WHAT do you get when Yorkshire's most famous living artist teams up with York's most talented modern strained glass designer to create a new window for Westminster Abbey? Something pretty special, that's what...

The design for the new Queen's Window was sketched on his iPad by David Hockney a couple of years ago.

But it was made right here in York, by stained glass artist Helen Whittaker of Barley Studio, who also created the Afghanistan commemorative window at All Saints Church.

Hockney's brief was to create a window to celebrate the Queen's reign. He chose to design an almost abstract window of bright, glowing colours - the kind of yellows, reds, blues, pinks and greens he is famed for - which somehow captures the essence of the English landscape the queen is known to love. Among the motifs is a hawthorn tree. For a brief four days of the year when it flowers, this tree is "(like) the moment when champagne looks as though it's been poured over all the bushes. It's a rather celebratory thing," the artist explained.

The iPad was, he says, the 'natural thing to use' to design the window because it is 'back lit like a window'.

The challenge of translating Hockney's design into glass fell to Helen. She went to see the artist in his studio in California at the start of last year: and he also visited her and her team at Barley Studio in York a couple of times.

Helen took measurements from Westminster Abbey, then worked in the studio from a full-sized 'cartoon' of Hockney's design.

None of the glass was painted, apart from Hockney's signature in one corner. Instead, it was glass that had been coloured at the moment it was made, and which was then cut to shape for the window.

I was beautiful glass to work with, Helen says. "It was mouth blown, with beautiful impurities and varied depths." It is partly the quality of the glass which gives the window its texture.

Hockney was a delight to work with, she says.

"He's extremely sure what he wants, but he's a complete gentleman too." The artist had a child-like wonder about the potential of stained glass, a material he had never worked with before, she says.

The resulting window is very different from much traditional stained glass, which - despite the quality of some of the work - is often these days seen by many as little more than 'religious wallpaper'.

No chance of that with the Hockney window. It demands to be noticed.

"He respected our creativity, and he respected the tradition of stained glass making, but he had his own vision," Helen said.

The window was unveiled on Wednesday morning. Before that, Helen had only seen the glass in the studio, or from scaffolding as it was being put in place.

She got her first glimpse of it in place from a new gallery at the Abbey on Wednesday morning.

And what did she think? "I think it is fabulous," she said. "He's an amazing visionary, and his colours are so right for stained glass."

Stephen Lewis