Look to the Bees and Follow

G. Owen Bonawit was a prominent American stained-glass and painted glass artist, active from the 1910s to 1941. During this period, he produced original and imitative works of stained glass, pictorial leaded glass, and other decorative architectural elements for homes, schools, and libraries, and other public buildings. His most notable work was a monumental commission for more than six hundred panels of stained glass for the Yale University Library, which was completed between 1930 and 1931. At Cranbrook, Bonawit glasswork appears in Hoey Hall at Cranbrook School, Christ Church Cranbrook, and in Cranbrook House itself.

This round panel is one of two in Cranbrook House created by Bonawit. In conversation with Mark Coir, then Director of Cranbrook Archives, Henry Scripps Booth recalled that this panel, its counterpart, a woman in medieval costume (CEC 696), and two pictorial leaded window panels (CEC 1007 and CEC 1049) were commissioned by him from Bonawit for his architectural office, Thornlea Studio. According to Henry Booth, they were installed in Cranbrook House instead after George Gough Booth saw them and decided they deserved a more prominent display location. However, some discrepancies between the dates recalled by Henry and those in Cranbrook House records cast doubt on this possible point of origin for the Bonawit windows.

A fully armed knight with a plumed helmet stands on the back of a lion before the walls of a castle. His shield bears the crest invented by George Gough Booth for himself – a blue ground with a golden chevron, charged with three bees, representing the three generations of the Booth family in America. The figure is encircled by George Booth’s motto, “Look to the Bees and Follow.” There seems to be little relation between the inscription—adjuring diligence, collaboration, and the steady pursuit of opportunity—and the martial image of the knight with a drawn blade. Yet both may be seen as allusions to “the battle of life,” in which, in modern times, hard work and perspicuity may be as rewarding as aristocratic birth and skill in combat were in the medieval period.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024