Charles Eamer Kempe 1838-1907
Windows by Kempe's firm can be seen in churches all over Britain. There are over two hundred in the USA and others in Australia, Canada, Africa, Ireland and other countries. Shown below is St. Leonard, one of his early windows at Staplefield in Sussex. Kempe probably copied the canopy from the windows made around 1300 at Merton College Oxford.
Kempe was born at Ovingdean Hall near Brighton. In 1858 he went to Pembroke College Oxford to study for the priesthood. Later he designed the College Chapel. He had a bad stutter. This made him decide that he could not be a priest. Instead he would be a church decorator and design beautiful windows, wall paintings and embroideries.
Kempe went to sketch old windows in England and abroad. 
He studied church
decoration under the architect G. F. Bodley and in the stained glass firm of
Clayton and Bell.
In 1864 Bodley asked him to help with the wall paintings at All Saints
Cambridge. In 1868 he asked him to design the wall paintings in his new church
of St. John at Tuebrook in Liverpool. In 1866 Clayton and Bell asked him to
design the Bishop Hooper memorial window in Gloucester Cathedral.
In 1866 he also designed windows for Karachi. These led to other orders in India. He used his own glass works to make windows for Bombay Cathedral. He also designed over 200 windows for the USA and 72 for Australia. His output was enormous and his windows can be seen all over Britain.
Kempe's later windows are far more elaborate than the earlier ones, with
elaborately patterned brocades and plenty of pearls. This can be seen in this
detail of St Dorothy, a later window from Staplefield.
He
also designed stained glass for his own home, Old Place at Lindfield. Some of
the Linfield windows can now be seen at Wightwick Manor, a National Trust house near
Wolverhampton. (Wightwick also has some other Kempe windows, made for the house
in 1888 and 1893, a few Morris windows and many other items by William
Morris and his firm.)