now a thirtysomething from Brisbane
I go to work everyday in a Harry Seidler designed building and everyday I pause in the lobby and take it all in.
The space, the glass, the lines, the acoustics, the everything.
I love it all.
There are shadows .
There are lines.
There are curves.
There is glass, lots of glass.
And most importantly, there is the wave. Love the wave.
Having seen the Stained Glass Shop Windows that Mum has been collecting on Flickr. I took some photos of my own during the first half of my trip. On the last day coming through Armidale, Guyra, Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Stanthorpe I saw plenty of good stained glass shop windows and the windows in Glen Innes were a stand out in the vast number of them still in place but I just wasn’t in the mood for walking up and down the main streets taking photos of the stained glass windows or the pressed metal ceilings or the shop fronts. Next time! I’ve included Google Street View links where I can so click on those links and have a virtual stroll.
These first two windows are on shops that are not very far apart on the main street (Marshall Street) in Goondiwindi, both a fairly standard swag pattern. The first shop also features a pretty standard pressed metal ceiling on the awning. This pattern is sold these days as Dancetti, very Art Deco in styling, this design is seen on shop awning ceilings all throughout Goondiwindi, Moree, Narrabri, Gunnedah. I’m fairly certain I saw it in Tamworth as well.  The design very effective in the typical proportions of a shop awning (long rectangle) and not very detailed so I imagine it would have been one of the cheapest ceilings you could buy.
I don’t mind the swag styles above but when it comes to style I’m much more a fan of the geometrics of Art Deco than than the flowy, flowery Art Nouveau. The simple stylised arrow designs in these windows below are what I like, strictly speaking they are on a pub (The Victoria Hotel) so they aren’t really shop windows but still.
Now we are talking! Oh hello geometric! These windows belong to the Waynes World Discount Variety store in Moree (71 Heber St, Moree). The second photo is the front of the shop and there would have been originally a sign in the area which is now boarded off below the stained glass. I really like how the pressed metal ceiling has is geometrical like the stained glass. The design of the pressed metal is called Linfield or Labyrinth depending in you you buy it from these days.
The final window of the this post comes from Mum’s new home town of Narrabri. These windows are on the building that now hosts Max’s Spares (85 Maitland Street) are so over the top and magnificent and just so right. I would have loved to have seen these windows back in the day and to know what was in the oval space. It may have always been plain glass but I imagine it would have had some form of advertising on it. I think that Max’s Spares should put signs in them with words like radiators, fan belts, gaskets and the like.
Finally sneaking into this post is this a photo of a vent in the bricks at the Narrabri Railway Station. This part of the station was built in 1098 (click to read the NSW Heritage database for the station) and I would be interested to know if other NSW railway stations built in that period had the same vents. Just look at those circles and waves.
So there we have it. A sampling of stained glass shop windows, a peak into pressed metal ceilings and lovely geometric brick vent to finish off with.