Brief History of Stained Glass

©1997 Jeff G. Smith
The earliest uses of glass in windows are only dimly documented. Although there are no surviving examples, glass was being used in windows by the sixth century AD. This glass was probably a barely transparent, green-white color that would have illuminated interior spaces with a cool, mellow light. It would be centuries before glassblowers produced colorless, transparent sheets of glass.1 The glass used in these windows would have been held together by some sort of lattice-work because the glass sheets being produced at that time were too small for all but the smallest of window openings.2 The windows of this period varied considerably. Some were assembled in a wooden lattice. In others drilled boards held inserted bits of glass. Sometimes windows were fitted with the thinnest of sheets of alabaster or marble.3
The earliest surviving examples of stained glass are fragments from the Kloster Lorsch in Germany, the head of Christ from Wissembourg in Alsace, and the famous five prophet windows in Augsburg Cathedral. Regardless of the specifics of its evolution, these examples demonstrate that the technique for leading glass had been refined considerably by the 9th and 10th centuries .4
By this time the technique already relied on thin "calmes" or strips of lead resembling tiny "I-beams" to assemble pieces of glass into panels of stained glass. After preparing the design as a full-scale pattern called the "cartoon", windows are built piece by piece, panel by panel. As each piece of glass is cut, it is connected to previous pieces with lead calmes of varying widths by fitting the glass edges into the slotted sides of the calmes. When leading is complete, the ends and intersections of the lead calmes are soldered together on both sides of the panel of stained glass. Finally, the spaces between glass and lead are weatherproofed with caulk and the panel is scrubbed clean. The earliest caulking was made from a mixture of house dust and linseed oil giving the linework a soft edged glow.5
As is still the case today, glass colors were determined by the glassblower who added various metal oxides to the molten glass to produce specific hues in the finished sheets.6 Ruby and blue glasses dominated the early glazier's palette due to their relatively simple formulas. Later, during the fourteenth century a fine range of secondary colors (smoky ambers, yellow-greens, and gray-purples) became generally available, and began to augment the glazier's palette.
As the stained glass technique became more sophisticated, it likely drew conceptually from other, older medieval art forms that anticipated its use of leading to hold pieces of glass together. In mosaics, the combination of brightly colored bits of glass and stone was already an old, familiar medium by the sixth century. The metal strips used by the cloisonné enameler to surround areas of color are most suggestive of lead lines.7 Illuminated manuscripts utilized intense color and intricate motifs that also likely influenced the newer medium.
The earliest detailed description of stained glass by a practicing artist was set down by Theophilus about 1122 AD The following amusing excerpts from his unique account remain insightful even today:
PROLOGUE: ....I drew near to the forecourt of holy Wisdom and I saw the sanctuary filled with a variety of all kinds of differing colors, displaying the utility and nature of each pigment. I examined them one by one with careful experiment, testing them all by eye and by hand, and I have committed them to you in clarity and without envy for your study. Since this method cannot be obvious, I worked hard like a careful investigator using every means to learn by what skilled arts the variety of pigments could decorate the work without repelling the daylight and the rays of the sun by the use of glass alone and in its variety.
CHAPTER 6. HOW TO MAKE SHEETS OF GLASS: At the first hour (of) morning take the iron blowpipe, put its end in a pot full of glass, and when the glass sticks to it turn the pipe in your hands until as much glass as you want agglomerates around it. Take it out at once, put it to your mouth, and blow quickly and repeatedly. When you see it hanging down like a long bladder, put the end into the flame and as soon as it melts, (when you blow) a hole will appear. Then take a round piece of wood made for this purpose, and make a hole as wide as the middle (of the cylinder). ....Then separate (the cylinder) from the pipe. Then give it to a boy who will carry it on a piece of wood to the annealing furnace, which should be moderately hot. In the same way, by the same sequence of operations, work similar pieces of glass until you have emptied the pots.
