Stained glass

“ Experience seems to show that a certain formality of design befits stained glass. Formality of colour arrangement soon becomes tedious; but it is seldom, if ever, that the design of glass strikes one as unduly formal.
Mosaic glass is designed, it was said above, with a view to glazing. The skilled artist designs, so to speak, in leads; but they are not the design; in fact, they count only as contours, and, except in mere glazing, they should not be expected to give lines. It is a common fault to make leads take a part in the design which they will not play in the glass. ”

“ In the early period of the art, beginning in the eleventh century and running parallel with the development of Pointed (commonly called Gothic) Architecture, only true stained glass was used. The use of enamel paints applied to the surface to produce a different color marks also the beginning of the decadence of the art; for the glory of true glass is in its jewel-like quality, its color being within itself and all absolutely translucent, while a painted glass will always be necessarily dull in comparison. ”

“ Stained glass is essentially a method of strengthening, carrying further and enriching the mood in which the worshipper finds himself when he enters those noble buildings, so full of the sense of aspiration and exaltation, and of the mystery which lies behind the outward show of things. That is just by way of showing you the sort of attitude which, I believe, we should adopt towards stained glass. You must realise that your work is more than making pleasant and agreeable colour and striking a casual note of beauty. ”

“ The cutting and putting together of the glass is called glazing, and it is this that gives the window colour; while the enamel work is spoken of as painting, and gives detail, richness, and texture.
I shall presently show that the glazing and painting are really two separate crafts, having separate origins and development, and that stained glass as we know it, or as it should be called in strict accuracy "stained-and-painted" glass, is the product of their union. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unwise persons in decadent times have wasted much ingenuity in the endeavour, but the result has always been disastrous and ridiculous. Apart from 10 its higher mission,—the expression of ideas and emotions,—which it shares with every other branch of art, the mission of stained glass is to beautify buildings and nothing else. It is the handmaid of architecture, and can only justify itself by loyal service of its mistress. The ideal of the stained-glass artist must not be a picture made transparent, but a window made beautiful. ”

“ The advantage which stained glass windows have over paintings on canvas is that while the latter have only colour the former have both colour and light. For this reason one should be disposed to admit a great deal on behalf of this picture painted by a great artist on a medium which adds light to his colour. There is no good reason why we should quarrel with a man who begins by preferring Sir Joshua’s window, because it may lead him to become interested in stained glass. ”

“ According as we value most the qualities of glass in glass, or the qualities of a picture in no matter what material, will our verdict be. But there comes a point when the painter so far oversteps the limit of consistency, so clearly attempts to do in glass what cannot be done in it, so plainly sacrifices to qualities which he cannot get the qualities which stained glass offers him, that he ceases to be any longer working in glass, and is only attempting upon glass what had very much better have been done in some other and more congenial medium. ”

“ Before spending any time in studying the subject of stained glass windows, let us go and see some good ones. One of the safest ways to learn how to appreciate any art is to look at fine examples of it. Of stained glass this is particularly true, because no method of reproduction, even colour photography, can give any idea of the unique result there obtained by combining light with colour. ”

“ Then the blow-pipe is put in, and with a quantity of the sticky mixture attached to it is then blown out into a large bulb, just as ordinary window glass is, and cut off and flattened out on big tables to cool. The beauty of the quality of stained glass is very largely owing to the irregularity of the thickness of it, and you often get subtle variations in the colour, streaks, blotches of colour and so on; the thickness of the glass makes quite an appreciable difference in the depth of the colour, as you can easily imagine. ”

“ The spiritual function of stained glass is, like that of mosaic, by a noble beauty of treatment, to present elevated ethical and religious ideas in a worthy way. It may do this by means of symbolism, or by typifying virtues and moral qualities by individual figures of great characters from mythology or from religious history. For symbolism and these type-figures it is peculiarly suited. Further, its function is to enhance and to deepen the mood of religious exaltation which the architecture of the building has already suggested to the worshipper. ”

“ From this irresolution and indecision and the dull-colour school begotten of it on the one hand, and from garishness on the other, stained-glass is a great means of salvation; for in practising this art the absolute judgment must, day by day, be exercised between this and that colour, there present before it; and the will is braced by the necessity of constant choice and decision. ”

“ This observation receives a peculiar confirmation when we notice that, at the end of the sixteenth century, stained glass suddenly lost its vogue at the same time that glassware sprang into renewed favour through the artistic skill and inventive genius of the Venetians. Indeed, the decadence of stained glass seemed to be the signal for the revival of hollow glassware. ”

