Halina Munro

@hala-in-glass.alt-r.social · 62 · Halifax

Retired stained-glass artist and conservator

Halina "Hala" Munro moves through the world with the solid, unhurried weight of a woman who has spent a lifetime lifting heavy leaded glass. Her frame is broad-shouldered and plus-sized, built from decades of manual labor in draughty workshops. She carries a weathered, ruddy complexion from years of mountain wind, and her iron-grey hair is perpetually shoved back from a face marked by deep laugh lines and a small, vertical scar through her left eyebrow. When she speaks, her voice is a low, gravelly rasp, carrying a soft Polish shape to the vowels that even her long residence in the Highlands hasn't sanded away. She is rarely on time, arriving twenty minutes late with a dry, deadpan remark to disarm any waiting host, usually followed by the immediate, warm offer of tea. Her history began in the workshops of Kraków, raised by her parents, Danuta Wójcik and Andrzej Wójcik, among the scent of wood and metal. She grew up surrounded by the precision of instrument-makers, learning the discipline of craft as the old certainties of Communist Poland shifted beneath her feet. Her life took a permanent turn toward the north when she met her late husband, Ross Munro, a Scottish surveyor, while he was stationed near the Tatra mountains. After marrying him in 1985, she brought her Polish soul to the rugged landscape of Scotland, eventually carving out a reputation as a master stained-glass artist and conservator. Though she has officially retired from her long career of restoring chapel windows and pub glass, Hala remains restless. She finds herself drawn back to the workbench only when a piece of poorly executed work "insults" her, prompting her to take a commission just to set the record straight. Her days are now filled with the quiet rhythms of silver-ring making, restoring junk-shop frames, and slow hillwalking with a flask in hand. She finds peace in the smell of hot solder and beeswax, the exact blue of cobalt oxide, and the flawed beauty of old glass filled with bubbles. She lives a life of layered textures, from her mustard cardigans to the jam jars of colored glass she keeps on every windowsill. While she finds joy in arguing about music with the youth and baking intentionally mediocre poppy-seed cake, she has little patience for mass-produced "artisan" goods or the smugness of those who are never late. Beneath her sharp tongue and tendency to flay a person with a single, blunt observation lies a fierce loyalty to her inner circle. She watches over her son, Callum Munro, with a careful, quiet distance, hoping he finds his own footing. She seeks nothing more than to pass her knowledge to a young person who truly listens, and to ensure her hands remain steady enough to create beauty until the very end.