Colored glass

“ It must not be thought that stained glass loses in beauty by the presence of these black lines of lead and iron. On the contrary it gains enormously. 8 Large pieces of unrelieved colour in windows are thin in effect and trying to the eye, which needs the continual contrast of the solid black of the lead all over the window to enable it to appreciate the colour and brilliance of the glass. The painting when rightly used is directed to the same end, for it may be said that the smaller and more divided the spaces of clear glass, the more brilliant and jewel-like is the effect. ”

“ Take, for example, the Ark at Canterbury in Plate IV. Where a fifteenth century painter would have been content to make the ark of perhaps only one piece of glass, probably of white, getting his detail in enamel and silver stain only, our thirteenth century craftsman has used over fifty pieces, purple, blue, red, yellow, green and white, and that in a space less than a foot square! He was a colourist par excellence, and his waves, too, are blue, greenish-blue and green, with caps of white foam—all a mosaic of glass and lead. ”

“ HUNTING GOBLET, DOME FOOT
If you place near each other, upon a white damask cloth, a glass of Charles II date, a William and Mary glass, a George III glass, and a Victorian glass, you will notice a darkening and then a whitening in tint (though not a brightening) as your eye travels from the oldest glass to [16] the most modern. By “tint” or “tinge” I do not mean “colour,” in the sense of red or green or blue; I will deal with coloured glass later on. By “tint” or “tinge” I mean the shade of leaden, darkish hue in the metal from which the glass article was blown or moulded. ”

“ For, as we have said, the glory of true stained glass is in its rich, jewel-like color. Its reds, which the makers called “ruby,” its blues which they called “sapphire,” with its “emerald” greens, its “gold” and its “pearl,” never entered the field to compete with the achievements of the painter’s brush; to compare the delight they afford the beholder with that derived from a painting would be in a sense as impossible as a comparison between the fragrance of a flower and the cadence of a song. ”

“ This man possibly did in glass much what he would have done on canvas; but he could never have got such pure, intense, and at the same time luminous, effects of colour in anything but glass, and he knew it, never lost sight of it, and tried to get the most out of what it could best give him—that is to say, purity of colour, and translucency and brilliancy of glass. Whatever amount of pigment he employed (probably more than it seems, the light is so strong in Italy) it seldom appears to do more than just give the needful modelling. ”

“ Even if the material with which the glass-stainer works admitted of a successful imitation of natural forms, the result could not be beautiful. No one desires roses to blossom on his window-panes, nor butterflies to settle on the glass as if it were a flower. The real purpose of the glass can never be safely forgotten in its decoration: it is to keep out the cold while admitting the light; the color is to tone the light, and prevent its being garish; and if, farther, any form is placed upon the glass, it is merely to prevent monotony by presenting an agreeable variation from mere color. ”

“ If, therefore, we want the qualities of deep, rich, luminous and translucent colour, which glass better than any other medium can give, we must resort to the use of pot-metal—that is to say, to glazing—assisted more or less by brown paint, used, not to get colour, but to stop it out, or to tone it down. ”

“ In many cases glass-makers could produce a very slightly greenish glass, but in order to overcome this colour they deliberately add to the glass a colouring oxide imparting to the glass a colour more or less complementary to the natural green tint. ”

“ Still the words “stained glass” do not fully describe what is meant; for the glass in coloured windows is for the most part not only stained but painted. Such painting was, however, until comparatively modern times, used only to give details of drawing and to define form. The colour in a stained glass window was not painted on the glass but incorporated in it, mixed with it in the making—whence the term “pot-metal” by which self-coloured glass is known, i.e. glass coloured in the melting pot. ”

“ For smaller objects—jewellery, beads, and inlay of various descriptions—they had command of a wide scale of colours—reds and tawny yellows from jasper, purple from the amethyst, greens from root of emerald and from a special kind of felspar, and blue 22 from the turquoise and (at a very early period) from the lapis lazuli. But the stones to which they had recourse for their favourite blues and greens were rare, and they were therefore the more ready to find a cheaper substitute in glass. ”

“ The Increased Amount of White used.—Not only is the canopy white, but there is also as a rule a good deal of white in the figures within it, which are generally relieved against a diapered flat background of colour. Just one figure at New College has the brown-pink flesh colour, and that is its last appearance. Everywhere else one finds white used, the hair, in the case of women and young men, being stained yellow. This large increase in the use of white glass was accompanied, and indeed made possible, by a most delicate and skilful use of the yellow silver stain. ”

“ The balance of white and colour is just perfect, and the way the patches of deep colour are embedded, as it were, in grisaille, is skilful in the extreme. To compare them with the futile effort of the eighteenth century, opposite, is to apprehend what can be done in glass, and what cannot. The whole secret of the success of the mere craftsman where the great painter failed, is that he knew what to seek in glass,—colour, brilliancy, decorative breadth. ”

“ The broad mass of any one colour is itself made up of many various tints of glass. The accidental fusion of colour, as of red and blue into purple, is guarded against by framing, say, the blue with green, or the ruby with brownish-yellow. ”

“ Rather less exacting in their demands upon the correctness of the colour employed are the architectural and ornamental uses to which coloured glass is so extensively put in both public and domestic buildings, while, finally, coloured glass is largely the foundation upon which the stained-glass worker builds up179 his artistic achievements; in another direction, coloured glass is also utilised in the production of ornamental articles and of some table-ware. ”