CHAPTER 9. SPREADING OUT THE GLASS SHEETS: When...the glass has been cooled in the (annealing) furnace, take out all your work together and kindle a large fire in the furnace where it is to be spread out and flattened. When the furnace is red-hot, take a hot iron, split the glass (muff) along one side and put it on the hearth of the red-hot furnace. When it begins to soften, take the iron tongs and a smooth, flat piece of wood, and opening it upon the side where it is split, spread it out and flatten with the tongs as you want it. When the glass is completely flat, immediately take it out and put it in the annealing furnace, which should be moderately hot, in such a way that the sheet does not lie down but stands up against the wall. Next to it put another sheet, and a third, and all the rest. When they are cooled, use them in laying out windows by splitting them into pieces of whatever kind you wish.
CHAPTER 17. LAYING OUT WINDOWS: ....take the measurements, namely, the length and breadth of one section in a window, and draw it on the board with a rule and compasses. If you want to have a border on it, draw it and after doing this, draw as many figures as you wish. Then arrange the different kinds of robes and designate the color of each with a mark in its proper place. After this, take a lead pot and in it put chalk ground with water. Make yourself two or three brushes out of hair from the tail of marten, badger, squirrel, or cat or from the mane of a donkey. Now take a piece of glass of whatever kind you have chosen, but larger on all sides than the place in which it is to be set, and lay it on the ground for that place. Then you will see the drawing on the board through the intervening glass, and, following it, draw the outlines only on the glass with chalk. Delineate all the kinds of glass in the same way.
CHAPTER 18. GLASS CUTTING: Next heat on the fireplace an iron cutting tool. When red-hot, apply it to the glass that you want to cut, and soon there will appear the beginning of a crack. If the glass is hard (and does not crack at once), wet it with saliva on your finger in the place where you applied the tool. It will immediately split and, as soon as it has, draw the tool along the line you want to cut and the split will follow. When all the pieces have been cut like this, take a grozing iron and trim and place together all the pieces.
CHAPTER 25. CASTING THE CALMES: After this, make a hearth where you can melt the lead, and form a hollow in it in which you put a large earthenware pot and light a large fire over it. Put the lead inside the pot so that when it is melted it flows down into (the pot). Meanwhile, open the mold for the calmes and put it on the coals to heat. When the mold is hot, shut it, (and) taking a small ladle withdraw some molten lead and pour it into the mold. Throw the mold onto the ground and open it with a knife. Take out the calme and cast again. .... you will be able to cast more than forty calmes in one heating.
CHAPTER 27. ASSEMBLING THE WINDOWS AND SOLDERING THEM: .... take some pure tin and mix it with a fifth part of lead for use in soldering your work. You should also have forty nails. Then take the glass and lay it in its order. After this take up the head of a figure, wrap a lead calme around it, and replace it carefully. Then drive in three nails around it with a hammer suited for this work and fit to it the breast, the arms, and the robes that remain. As you set each piece in position, secure it with nails on the outer side so that it cannot move from its place. Now you should have a soldering iron which is long and thin, with a slender point, filed and tinned. Put this into the fire. Meanwhile (pour wax on) the tin sticks. Pick up the hot iron and, wherever two pieces of lead meet, touch the tin to it and smear them with the iron until they stick to each other. When the figures have been firmly set, in the same way arrange the grounds, of whatever color you want, and so assemble the window piece. When the window is finished and soldered on one side, turn it over on its other side, and solder it in the same way, and secure it firmly throughout.8
The preceding quotation of Theophilus may seem excessively long for a "brief" history of stained glass. However, whether one approaches the medium out of historical curiosity or as a practicing artist, a knowledge of and empathy for the nature and origins of stained glass is crucial -- and has been often overlooked. We will see that, historically, the vitality of the stained glass medium has suffered when the fundamental natures of lead, glass and light have been forgotten or ignored.
The cultural and architectural advances which led to the Gothic Cathedral also fueled the refinement of stained glass as described by Theophilus. Prior to the thirteenth century all of Europe's cultural centers were on the shores of the Mediterranean. Northern Europe was a rural region with a scattering of castles (manorial estates), monasteries, and villages. During the late twelfth century, the king of France, Philip Augustus, took the first steps that were to promote Paris as not only the capital of the kingdom, but to establish it as the first true city in Europe north of the Alps.9 By the end of the thirteenth century Paris was a walled city with paved streets, Notre Dame Cathedral, a university, and a flourishing trade that supported 150,000 Parisians. Other areas where the town began to supplant the manorial estate included Ghent, Lille and Tours.10
Although there is perhaps no typical Gothic Cathedral, much can be learned without undue repetition by focusing on a single example of Gothic Architecture. For this purpose we will examine more closely the cathedral at Chartres and the antecedents which anticipated its style.
