macquarie Place, now demolished, with small fish representing the members of the church within a fish representing Christ’s body, was 15m long.  Its whereabouts is unknown.  One wall of the chapel at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney, and part of the adjoining wall, has a vibrant stained-glass window from 1977 (Fig. 4) with large-scale religious symbols including the Jewish Holy Father and the Son of God, Chi Ro and the Evangelists and the Holy Spirit.  Moor also designed the Stations of the Cross in the chapel.  The dalle de verre wall at St Francis Xavier Church, Lavender Bay, Sydney (Fig. 5), made in 1960, is 21m long. It is made of 2.5cm glass cut to the desired shape and set in concrete. Religious symbols are incorporated in an abstract design; in the section illustrated here Baptism is symbolised by fish and the Church is symbolised by the papal tiara and keys, the Ten Commandments and scriptures.  For Hectorville Catholic Church, South Australia in 1962 Moor designed a window 12m high on the theme of the Annunciation and Christ’s Passion with figures in medallions on abstract blue and red backgrounds.

Fig. 3 (left) Stephen Moor, Prince Henry Hospital Chapel, Little Bay (NSW) 1962.

Fig. 4. (above) Stephen Moor, St Vincent’s Hospital Chapel, Sydney (NSW) 1977.

Moor’s studio employed apprentices and craftsmen.[12]  Stained glass artists who worked with Moor and went on to set up their own successful studios included Wolfgang Janzen, Jeff Hamilton and Paddy Robinson; the latter two are still operating successful stained glass studios.  Moor retired in 1991.  His other artistic interests were sculpture, painting and fashion design which he put to good use by designing clothing for Glamour Oz dolls designed by one of his relatives, Jozef Szekeres.[13]

Fig. 5. Stephen Moor, First section of dalle de verre wall, St Francis Xavier Church, Lavender Bay (NSW) 1960.

[1] Advertisement for ArsSacra studio for religious art, Burwood. Catholic Weekly, 15 October 1953, p. 20.  The school where he taught probably refers to the former Royal Hungarian Academy of Drawing and Teachers’ College in Budapest.

[2] Email from Jeff Hamilton, 28 February 2022.

[3] Although the advertisement states Moor worked in more countries, Michael Moor says his father definitely did not work in France and he thinks not in Austria.

[4] Jenny Zimmer, Stephen Moor, Craft Australia, Spring 1982, 3, p. 48.

[5] Zimmer, Craft Australia, 1982, p. 48.

[6] Stephen Moor – Scrapbooks and Photographs c.1950s-1970s, ML MSS 6751 (1), State Library of New South Wales.

[7] Stephen Moor – Scrapbooks and Photographs c.1950s-1970s.

[8] Werksverzeichnis Stephen Moor (catalogue of works) provided by Dr Michael Moor.

[9] A Brief Guide to the Dalton Memorial Chapel, Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview 1999, p.

[10] Moor’s catalogue says he made all the windows in St Christopher’s Canberra but the earlier ones are from 1940 by Barnard.

[11] Beverley Sherry, Australia’s Historic Stained Glass, Murray Child, Sydney, 1991, p. 93.

[12] Michael thinks that his father employed less than the four glaziers as stated in Zimmer’s article, which she based on talking to Moor.

[13] See the dolls (and Stephen Moor’s designs) on fashiondollchronicles.com.