Vitreosity

Strange Interlude - Screenprinting edition

A little unexpected personal backstory. This is a video with my old friend Geoff talking about screenprinting. Geoff was one of my roommates in the 80's, and we became good friends. We used to talk about screenprinting back then and those conversations are one of the reasons I thought about applying screenprinting to my stained glass. Geoff was also the one who first heard about the Print Gocco process and inspired me to try it.

Just to prove the connection, here is a roll of reject 'Twigs' wallpaper that I got from Geoff and still occasionally use for gift wrap.

and a scan with 'The Twigs' name -

Arthur Ganson: Machines and the Breath of Time

Talking about tinkering, here is another video with the Kinetic artist Arthur Ganson. I had posted his brief TED talk in 2008. This is a more recent talk and a much longer one, for the LongNow Foundation. Wait for a leisurely 88 minutes where you have time to watch and drink it in. I love his work and have always wondered how some of the kinetic aspects of his work might be applied to glass art.

[Oops, just discovered that the embedded version is only 10 minutes long (weird.), so here is the link to the full 88 minute version of Arthur Ganson: Machines and the Breath of Time.]

Hidden Cat Revisited

Thanks to all for the wonderfully positive response to the Watching Eyes Hidden Cat panel and blog post. I was surprised by the number of responses and Gwyneth was touched and a little perplexed by it all. The project was mainly done as something for the two of us to do together, and it just happened to work especially well. Gwyneth is not that interested in becoming an artist. She wants to work with animals, perhaps become a zoologist. Her special interest - big cats, of course.

I've gotten some inquiries from those who would like to do similar projects with their kids or with kids in general. I do have a few pieces of advice based on my experience. First of all, obviously, I would stay away from the pattern books, totally. Let the kids do the design, whether they end up liking it or not, whether they stick with it through the end or not. Just plunge in and let them make the creative decisions. Also, don't be afraid to let them handle the glass and use the tools, including the power tools. There will be mishaps and cuts are to be expected, but that's part of the learning. Safety first, but not at the expense of paranoia.

Upon reflection, I realized I was partly inspired by this short video from the TED people that I saw a few months before I did the project with Gwyneth. The man in the video is Gever Tulley and he founded a place called The Tinkering School. I like the part about 'decoration'.

He's also written a book called 50 DANGEROUS THINGS (you should let your kids do). Here is another TED talk where he talks about 5 of them (well, actually 6½).

Bottle Wall Videos

I realized the other day that I hadn't checked for new bottle wall/house videos in over a year. So I checked and found there are quite a few newer ones on YouTube and elsewhere. Still nothing good about building bottle walls or houses, but some unique insights into existing structures. And one or 2 wild experiments like this one of a bottle wall turned into an animated LED display. Most interesting toward the end is to see the Times Square type text display and then realize that these are bottles!!

Bacardi Bottle Wall, LED lit bottle wall, by Alex Beim of tangible interaction. There is no sound.

Bottle wall (no sound) from Alex Beim on Vimeo.

Make sure to check out the very detailed flickrset on the Bacardi Bottle Wall, with many construction details.

6 more recent bottle house videos below the fold...

Stanisław Wyspiański

Not much posting recently, partly because I've been busy and partly because all the posts I've tried to do recently just get bigger and bigger and I can't figure out how to tie them up into a coherent whole. This is one example and I've decided to just let it go, rambling and imperfect as it is. Maybe I'll hone it later, but for now, here it is -

When I first saw this image on Flickr a few months ago, I thought it was the work of some obscure artist from the 1970's or even more recent. I guess I was fooled by the fact that the faces are created with the leadlines, not with paint, something that is quite rare before the 1970's. It turns out this piece is from 1904 and is by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869 – 1907). The panel is called 'Apollo: the Copernican solar system' and it's located in the Medical Society House at 4 Radziwillowska street, Cracow, Poland.

It also turns out that Wyspiański is an especially unique and interesting artist.
More below the fold....

I am Zenon

The designs are interesting in their complexity, but the New-Agey lingo is way, way over-the-top.

That said, I like the form of the video. A stained glass designer talking about a given design. Simple. It would be interesting to imagine what other stained glass designers might sound like looking at their cartoons while explaining the design and iconographic choices.

Watching Eyes Hidden Cat

I spent some of the recent winter break helping my 11 year old daughter Gwyneth create this stained glass panel. She was the designer and I was merely the fabricator. Wonderful experience, and I love the result.

full story below the fold...

Happy Janus Day

that is, Happy New Year.

I often think at the beginning of a new year about the name 'January' and how it derives from the name of the Roman God Janus. I've long been fascinated by the image and the idea of Janus, the god who could look at the past and the future simultaneously. I've never seen a representation of Janus in stained glass, so I guess I have to make my own.

Janus Panel, black & white sketch from 2005, colored design in 2009, stained glass panel (sometime in the future?)

Lawrence Lee

A very nice Flickr group featuring the stained glass of Lawrence Lee (b.1909).