The prototype for the Gothic Cathedral in general as well as Chartres was the Abbey Church of St. Denis outside of Paris. As the burial place of French kings, the monastery of St. Denis received the direct patronage of the royalty. Because of this prestige, the capable and talented Abbot Suger was able to enlist the most expert craftsmen from all parts of the kingdom to rebuild the Abbey Church during the mid-twelfth century. The result is notable, not for its innovation, but for its success in combining numerous late Romanesque devices, such as the pointed arch and the ribbed groin vault, for the first time. With St. Denis as its model, the Gothic Cathedral proliferated from about 1150 to 1300 AD in the Ile-de-France (towns of the domain) including Amiens, Beauvais, Rheims, Bourges, Rouen and Chartres.11 During this time a deep, common religious fervor permeated local populations creating the enduring level of civic commitment and pride required to persevere through decades, often centuries, of cathedral construction.
Rising from its surrounding village, which in turn rises from the slightly rolling countryside, Chartres is the dominating landmark for miles around. The cathedral represents the cumulative and united efforts of stone-cutters, masons, carpenters, metalworkers and, of course, the glaziers. As the ultimate product of a town and its craftsmen, cathedrals were the source of immense local pride, as well as of intense rivalry between towns. Chartres' vaulted ceiling is 122 feet high; the cathedral at Amiens topped that by eighteen feet; and, finally, Beauvais produced the highest vaulting in its cathedral at 157 feet. (As was often the case, the ceiling of Beauvais cathedral collapsed several times during construction before its builders finally deduced the elusive structural solution which is commemorated graphically in stone relief on the final solution which still stands today.)
The unique public dedication that made these monumental edifices possible was acknowledged by Abbot Haimon who, after a visit to Chartres Cathedral during its construction was moved to write:
Who has ever heard tell, in times past, that powerful princes of the world, that men brought up in honor and wealth, that nobles, men and women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness of carts, and that, like beasts of burden, they have dragged to the abode of Christ these waggons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, stone, wood, and all that is necessary for the wants of life, or for the construction of the church?...When they have reached the church, they arrange the waggons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the whole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and canticles. On each waggon they light tapers and lamps; they place there the infirm and sick, and bring them the precious relics of the saints for their relief.12
Construction of the cathedral as it appears today began after fire destroyed much of the Romanesque Chartres cathedral in 1194 AD. The triple portal with lancet windows above as well as the twin towers (without spires) date from the earlier church. The present, west faade was achieved by moving the portal and lancet windows forward forty feet to stand flush between the towers. Then the west rose window was set above the lancets with the Arcade of Kings and a gable on top to mask the wooden roof that covers the nave vaulting.13
Both towers are now surmounted by spires which is a rarity. Most cathedrals were intended to have two spires, but most were never completed. Neither spire was completed at the cathedrals of Notre Dame, Rouen or Amiens. At Chartres the spire on the right (as one enters) was completed first, and in many ways is the most successful in its simplicity and scale. The spire on the left side of the west faade is twenty seven feet higher, is the more ornate, reflecting the prevailing design morés of the early sixteenth century.14
The fenestration and other exterior articulation at Chartres elegantly echo the interior spaces. The nave is 53 feet wide and is flanked by aisles punctuated with stained glass windows. The Gothic architect has nearly eliminated walls. Supporting piers are oriented at right angles to the nave and are bridged over with vaults, allowing for the liberal incorporation of stained glass windows that had been inconceivable in the Romanesque period. On sunny days these windows transform the interior wall and floor surfaces into transcendent displays of color. The shafts of incoming light accent the system of arches, piers and vaults to create an illusion of magnified space and height.15
By combining the flying buttress, trifolium gallery and spacious arcades with the pointed arch and rib vault pioneered at St. Denis, Chartres' architects were able to maintain huge masses of masonry in a delicate equilibrium of weights and balances while also increasing the number of windows at all levels. The weight and location of every stone had to be calculated in terms of what was above and below it, so that its force could be transmitted along the various levels until it was grounded.16
