For a fascinating tale of St. Martha’s origins – happily unsullied by dressing up and playing with brooms - click here.

Here’s an interesting story from our our colleague, Ebel Rispens, who lives in Groningen in The Netherlands.

It’s in response to our recent post about sunlight and stained glass design.

Ebel writes:

It’s a fact that Piet Mondrian never ever made or designed a stained glass window.

And do you know why?

He refused to have anything to do with stained glass because he thought it was one of the ugliest things that anyone could do with colours …

Well, I am sure we’ve all seen some stained glass windows which make us wish that Thomas Cromwell were alive today.

And I am also sure it’s sometimes fun to make provocative and witty remarks.

Yet I only need to walk around some of the art on display in London’s Tate Modern to remind myself why we are glad to practice a craft.

As with mainstream art, so with the craft of stained glass: it’s often the content and the design which appear to transcend rational appraisal, and – worse – simply become the victim of fashion.

But at least there are clear standards about whether a stained glass window has been skilfully painted and assembled.

At least the making is subject to objective scrutiny and judgment.

And at least this process of making something well is something which demands to be enjoyed for its own sake – even when it happens to be your livelihood.

The Journalist Rings

Bless her, she’d been asked to write an article for next February’s Homes & Gardens (and she’d rung us five months early because she knew how busy we get …):

“I’m writing about buying and using stained glass and I’ve been looking at your website with great interest …

(What a lovely journalist, I thought.)

… I need to find out about the various options available to buy, and also who can restore them …

… Can you help me please?”

Her voice was friendly enough, but I must admit I was immediately on my guard.

Like you, I’ve seen plenty of cases where words have mysteriously changed their context, or had their qualfications left out, and that’s the last thing anyone needs when the subject’s stained glass restoration.

So we proceded as gingerly as Kennedy and Khrushchev discussing missile placements on the lovely island of Cuba.

And one of things we talked about was how stained glass can be re-sized.

It’s a familiar problem.

A piece made for one particular setting has been removed and must now be made to fit a new setting.

And I was duly reminded of this classic example from our casebook of stained glass adventures and challenges.

The Loving Couple

Some time back, our client approached us with two magnificent pieces of painted stained glass. Here’s one of them:

"Please make me 60 inches taller!"

Naturally, this elegant gentleman was accompanied by a demurely blushing damsel.

The task:

To transform these two pieces, each one measuring 12 inches across by 18 inches high,  into a pair of stained glass windows, each one measuring 26 inches across by 78 inches high.

Now, to perform this kind of operation, you have to respect the spirit of the original, whilst also taking into account the new location.

If I tell you that the new location was an ornately gilded dressing room within an 18th century mansion across the sea on mainland Europe, then you’ll see that a great many options were swiftly ruled out.

Our client being a person of considerable influence, we gave the matter our deepest thought.

And then we remembered our priceless book of leaded light designs from 1615.

Our personal copy dates from 1895. Here’s the splendid frontispiece:

How we found inspiration in an ancient Manuscript (and you can too)

Let me translate:

Book of sundry drafts

principally serving for glaziers

and not impertinent for plasterers and gardeners

besides sundry other professions

Surely this 400-year old collection of leaded lights would prove to be our inspiration!

We spent a happy hour reminding ourselves of these exquisite designs.

And then we came across this one here:

"Eureka!"

We were away!

The first task was, with surgical precision (not to mention our ruler and set square), to use the original scale drawing to map out the full-sized cut-line. (Those of you who’ve mapped out “simple” diamond quarries will know that a job like this takes time and patience.) You can see here how, in the middle, we prepared a space for the original stained glass (from which we had taken a “rubbing”):

The full-sized cut-line

The second task was, with equal care, to cut the glass. Here we used glass that was made specially for us by our nearby glass blower. (Machine-rolled glass would all have been too uniform and lifeless.)

Finally, the assembly: with a geometric pattern like this one, the leading had to be exact …

Careful leading for ...

… with neatly abutting leads (or else the soldering will fail):

... a client of considerable Influence

Once cemented and polished, we had a look:

Finished

Our lips began to quiver. Our eyes went moist. We knew the day would soon come when we would be obliged to return the glass to its rightful owner.

It never gets any easier to say goodbye!

At least these windows had once been ours to look at.

Original Designs from 1615

It’s no exaggeration to say these designs are extraordinary.

Just imagine if more stained glass windows had such richness and complexity.

Are you interested?

Then scroll up and click the link in the far-right sidebar.

The light was heavenly here the other day – just as David was working on a water-colour design in our stained glass Studio #2 …

Sunlight in the studio at Stanton Lacy

But that’s not in fact the water-colour you see right there.

What you’re looking at is the full-sized black-and-white predecessor of the final full-colour design.

The actual water-colour is on a bench to the right and tantalizingly out of view.

(Well, our clients haven’t seen it yet. So you too, dear friends, must exert due patience!)

We’ve found this to be a most useful three-stage way of preparing our stained glass designs.

1. A small sketch which reveals the broad geometry of the window – you can just see this pinned to the left-hand timber post.
2. A full-sized design in black-and-white (graphite) that articulates the precise geometry and also specifies all the tonal details (vital for the glass painting and silver-staining that we do).
3. A full-sized water-colour design which the client sees and – within the limits of the medium (light-reflective paper) – understands to give a good impression of how their glass will eventually look.

At each stage, there’s plenty of time for conversations with our clients, so that everyone knows that all the hundreds of individual ideas are taking shape and coming together.

Canny eyes amongst you will note there’s colour in the border of the black-and-white design.

Yes, indeed.

Not just ordinary colour, but stolen colour.

Stolen from a Mondrian in fact.

Some call this “theft”. We call it “inspiration” and “hommage”.

A fine line, of course. And it’s one that we tread carefully.

We naturally informed our clients.

Larceny, yes – sometimes.

Fraud, deception and “passing off”, most definitely not!

Such, at any rate, will be the substance of our defence should we one day get a knock on the studio doors from some ferret-t00thed attourney for the New York Museum of Modern Art …