In July 2016, a CAS delegation met with leaders of The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) at London’s historic Staple Inn to view a stained glass window commemorating the CAS centennial and the organization’s noteworthy role in the actuarial profession. A Tudor building situated on the south side of London, Staple Inn has been home to IFoA offices and events since 1887. The IFoA invited the CAS to commission a window for the Staple Inn to honor the CAS 2014 centennial, joining previously commissioned windows by other actuarial societies including the American Academy of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries.
In 2003 the CAS Board of Directors formed the CAS Centennial Commemorative Subcommittee to design and commission the window. The committee drafted a window brief that was sent to the British Society of Master Glass Painters (BSMGP) with design requirements and a brief history of the CAS. The BSMGP sent its membership the window brief calling for interested artists. The committee ultimately selected Joseph Nuttgens, a Fellow of the BSMGP, to create the window.
Nuttgens is the son of renowned stained glass artist J.E. Nuttgens and has designed and created stained glass windows for many cathedrals, churches and other locations within the United Kingdom. He created the CAS window in The Stained Glass Studio, a workspace that his father built in 1939. (The last window created by the senior Nuttgens in the studio was a commission for Sir Paul and Linda McCartney). Nuttgens designed the window’s colors and themes to balance with adjacent stained glass windows in the Great Hall.
The site of the Staple Inn, first known as the Staples, was a London mercantile space established in the 14th century. Following major renovations in the 1580s, stained glass windows were introduced to the Inn’s Great Hall. A pillar of resiliency, the Inn survived the great London fire of 1666 with the flames stopping 200 yards away, and the Inn endured major damage from a Luftwaffe bomb during World War II in 1944.
