McLellan, Sadie Fadden

Person

McLellan, Sadie Fadden

1914-2007

Born in Milngavie, McLellan attended Bearsden Academy, where her art teacher was the artist Willie Armour. She enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art in 1931 and gained her Diploma (with Distinction) in Design and Decorative Art: Stained Glass, in 1935, and the Endorsement of Diploma following post-diploma study in 1936. A gifted student, she was awarded a minor Travelling Scholarship in 1934, a Maintenance Scholarship in 1935, and the John Keppie Scholarship in 1936.

During her third year at the School she entered the stained-glass workshop of Charles Baillie, designer of the famous Rogano restaurant, in Glasgow, and a prolific artist in stained glass. She used her Keppie Scholarship to visit Scandinavia and her post diploma year was spent at the Danish Royal Academy of Art, in Copenhagen.

In 1938 she contributed a mural, a stained-glass panel and an embossed panel to the Women's Pavilion at the Empire Exhibition. Between 1943 and 1947 she joined the GSA staff working in the Department of Design and Crafts, Glass. In 1953, she was awarded a significant commission to execute a scheme of 10 windows for the Robin Chapel of the Thistle Foundation in Craigmillar, Edinburgh.

McLellan later pioneered the use of a stained glass technique called "Dalle de verre" in Scotland. She used this technique in her best known work at Pluscarden Abbey, near Elgin.

From 1971 McLellan and her husband, Walter Pritchard, a fellow stained glass artist, worked in Crawfordjohn, South Lanarkshire. In 1989 she retired to live with her daughter in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Pritchard, Walter (1905-1977)

P898

• GSA Records
• The Herald, obituary, 23rd February 2007