Christopher Whall

“ You have to deal with the whole sum of things all at once; the possible material crowds around the artist's will, shifting, changing, presenting at all stages and in all details of a work of art, infinite and continual choice. "Nothing," we are told, "is single," but all things have relations with each other. How much more, then, is it true that every bit of glass in a window is the centre of such relations with its brother and sister pieces, and that nothing is final until all is finished? A work of art is like a battle ”

“ How many a man one sees, earnest and sincere at starting, led aside off the track by the false lights of publicity and a first success. Art is peace. Do things because you love them. If purple is your favourite colour, put purple in your window; if green, green; if yellow, yellow. Flowers and leaves and buds because you love them. Glass because you love it. It is not that you are to despise either fame or wealth. ”

“ If I have got my window already brilliant and the whites pure white, and still want, over and above all this, my "Star of the Nativity," let us say, to sparkle out with a light that cannot be its own, shall I not use a faceted "jewel" of glass, forty feet from the eye, where none can see what it is but only what it does, just because it would be a gross vulgarity to use it where it would pretend to be a diamond? ”

“ I have thought fit, dear student, to touch on these great questions in passing, that you may know where you stand; but our real business is with ourselves: to make ourselves so secure upon firm standing ground, in our own particular province, that when the hour arrives, it may find in us the man. Let us therefore return again from these bright hopes to consider those particular details of architectural fitness which are our proper business as workers in glass. ”

“ Don't strive to be original; no one ever got Heaven's gift of invention by saying, "I must have it, and since I don't feel it I must assume it and pretend it;" follow rather your master patiently and lovingly for a long time; give and take, echo his habits as Botticelli echoed Filippo Lippi's, but improve upon them; add something to them if you can, as he also did, and pass then on, as he also did, to the little Filippo—Filippino—making him a truer and sweeter heart than his father, out of the well of truth and sweetness with which Botticelli's own heart was brimming. ”

“ Fancy a surgeon having to hold the limb with one hand while he uses the lancet with the other, or an astronomer, while he makes his measurement, bunglingly moving his telescope by hand while he pursues his star, instead of having it driven by the clock!
You cannot afford to be less keen or less in earnest, and you want both hands free—ay! more than this—your whole body free: you must not be lazy and sit glued to your stool; you must get up and walk backwards and forwards to look at your work. Do you think art is so easy that you can afford to saunter over it? ”

“ Remember,—it is an accessory to architecture; and who is there that does not want repose in architecture? Name me a great building which does not possess it? How the architects must turn in their graves, or, if living, shake in their shoes, when they see the stained-glass man turned into their buildings, to display himself and spread himself abroad and blow his trumpet! ”

“ There is quite enough originality in making a noble figure of a saint, or treating with reverent and dignified art some actual theme of Scripture or tradition, and working into its detail the sweetness of nature and the skill of your hands, without going into eccentricity for the sake of novelty, and into weak allegory to show your originality and independence, tired with the world-old truths and laws of holy life and noble character. ”

“ We must not shrink, then, from saying all that is in our mind: we must ask ourselves the great questions of all art. We must investigate the How of them, and even face the Why.
Therefore here (however hard it be to do it) something must be said of such great general principles as those of colour, of light, of architectural fitness, of limitations, of thought and imagination and allegory; for all these things belong to stained-glass work, and it is the right or wrong use of these high things that makes windows to be good or to be bad. ”

“ When, therefore, the main relations of colour have been all set out and decided for your window, turn your attention to small differences, to harmonies round the harmonies. Make each note into a chord, each tint into a group of tints, not only the strong and bold, but also the subtle and tender; do not miss the value of small modifications of tint that soften brilliance into glow. Study how Nature does it on the petals of the pansy or sweet-pea. You think a pansy is purple, and there an end? ”

“ From the highest forms of painting to tying up a parcel or washing out a brush;—all tools should be clean at all times, the handles as well as the hair—there is no excuse for the reverse; and if your tools are dirty, it is by the same defect of your character that will make you slovenly in your work. Painting does not demand the same actual swiftness as some other arts; nevertheless each touch that you place upon the glass, though it may be deliberate, should be deft, athletic, perfect in itself ”

“ While ladies who want to dress beautifully look at the things themselves, and compare one with another. And how nicely they dress. If only painters painted half as well. If the pictures in our galleries only looked half as harmonious as the crowd of spectators below them! I would have it part of every painter's training to practise some craft, or at least that branch of some craft, which compels the choosing and arranging, in due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. ”