For decorative detail Gothic interiors rely predominately on the lines and surfaces of the structural members and the subsequent interplay of light from the stained glass within their spaces. Light and glass at Chartres are organized so that there is a gradual transition from the dark violet and blue lancets and rose window over the main portal, through the lighter hues of the aisle and clerestory windows along the nave, into the flaming reds of the transept rose windows, to a culmination in the intense reds and oranges of the five lancets in the apse above the altar. The interior masses and voids become activated and etherealized by the directional flow of light, and material and spatial elements fuse into a glowing harmonious whole.17
The dazzling intensity of the 175 surviving stained glass windows at Chartres is indicative of the emotional exaltation that inspired medieval artisans to create these fantastic places of worship. The glass does not exist separately, but is an integral aspect of the cathedral. Chartres was acknowledged as the center of glass-making, and the stained glass in her cathedral was proclaimed to be unsurpassed.18
When faced with the detailing of the windows themselves, Chartres' stained glass artists preferred two-dimensional designs similar to the motifs that typify illuminated manuscripts and mosaics of the day. This restrained formality and the abstract border patterning allowed the stained glass windows to merge effortlessly into the architectural totality. The iconography at Chartres is dedicated to the Virgin Mary who sits enthroned majestically in the altar window surrounded by nearly four thousand figures of archangels, saints, prophets, bishops and canons.20
The symbolic and pedagogic aspects of Chartres' stained glass are readily apparent at close range and, therefore, are more easily represented in photographs or expounded upon in academic treatments. However, the overall and transcendent nature of the experience of light within the Gothic cathedral is the true starting point when considering the unique qualities of Gothic stained glass. The prevalence of windows in the Gothic cathedral allowed Gothic builders and artisans to create monumental and dazzling places of worship that were heretofore inconceivable to the medieval mind. The expression of light within Chartres and other cathedrals of the time is the direct result of architectural developments that led from the more massive Romanesque style to the lighter style we now know as "Gothic". Unpainted, transparent glasses act as filters that allow colored beams of sunshine to project into darkened interior spaces in a magnificent crescendo that unmistakably symbolizes the ultimate triumph of light over darkness.
Standing by itself, any written overview of the incredible, multidisciplinary wonders revealed in the Gothic Cathedral and its stained glass will be hopelessly incomplete. To be fully appreciated, a cathedral must be directly and subjectively experienced. The words of Abbot Suger may provide an inkling of the subliminal wonder of Gothic stained glass:
Thus, when - out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God - the loveliness of the many-colored gems has called me away from eternal cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior realm to that higher world in an anagogical manner.21
Beginning in the mid-thirteenth century stained glass began to become less distinct as a unique medium due to the increased use of a variety surface treatments. Black or dark neutral paint had been use to add detail and shading to stained glass from its earliest history. This paint was a mixture of copper or iron oxide, powdered glass and a binding agent such as wine and gum arabic. Paint was applied directly as "trace" painting, or in a subtractive method called "matte" painting, and later in the lacy "grisaille" style.22 . During the fourteenth century a yellow stain was introduced composed of sliver nitrate in a binder of clay or ochre. This new stain produced highlights ranging from lemon yellow to deep orange.23 Ruby glass had to be flashed in thin layers onto a base of clear glass due to the opacity of all but the thinnest films of the red glass. Fifteenth century artisans discovered that by selectively abrading away the thin flashed layer of red, they could add new graphic detail to their windows. Soon flashed glasses in many colors were available for etching.24
With these and other techniques for the surface treatment of glass (i.e.: painting, staining and etching) the glass artisan became highly sophisticated in the surface treatment of glass itself, while becoming less and less empathetic towards lead and line, glass and light. Although often successful from a painterly point-of-view, stained glass during this period came to deny its glassness. At this time stained glass existed as a specialized branch of painting similar to fresco and easel painting rather than as a distinct medium.