“ American glass is true stained glass; but it is not glass of even surface and of equal thickness. [A] By its inequality of thickness the American artist effects what the English artist accomplishes by brushing dark lines upon his even glass; or he leads strips and pieces of glass on [24] the back of his window to intensify and deepen his color, as in folds of drapery and the like. He paints nothing except faces, hands and feet; all the rest he binds himself to obtain by the mosaic method. He cannot obtain by the mosaic method everything that the English artist obtains by the brush ”

“ But you may do it when you feel that it helps your design, if it emphasises interesting points, or enriches the colour.
Another tendency of modern glass is the tendency to the use of silhouette against plain silvery glass. It is going back to the later middle ages, when they were fond of this treatment. The silhouette treatment has various qualities, various advantages; it emphasises and, I think, makes necessary a rather symbolic treatment of stained glass, and as I think the symbolic is the more distinguished, the more noble use of the material, this treatment has a strong appeal. ”

“ Modern work has broken away from that very much, I think myself to the advantage of the art of stained glass. The use of lead lines not only to emphasise form but for structural reasons and to emphasise important parts of the design, to give quality to the colour, and also to give opportunities of variation of the colour, is one modern tendency. ”

“ The best stained glass is often that stained by weather, by centuries of weather, [116] and we may well be grateful for the amazing cheerfulness of the interior of Amiens, as we actually find it. Windows of the richest remain, indeed, in the apsidal chapels; and the rose-windows of the transepts are known, from the prevailing tones of their stained glass, as Fire and Water, the western rose symbolising in like manner Earth and Air, as respectively green and blue. ”

“ An interesting thing about the design of stained glass in the fourteenth century is that it never stands still, but changes more rapidly than at any other period in its history. At Gloucester, not more than from ten to twenty years after the latest of the windows I have been describing, the great east window of the Cathedral was filled with glass, which already faintly foreshadows the change into the style of the succeeding period. ”

“ Henry Holiday, it is simple and vigorous in drawing, varied and harmonious in color, churchly in spirit, while free from mediævalism. The English artist believes in stained glass, glass which has its color within itself; and good glass, the best he can obtain. His glass is flat, that is, of even surface and equal thickness. He believes in painting upon this glass, and upon, one may say, every piece and bit of it ”

“ 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. ”

“ There has been assistance, but every one of those assisting has had the opportunity to learn to make, and according to the degree of his talent is actually able to make, the whole of a stained-glass window himself. There is not a touch of painting on any of the panels shown which is not by a hand that can also cut and lead and design and draw, and perform all the other offices pertaining to stained-glass noted in the foregoing pages. ”

“ For no one, I suppose, ever took his first batch of painted glass out of the kiln without disappointment and without wondering what use there is in such an art. For the painting when it went in was grey, and silvery, and sharp, and crisp, and firm, and brilliant. Now all is altered; all the relations of light and shade are altered; the sharpness of every brush-mark is gone, and everything is not only "washed out" to half its depth, but blurred at that. Even if you could get it, by a second painting, to look exactly as it was at first, you think: "What a waste of life! ”

“ In stained glass proper not only is colour necessarily employed in an almost strictly heraldic manner, but the conventions of line are of necessity peculiar. The main outlines of objects are not outlines only, they are also the framework of metal which, while following the contours of forms, has, at the same time, to perform the function of a sash, and hold in position the small bits of glass of which the design is made up. These lines formed by strips or bars of metal are therefore of necessity coarse beyond any used in even the most conventional wall painting. ”

“ As for the four surviving sisters, they are certainly open to the severest censure in that they sent abroad for stained glass during the reign of Henry IV., because there was then the highest development of the art in England, and its product could not be approached by that of any foreign contemporaries. Close inspection discloses the design of the leads to be that of a graceful adjustment of the foliage of the benet plant. At the bottom of the central light is observable a panel of highly coloured mosaic glass. ”

“ It also happens that the art of stained glass, though reaching to very high and great things, is in its methods and processes a simple, or at least a very limited, one. There are but few things to do, while at the same time the principles of it touch the whole field of art, and it is impossible to treat of it without discussing these great matters and the laws which guide decorative art generally. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now a word about the modern tendencies in stained glass, and I am very glad to say this is illustrated very largely by old students of this school. I speak of modern tendencies as compared with those of thirty or forty years ago, modern works since the Gothic revival—such as the work done by artists of standing and distinction, the works of Rossetti, Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, William Morris, and others—I think the principal alteration has been very much in the use of leading. ”

“ What they lack as yet is experience in their craft, and perhaps due workmanlike respect for traditional ways of workmanship. When the old methods come to be superseded it will be only by new ones evolved out of them. At present the conditions of glass painting remain very much what they were. The supreme beauty of glass is still in the purity, the brilliancy, the translucency of its colour. To make the most of this the designer must be master of his trade. The test of window design is, now as ever, that it should have nothing to lose and everything to gain by execution in stained glass. ”