Window (architecture)

“ It scarcely needs showing that the designing of a window is a very different thing from the painting of a picture. In the first place, the architectural frame of the window is there, arbitrarily fixed, whereas the painter chooses his frame to suit his picture. The designer of a window has not only to accept the window-shape, but to respect both it and the architecture of the building. ”

“ I feel it necessary, however, while neglecting the more usual course of chronicling the history of window-tracery, to supplement my lectures at this point with some remarks on the general construction of windows—applicable more or less to all periods of Mediæval architecture.
The most normal form of a window in an arched style is simply an opening straight through the wall covered by a barrel arch. ”

“ A certain false air of truth was sometimes given to the would-be deception by an acknowledgment of the window-shape—that is, by making the foremost arch or arches follow the shape of the window head, and form, as it were, a canopy losing itself in perspective. Architecture proper to the subject, or not too inappropriate to it, is sometimes schemed so far to accommodate itself to the window-shape as to form, with the white pavement, a more or less canopy-like setting for the figures. ”

“ We are not at liberty, therefore, to change the window openings, in size or form, unless indeed we wish to rebuild the church. We may at our taste reconstruct the windows in the houses in which we live, but we cannot alter the style of these windows without destroying the style of the architecture. The series of long narrow lancets, no matter how long or how narrow, are right; and with all their severe simplicity, their beauty of outline and their grace and dignity grow upon one the more they are studied. Mediæval builders had a meaning even in putting such windows in pairs ”

“ In domestic architecture, if a window were beyond the width of a single casement, a small pillar was often interposed, and the inner order of the window was divided into two arches, while the outer one, if there were any, was in one, the casements or shutters falling into rebates in the back of the column, by which a window of double width, which would not otherwise be conveniently attainable was produced. ”

“ All this makes it difficult to trace the subject; and yet the windows are in a certain pictorial way the more effective. In fact the unity of the window has been preserved: the white landscape on one side, and the white architecture on the other, make equally a setting for the colour, and form, with the “messengers” and their little canopies, one framing, not several frames. Right or wrong, the artist has done what he meant to do, and done it oftentimes very cleverly, though not with uniform success. The inequality spoken of is not only in workmanship but in design. ”

“ Above, and set back rather from the face of the doorway, is a rose window, the very rich traceries of which are arranged in intersecting equilateral triangles; over it is a crocketed pediment, with tracery in the spandrels and on either side, and flanked by pinnacles. Every portion of the wall is panelled or carved. ”

“ In the days of ancient Greece, and in the earlier days of Rome, windows were necessarily kept in a very undeveloped form, through the non-existence of window glass; so much so, that in Classic architecture the window seems a thing shunned as an unhappy necessity ”

“ In domestic buildings, where windows have to serve the double purpose of admitting the light and facilitating external view, they were not usually grouped as above described, but were made wider in their openings, the unpleasant effect which might otherwise{252} arise from it being obviated, and the glazing and opening of the window rendered more easy by the use of thin mullions or pillars dividing the window into two or more lights. ”

“ A Corinthian order with columns of alternately straight and spiral channelling, spaced in conformity with the pilasters of the basement and raised on pedestals, frames in a series of round-arched windows which are alternately large and small in correspondence with the magnitudes of the intervals. The window of each wide bay nearly fills the space enclosed by the order, and a keystone in the arch forms a corbel to the entablature, while the spandrels are adorned with sculptures in high relief after the manner of those of the Roman triumphal arches. ”

“ The window openings are of thoroughly mediæval character in their larger features, and are each composed of a round arch embracing two smaller arches with a central shaft and jamb shafts, but the shafts have the tapering form with entasis, and the congé, of classic design. ”

“ Next in importance to the column as a characteristic of the style, we must place the Window. Indeed, it has generally been made to take the precedence of it, and is no doubt that by which the date of a building is most readily ascertained and its style defined.{159}
The Romanesque windows were simply openings with round heads, the jambs and arches being either perfectly plain, moulded, with or without enrichment, or the jambs shafted. These windows were most usually isolated, but were here and there grouped into couplets, triplets, etc., or made to form portions of continuous arcading. ”

“ The design of the west front, which contains above the doorpiece two large windows, with pointed niches and small circles inserted between the arch-heads, is probably original, but the upper portion and gable, including the large traceried window, are doubtless part of the restoration of the fifteenth century. ”

“ It is more actually only the lower part of the window which is stopped, and by the fact, the wall forced to reprocess itself inside with naked stained glasses, to let half of the mullions release itself in low-relief, preserves nothing any more but one low thickness which is equivalent to a simple partition. ”

“ The beautiful foliaged bosses along the ridge rib are best seen from the triforium or the clerestory.
The great east window is considered to be the finest example of its style in the kingdom. It is of eight lights, "formed by doubling the four-light," and has a great circle in the head, filled with a six-foil surrounded by half-a-dozen quatrefoils. "Bar-tracery being fully developed," we read in a note to Rickman's "Gothic Architecture," "the general appearance of the window is rather Decorated than Early English, but the mouldings still belong to the earlier style." "This window ... ”