Unsurprisingly, it was early during this period that the first uses of the English term "stained glass" appear. This is actually a misnomer probably first coined by English speaking observers of medieval glass painters in France who erroneously inferred that the color in stained glass windows was imparted by painting or "staining". The term's imprecision reflects just how thoroughly surface treatment had come to obscure the traditional concept of glass as filter. For this reason the stained glass of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can best be evaluated in terms of its painterly imagery, and not with regard to its use of glass, lead and light to transform interior spaces.25 Viollet-le-duc was moved to complain of tonalities that have the great fault of lacking luminosity, and give to interiors a false light, seemingly without depth. In a building permeated with this lamp-like light, one feels oppressed.26
Except for refinements in glass cutting with the development of the diamond and steel-wheeled glasscutters; and the discovery of wet etching with hydrofluoric acid, there was little significant progress in the technique of stained glass until the 1840's. As glass-painting eclipsed the original attitudes of Gothic glaziers about glass and light, stained glass painters demanded less and less from their glass "canvas" in terms of color, transparency and texture. Hand- and machine-rolled glasses took the place of mouth-blown sheet glass so completely that the technique for producing mouth-blown sheet glass was lost and forgotten. In practice, many glass painters relied extensively on, and even preferred, the inexpensive, machine-made glass that was used in the glazing of ordinary windows.27
During the Gothic Revival Period in the 1840's Charles Winston inspired the painstaking research that led to the rediscovery of the Gothic process for blowing sheet glass which fortunately had been carefully documented by Theophilus and others. Mouth-blown sheet glass is often referred to as antique glass which the technique indeed was to its nineteenth century rediscoverers. The modern stained glass palette would otherwise be without the rich variety of mouthblown glasses which are indistinguishable from glasses found in Gothic Cathedrals.28 With the rediscovery of antique glass, all of the essential techniques and materials for leading glass were again available to the stained glass artisan. Many of these techniques have since been electrified, plasticized, or otherwise altered, but in principle and practice stained glass methodology had come of age by 1850.
NOTE: Before continuing, it should be noted that the western tradition of stained glass is not the only such tradition. By the thirteenth century colored glass was being incorporated into breathtaking windows in the Middle East using a very different methodology that relies on an intricately carved plaster framework to hold glass together in shimmering, tessellated patterns. Early examples of this "Gypsum Technique" can still be seen in the windows of Kalawon Mausoleum in Cairo completed in 1284. As a well suited expression of stained glass reflecting the cultural, geographic and religious context of the Middle East, these windows produce a gem-like shimmering surface whose three-dimensionality relies, not only on glass's transparency, but upon the carved plaster matrix with its slanted openings for glass and intricately detailed surfaces. These glass openings are carefully slanted at an angle equal to the viewing angle from below. 29
Fifteenth century commerce and colonialism served to disseminate western stained glass into other countries and cultures. Interesting and unusual applications of western stained glass are often unexpectedly encountered in areas where other cultural and aesthetic traditions have had historical interaction with those of the West (i.e.: Indian and Arabian peninsulas, Southeast Asia, Northern Africa). Later, during the twentieth century, the reconsideration of stained glass has expanded and now reverberates around the globe among all countries.
To summarize this overview of the western stained glass tradition, we have followed the rise of stained glass from its dim origins prior to the sixth century to its glorious expression in the early Gothic Cathedral. We then watched the gradual erosion of the original, fundamental concepts about stained glass as a filter of light by an obsession with glass-painting that began during the late thirteenth century. The lost potential was restored by the Gothic Revivalists, but was this potential ever realized? Did Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LeFarge advance our awareness of glass and light and art with their popular foiled confections at the end of the last century?
We must also remember that advances in architecture, its materials and technologies since the turn of the century have not been accompanied by cohesive and empathetic developments in stained glass design. Unlike the dramatic blossoming of stained glass that heralded Gothic architecture's displacement of the earlier, heavier Romanesque style, stained glass in the 20th century has largely failed to take advantage of the new architectural vernacular and its imaginative fenestration of buildings. With larger and larger windows designed into both secular and religious spaces, stained glass design is still often conceptually reminiscent of the narrow, self-contained lancet windows as well as larger rose windows of the Gothic cathedral (rose windows can be seen to be collections of smaller "lights" within a heavy masonry tracery). In light of new architectural possibilities, the continued use of stained glass as two dimensional painter's canvas for pre-Victorian imagery, is an opportunity lost.