“ The way you distribute your colour matters very much. Some in washes, some in splashes, some in spots, some in stripes. What will "not do" in one way will often be just right in the other: yes, and the very way you treat your glass when all is chosen and placed together—matt in one place, film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw glass with texture and bringing out its nature and its life. ”

“ You probably know that in making modern stained glass a great deal of paint is used in order to get shading and degrees of color. It was toward the end of the thirteenth century that the old glass-makers began to introduce the use of paint into their windows. First came the grisaille glass, as it was called, where instead of strong reds and blues most of the window was in white painted with scroll work in which a few bits of brilliant stained glass were set like jewels. ”

“ Painting in colour upon glass could naturally not stop at flesh red. It was used for pale blue skies, at first only to get a more delicate gradation from pale pot-metal colour to white, but eventually for the sky throughout the picture. In connection with yellow stain it gave a green for distant landscape. ”

“ In quality, tint, feel, and ring the plain blown glass was a beautiful product, and when it was cut or engraved the decoration was done by fine craftsmen and often with excellent taste. Old glass has its own peculiar charm; the dark beauty of the crystal metal, the variety of form, the bell-like ring when flipped, the satiny feeling of the surface, the sparkle of the cut facets, and the combination of gracefulness and usefulness attract a collector: in cabinets it shines, gleams, glows, and sparkles in a reticent, well-bred way. ”

“ It is by their aid we get those mosaics of pot-metal, the depth and richness of which to this day, with all our science of chemistry, we cannot approach by any process of enamelling. Moreover, though merely constructional leads, taking a direction contrary to the design, may at times disturb the eye, (they scarcely ever disturb the effect) they add to the richness of the glass in a way its unlearned admirers little dream. ”

“ Even at its best enamelled glass is less effective than the earlier work. In proportion as the place of pot-metal is supplied by enamel, the colour is inevitably diluted, and at times it is quite thin. Indeed, it is pretty well proved, by the work of men who are masters in their way, that, in painted as distinguished from [Pg 233] mosaic glass, the choice lies between weak colour and opacity. At Auch and at Troyes we have weak but still often pure and brilliant colour. ”

“ Where delicate comparisons of colour are to be made, or other delicate work involving the use of the colour sense is to be carried on, it is essential that all colouration of the entering daylight should be avoided, and the use of the most colourless glass obtainable will be desirable. ”

“ Nowhere is silver stain more invaluable than in windows of white glass or grisaille, the quality of which is not sufficiently appreciated. The mother-of-pearl-like tints of what is called white glass lend themselves, in experienced hands, to effects of opalescent colour as beautiful in their way as the deeper pot-metal tones. ”

“ A square yard of simple red stained glass is artistically more beautiful if composed of a hundred pieces leaded together than if it were in a single sheet. The differences in texture themselves produce a better result, and the black leads, scarcely discernible individually, contribute an additional element of pleasure. And in arranging pieces of different color side by side, intelligent leading design was itself the artist’s drawing, and effected results altogether admirable. ”

“ In fact, not only does all glass absorb light, but it does this to a different degree according to the colour of the light, so that in passing through the glass a beam of white light becomes weakened in one of its constituent colours more than in the others, with the result that the emergent light is slightly coloured. Thus the purest and whitest of glasses, when examined in very thick pieces, always show a decided blue or green tint, although this tint is quite invisible on looking through a few inches of the glass. ”

“ On the other hand transparent or more usually opaque vitreous pastes in thin films form many of the so-called ‘glazes’ which give the charm of lustre and colour to so many products of the potter’s art. The most effective use of opaque coloured glass is in wall mosaic, where it is seen by reflected light, and owes its beauty to its lustrousness as well as to the richness and variety of its hues. ”

“ The Quality of Glass and the Colours Used.—At first these differ little from those used in the previous period, but as the fourteenth century proceeds, the rich intense reds and blues, with their "streakiness," their endless variety of tone and texture, which makes each piece of glass a jewel with an individuality of its own, and needing no enrichment, give way to glass of a thinner, flatter quality. ”

“ It must be clearly understood then that the colour effects which are the glory of the art are not directly produced by painting at all, 5 but by the window being built up of a multitude of small pieces of white and coloured glass—glass, that is, coloured in the making, and of which the artist must choose the exact shades he needs, cut them out to shape, and fit them together to form his design, using a separate piece for every colour or shade of colour. ”

“ You will not get the qualities of glass. Within the last two or three years there seems to have been very considerable improvement in the purity, translucency, and depth of enamel colours. How far they are lasting remains to be proved. Anyway, brilliant as they are, they have not by any means the intensity of pot-metal glass, and it does not seem, humanly speaking, possible that a film of coloured glass upon a sheet of white can ever compete in strength and volume with colour in the body of the glass itself. ”

“ Vitrum hæmatinum, ‘a red opaque glass,’ is passed over rapidly. ‘White glass is made also, and murrhine and glass resembling the hyacinth and the sapphire and glass of all other colours. [50] There is no substance easier to work or to which brighter colours can be given. The highest place must, however, be accorded to the white transparent glass which much resembles crystal; for drinking, it has driven out vessels of gold and silver.’ This passage is of the greatest importance. ”

“ Solid pigment as local colour is a thing to indulge in only with extreme moderation. The strong black lead lines often want lines or touches of black strong enough to keep them in countenance (that is not sufficiently remembered, and it is when it is forgotten that the leads assert their harshness in white glass) , and here and there, in work on a small scale, a point of black (a velvet cap, a bag, a shoe, as shown overleaf,) is very valuable as local colour ”