“ Modern stained-glass work is done by numerous hands, each trained in a special skill—to design, or to paint, or to cut, or to glaze, or to fire, or to cement—but none are taught to do all; very few are taught to do more than one or two. How, then, can any either use rightful liberty or observe rightful limitations? They do not know their craft, upon which these things depend. ”

“ The old men did not so. Did [Pg 238] they not add the fancies of their own time to the old work, and fill with their dainty, branching tracery the severe, round-headed, Norman openings of Peterborough and Gloucester? Did fifteenth-century men do thirteenth-century glass when they had to refill a window of that date?" No. Nor must you. Never imitate, but graft your own work on to the old, reverently, and only changing from it so far forth as you, like itself, have also a living tradition, springing from mastery of craft—naturally, spontaneously, and inevitably. ”

“ Every operation in the arts should be perfect. It has to be so in most arts, from violin-playing to circus-riding, before the artist dare make his bow to the public.
Placing on one side the question of the higher grades of art which depend upon special talent or genius—the great qualities of imagination, composition, form and colour, which belong to mastership—I would now, in this book, intended for students, dwell upon those minor things, the doing of which well or ill depends only upon good-will, patience, and industry. ”

“ There must be no craft-jugglery in stained-glass.
The art must set the craft simple problems; it must not set tasks that can only be accomplished by trickery or by great effort, disproportioned to the importance of the result. But, indeed, you will naturally get the habit of working according to this rule, and other reasonable rules, if you yourself work at the bench—all lies in that.
There must be nothing out of harmony with the architecture. ”

“ They are just typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by master to pupil. Years—centuries of practice have made them the commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.
Man's work upon earth is all like that. ”

“ The painting would remain for years, probably for centuries yet, if untouched, just as dust, without any attachment at all, will hang on a vertical looking-glass. But if you scrape it, even only with the finger-nail, you will generally find that that is sufficient to bring much—perhaps most—of the painting off, while both sides of the glass are covered with a "patina" of age which is its chief glory in quality and colour, and which, or most of which, a wet handkerchief dipped in a little dust and rubbed smartly will remove. ”

“ Working in this way all things are lawful; you may even put a thin film of "matt" over any piece to lower it in tone and give it richness, or to bring out with emphasis some quality of its texture. Some bits will have lovely streaks and swirling lines and bands in them—"reamy," as glass-cutters call it—or groups of bubbles and spots, making the glass like agate or pebble; and a gentle hand will rub a little matt or film over these, and then finger it partly away to bring out its quality, just as a jeweller foils a stone. ”

“ It is good sometimes to think where we are in the scheme of things, to realise that we are under the bell-glass of this balmy air, which shuts us in, safe from the pitch-dark spaces of infinite cold, through which the world is sweeping at eighteen miles a second ”

“ There is indeed plenty of stained-glass of the kind more beautiful as craftsmanship than anything since the Middle Ages, much more beautiful and cunning in workmanship than Burne-Jones, and yet which is little else but vestments and curtains and diaper—where there is no lesson taught, no subject dwelt on, no character studied or portrayed. ”

“ Glass-painting has been, and is capable of again becoming, one of the most noble forms of Art. Because of its subjection to strict conditions, and its special glory of illuminated colour, it holds a supreme position in its association with architecture, a position higher than any other art, except, perhaps, mosaic and sculpture.
The conditions and aptitudes of the Art are most suggestively discussed in the present volume by one who is not only an artist, but also a master craftsman. ”

“ But, after all, you were not looking out for an easy task, were you, in this world of stress and strain to have the privileges of an artist's life without its penalties? Why, look you, you must remember that besides the business of "saving your soul," which you may share in common with every one else, you have the special privilege of enjoying for its own sake your personal work in the world. ”

“ Whether we shall ever again have such a tradition running throughout all the arts is a thing that cannot possibly be foretold. But three things we may be quite sure of.
First, that if it comes it will not be by way of any imitative revival of a past style;
Second, that it will be in harmony with the principles of Nature; and
Third, that it will be founded upon the crafts, and brought about by craftsmen working in it with their own hands, on the materials of architecture, designing only what they themselves can execute, and giving employment to others only in what they themselves can do. ”

“ I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another Galatea. ”