Fortunately, the possibilities for intermingling of interior and exterior spaces through an expansive, uplifting sense of spatial flow in a more complete celebration of sunlight and landscape beyond were not completely ignored. By considering some of the less acclaimed developments in stained glass since the turn of the century, we may be able to better evaluate this medium in the larger context of the arts and architecture in general.
By the end of World War II, about one hundred years after the Gothic Revivalists and about fifty years after the advent of "modern art" (at least in other media), stained glass continued without vital contact between the glass-painters and the significant artists of the day, and in all directions there is a relapse into a servile and lifeless imitation of medieval mannerisms.30 This is understandable in light of the fact that it was the Gothic Revivalists who had rediscovered the lost technology. While the revivalists were consciously seeking to duplicate a centuries old, lost medium, those who followed made the default assumption that this ancient medium had no relevance to contemporary ideas and art.-- with one significant exception.31
To understand why this exception is significant, it is necessary to first understand the activities in stained glass that were typical during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, there was the tedious repetition of age old ideas as practiced by the traditional production studios. These studios were an outgrowth of the evolution of medieval glass guilds into the post-Industrial Revolution era combined with the resurrection of the original glass craft in the 1840's. With one eye riveted on the past, these studios also produced glass in the ornamental idioms of the Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. Very few workers could persevere through a rigid training system based on numbing repetition of tasks to advance beyond their apprenticeship to the level of master craftsman.32 There were no opportunities for balancing this training with exposure to current ideas in other media through formal training in the fine arts.33
Secondly, there were numerous collaborative efforts between the studios and acclaimed artists who were proficient in other media including Josef Albers, Georges Braque, Georges Roualt, Marc Chagall, Fernand Leger and Henri Matisse. These attempts seemed to be always celebrated out of all proportion to their artistic merit. Robert Sowers' comments on the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, which is actually one of the more successful artisan/artist efforts, adds perspective:
The Vence windows, magnificently, intuitively right though they are, are less like the late work of the greatest colorist of our time, than the first notable achievement of a very promising young stained glass artist - which Matisse at the age of eighty was.34
And finally, stained glass was being used honestly and unpretentiously in architecture by architects including Antonio Gaudi, Charles Mackintosh and Frank Loyd Wright.35
t is in this context that the work done by and inspired by Johannes Thorn Prikker around the turn of the century takes on a special vitality and significance. Thorn Prikker explored the potential of glass in terms of pure color and light through abstract design while reconsidering Christian iconography and symbols with a fresh originality. In a time when the world expected innovations in glass to consist of half-assimilated hand-me-downs from painting36, this German's work, deeply rooted in the simple, original elements of the craft, is the first, sustained example of a glass artist thinking and working in their familiar medium37. It is interesting to note that while the exact nature of influence remains obscure, Thorn Prikker's work undeniably echoes and reiterates the stained glass that Wright had used earlier to enhance the perception of light within, and views from his architecture.
Two of Thorn Prikker's students, Anton Wendling and Heinrich Campendonk, were in turn the torchbearers who inspired, influenced or instructed many present-day German glass artists including Ludwig Schaffrath, Johannes Schreiter, Wilhelm Bushulte, Georg Meistermann, Hubert Spierling and Paul Weigmann.38 What was spawned by Thorn Prikker and his successors is the first school of stained glass since the Middle Ages.39
Besides an empathy for the beauty of glass and color, the German School also possessed a fascination with the unique linear potential of leadwork in stained glass. Since the 15th century, lead lines had come to be ignored and even abhorred due to both the rise of glass painting and the technical difficulty of cutting intricate shapes in glass. The German's serious, rigorous and guardedly joyous rediscovery of the beauty of line has guided them to produce windows in an idiom that could not exist without both unadulterated glass and sensitively articulated leading. The loss of awareness of line that took place in Gothic times continues to challenge and inspire many modern glass artists.