“ The view from these windows is up the Teme and Corvedale. In the south wall are three large windows looking upon the court; they are of two lights, trefoiled, and crossed by a transom. Their283 recesses have equilaterally arched heads, and the angles are replaced by filleted beads. One window only has a stone seat. ”

“ Fine as are the Decorated windows already described, the Perpendicular ones are finer still. They fill almost all the embrasures not occupied by the earlier glass. Most of them are in the usual figure-and-canopy style, although here groups generally replace the [Pg 189] figures, and the details of the architecture are worked out in a painstaking way. A very fine one is the east window with its three lancets containing respectively St. ”

“ The form of the windows is perhaps determined in part by the desire for more space for stained glass, but it is also the logical outcome of the space afforded by the level lines of a wooden roof just as the use of the pointed window follows from the use of pointed vaulting. ”

“ In the clerestory the windows are of two lights, with a foiled circle set over them, plainly treated outside, but elaborated by a range of shafted arches running continuously in front of the windows within, so much apart from them as to leave a narrow passage round the building in the thickness of the wall. The east window is a peculiar triplicate, with the centre light much taller and wider than the others. ”

“ Fault, no doubt, has been found with the windows that they do not throw down the light sufficiently from above, but the windows themselves are traceried and filled with beautiful stained glass. Upon entering by the great portal at the west, the eye is caught in the far distance by the glimmering colours of the grand east window, whose dimensions are colossal, as may be gathered from the fact that its traceried compartments comprise no fewer than 350 pictures in glass, copies, in many instances, of known paintings. ”

“ It has been argued that each separate light of a window ought to be complete in itself. On the other hand it has proved possible to make due acknowledgment of architectural conditions without cramping design in that way. There can be no doubt as to the variety and breadth of treatment gained by accepting the whole window as field for a design. ”

“ Such windows are obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small houses.
I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten feet—one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night. ”

“ The reign of the big plate-glass window, I believe, is over, and certainly in such a climate as ours one needs as a rule to be assured one is really indoors. Certainly, nothing makes so much difference to the aspect and comfort of a room or house as the position and size of the windows. ”

“ The subjects on each side of the window are very large in scale, very pictorially and very freely treated, very finely designed at times, and very splendid in effect; but they are most unequal, and they are all more or less of a tangle. Their confusion is the greater inasmuch as there is no attempt to balance one picture with another. A landscape background on one side of the window answers to an architectural background on the other. On one side the interest of the subject is towards the top of the lights, on the other to the bottom, and so on. ”

“ In the field of architectural progress, more especially during the last few years, there have arisen vast possibilities for the development of odd windows. These, if properly placed, showing correct grouping, are artistic, not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. The artistic woman, realizing the value of color, will fill a bright china bowl with glowing blossoms and place it in the center of a wide window sill, where the [253] sun, playing across them, will carry their cheerful color throughout the room. ”

“ The windows are all arranged for 11⁄2-inch sash, hung to iron weights with good cord, and neatly cased and moulded on the inside; outside blinds are intended for each window above the cellar. The cornices are constructed in the simplest manner, and the perforated barges and finials are made as indicated by the elevation, and placed near the extremity of the gable cornices, from which ever-varying shadows are made against the building, producing the most delicate and pleasing effects. ”

“ The fashion of the day builds plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was brilliant. ”

“ The modern window, with its huge panes of glass and simple framework, makes an insistent demand for curtains. Without curtains windows of this kind give a blank, staring appearance to the room and also a sense of insecurity in having so many holes in the walls. The beautiful windows of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Italy, England and France, give no such feeling of incompleteness, for their well-carved frames, and over-windows, and their small panes of glass, were important parts of the decorative scheme. ”

“ It is not worth while dividing a window into lights and then effacing the divisions in the glass. Given a window of four or five lights, the decorator has no choice but to design a four or five-light window. He must render his subject so that the constructional divisions of the window keep their proper architectural place; if his subject will not allow that, he must abandon his subject, or give very good reason why not. The reason of mere pictorial ambition will not hold good. The test of a good picture-window is, how the mullions affect the design. ”

“ Windows without panes of glass are seen here, formed by upright panels, an inch wide, nailed to a crosspiece three inches wide, each having four such crosspieces. Intersecting the spaces made by the panels and crosspieces are smaller pieces of lath, which form three-inch squares in the window. In these three-inch 358 squares flat pieces of light-colored seashell are placed, which admit light, but through which the hot sun cannot penetrate. The windows do not raise or swing, but slide from side to side, when closing or opening. ”

“ At first the designer did not, as a rule, aspire to carry his subjects right across a big window. Accepting the transom as [Pg 198] a natural division, he would perhaps divide a four-light window vertically into two, so as to get four subjects, each under a canopy extending across two lights; or, in a five-light window, he would probably separate these by other narrow subjects in the central lights. ”