Window of opportunity from artistic butcher

Keith Clark has found a novel way of attracting customers into the butcher's shop he owns with his elder brother Barry. He decorates the windows of the high street shop in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire with glass paints to give the effect of stunning stained glass panels.

The designs change with the seasons and it gives Keith, who has always harboured an ambition to be an artist, the chance to let his creative juices flow. 'Ugly Bugs' was the theme of the town's annual high street fair, so this week the shop windows were adorned with "ladybirds and wormy things", according to Keith. He draws the design first on tracing paper, which he then sticks to the window and paints with glass paints. "It helps draw the punters in, and it's a good talking point," he said.

His most ambitious project was a Christmas stained glass window depicting Cologne cathedral. It took him 42 hours, which begs the question: who was making the sausages? Sausages are the shop's speciality, and the brothers make unusual varieties such as pork and pigeon, marmite and pork and the best-selling secret-recipe Buckinghamshire sausage.

The brothers entered the meat trade straight from school, working in the same shop as their father. Keith left the butchery trade aged 28, but Barry continued to work in the same shop. Around 10 years ago the shop was threatened with closure. Keith and Barry decided to buy the shop and clubbed together.

As a result, Keith found himself back in the meat trade, "next thing I knew I was back at the shop with my hand up the backside of a turkey," he added.

Painting the windows means Keith can combine his love of painting with the day-to-day running of his butcher's shop. For mothers' day the shop window featured birds and their young sitting on a branch, and at the start of the shooting season Keith painted a pheasant flying out of a hunter's game bag. He is now looking forward to unleashing his creative talent on a painting fit for National Sausage Week.

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