The seeds sown by Thorn Prikker and the German School probably would not have flourished without a series of circumstances in Germany that nourished them: the opportunity to restore and rebuild windows after World War II, an enlightened local patronage, and a tradition of architectural arts and crafts that were embraced by the fine arts.40 It is tantalizing, albeit frustrating, to wonder how many viable seeds have been sown, by how many artists communicating through glass, only to succumb to the dormancy imposed on them by a less than sensitive, infertile environment.
While the work of the German School reinstated stained glass as a viable art form, the actual technique for making stained glass was still a secret that was fiercely guarded by fabrication studios much as craft guilds of medieval Europe had shrouded the craft in mystery. All major work by the German artists was still being fabricated by these studios. Gradually, during the 1960's and early 1970's, "outsiders" discovered and revealed stained glass making techniques to other artists. In the United States a self taught vanguard of artists, primarily on the west coast, led the way. Californian, Peter Mollica even published a series of "How To" books. Also notable was Paul A. Dufour who, as student of Bauhaus participant Josef Albers, expanded the cursory understanding of the medium then available to the public and eventually founded the Stained Glass Program in the Fine Arts Department of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1970. Another notable demystifier of stained glass was Patrick Reyntiens in England.
As these "secrets" were slowly revealed, a whole new generation of artists have gravitated to this versatile and enticing "new" medium. Their work and that of others continue to inspire glass artists throughout the world. To chronicle more recent developments in stained glass is tempting. However, without the hand-lens that the intervention of time can provide, such an endeavor would be mostly myopic speculation. Hopefully, the benefit of this look back at the history of stained glass will be the gift of a deeper reverence for and sensitivity towards this mysterious union of glass and lead and light.
NOTES1. Konrad Pfaff, Introduction to: Ludwig Schaffrath - Glasmalerei + Mosaik, translated by Rozemarjn van der Horst, Scherpe Verlag Krefeld, West Germany, 1979, p. 212. Robert Sowers, The Language of Stained Glass, Timber Grove Press, Forest Grove, Oregon, 1981, p. 35 3. Lawrence Lee, George Seddon, and Francis Stephens, Stained Glass, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1976, p. 13 4. Ibid, p. 13 5. Paul A. Dufour, lecture notes: Jeff G. Smith, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, 1974. 6. Gottfried Frenzel, The Restoration of Medieval Stained Glass, "Scientific American: Science and the Arts", New York, NY, supplement 1995, p. 90. 7. Lawrence, op cit., p. 12 8. Theophilus, On Divers Arts, translated by J.G. Hawthorne & C.S. Smith, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1979, pp. 47-48, 54-55, 57, 61-63, 67-70.9. William Fleming, Arts and Ideas, Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, Inc., New York p. 12710. Ibid, p. 127 11. Ibid, p. 130 12. Ibid, p. 130 13. Ibid, p. 130 14. Ibid, p. 131 15. Ibid, p. 132 16. Ibid, p. 133 17. Ibid, p. 134 18. Ibid, p. 138 19. Ibid, p. 139 20. Ibid, p. 139 21. Ibid, p. 140 - 14122. Frenzel, op cit., p. 90 23. Sowers, op cit., p. 79 24. Ibid, p. 79 25. Ibid, p. 79 26. Ibid, p. 82 27. Ibid, p. 8228. Ibid, p. 6629. Alia Youssef, The Gypsum Technique, "Stained Glass Magazine", Kansas City, Spring 1996, pp. 35 -37. 30. Sowers, op cit., p. 107 (Herbert Reed quotation) 31. Ibid, p. 107 32. Paul A. Dufour, lecture notes: Jeff G. Smith, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, 1977. 33. Sowers, op cit., p. 107-108 34. Ibid, p. 108-111 35. Ibid, p. 111 36. Ibid, p. 122, 162 37. Ibid, p. 162 38. Ludwig Schaffrath, lecture notes: Jeff G. Smith, Berkeley, CA 1978. 39. Sowers, op cit., p. 111 40. Ibid, p. 122