Here are 2 striking details from St John the Baptist Church, Bisley, Surrey, England. Curiously, there are no full panel shots on which to compare. [wrong! see update below]

both images are via creative commons license from the Lawrence Lee flickrset of auntie_p, who is the main contributor to the Lawrence Lee Flickr group.

In the USA, Lawrence Lee is best known for the book he co-wrote with George Seddon, and Francis Stephens, called simply "Stained Glass". It is, in my opinion, the best introductory book on stained glass history. Well done all around - illustrations, photographs, general selection of sites, and overall structure. No initial introduction comes close to the quality of this book.

In my opinion, this is a must for any serious student of the art and technique of stained glass, especially any beginning student.

The cover of my own well worn copy of 'Stained Glass'.

Images or previews of the contents are hard to find, mainly due to the book's size, which is unusually large, at 14 ½" high by 11" wide. So, I quickly cobbled together this image of the York Minster page spread to give an example of one of its 'Cathedral' pages. There are other similar spreads for Chartres, Notre Dame, Toledo and others.

Click on the link or image to see a high resolution 'Zoomified' version of the Minster Spread.

Though out of print, it's surprisingly easy to find good inexpensive copies of the book. As of this writing, the second edition from 1984 can be purchased through Amazon for as little as $1.39, plus $3.99 for shipping. Also, a quick search for Stained Glass at ALibris also brings up used copies starting at $2.

[update January 22, 2010 - heard from flickrite Auntie_P, who points out that there is, in fact, a full shot of the Bisley window in the Lawrence Lee stained glass group pool. Here is the full shot...

She also pointed out to me that this is part of a larger project of gathering the photos of Lawrence Lee's work, including Lee's own photographs and sketches. Big project. Good Luck with the venture!!}

Secular Window Saturday 2 - Sundials

Gecko Dial, circa 2003-2005
click to see larger image in new window

Part of the Stained Glass Sundials by Carmichael Flickrset, which is part of the larger Sundials by Carmichael's photostream, by Arizona Sundial Creator John Carmichael.

Make sure to check out Carmichael's Stained Glass Sundials website. It includes an incredibly rich archive of historical stained glass sundials. The annotations are copious and well organized. For example, this is the The Ambras Castle Dial, a Swabian sundial made in 1550, from the page for the 16th and 17th century stained glass sundials.

Another stained glass site worth a good long browse.. or two.

Lansdowne Church, Glasgow

Merry Christmas to all in the Christian world!

I just received a Christmas card with a photo of this window from Lansdowne Church, in Glasgow, Scotland. It's considered to be some of the best work of the Scottish stained glass designer, Alf Webster.

I don't think I've seen any other breastfeeding scenes in stained glass. There must be some. I know that breastfeeding scenes were fairly common in Medieval art, though I've never seen one in a Medieval stained glass window.
Some Gothic art with breastfeeding scenes can be seen on the www.art-breastfeeding.com website.

While this image is certainly appropriate for the Christmas season, being a mother and child, it is not from a nativity scene, nor is it even Mary and Jesus apparently. I've only seen it referred to as "Jesus in a Crowd".

The full panel with the mother and child image in context -

photo via Creative Commons license from Tom_Clearwood's Lansdowne Flickrset, part of the Lansdowne Flickr Pool. Worth a good long browse. Many nice details of the windows, and it's a good cause as it's all part of the conservation effort to save the Lansdowne church as a community center, while keeping all the windows in their original place.

Secular Window Saturday - Museum of the History of Science

Arms of The Royal College of Physicians Window from the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, England.

via creative commons license from flickrite kotomigd

See more windows and other images from this "Museum of the History of Science, Oxford" Flickr Group Pool. It includes almost 700 images from the museum, including more than 25 photos of the stained glass. Fascinating stuff.

Sanford Bray

Last August, I posted this patent issued to Sanford Bray in 1886 for what we now know as the copper foil technique. A man named Patrick Horn saw that post and sent me some further information on Bray. Patrick found it while doing genealogical research. I thought I would put the info and documents out and see if anyone is interested in them. It's all a bit of a puzzle, but the pieces from Patrick do seem to fit, even if they still leave a very incomplete story.

Joining Glass Mosaics (links to full patent on Google Patents)
by Sanford Bray, Boston, MA
patent # 349424, issued 1886

The most interesting and surprising fact is that this patent was issued to Bray when he was only 27 years old.

The images from Patrick Horn, plus some text, and a little comment after the fold...

New Medieval Galleries at the V&A

The reviews are coming in for the newly reopened Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum (commonly known as the V&A) in London, England. This review of the V&A's Medieval & Renaissance Galleries in the Telegraph is pretty typically glowing.

But I'm not so sure. The collection is amazing, truly one of the very best in the world. But from the photos I've seen of the exhibition space, something strikes me as wrong.

Flickrite Sam the Sham and the Photos

My first uneasy impression - Why all the white?

A minor rant and a few more images below the fold...

Buzz is good

Joseph Cavalieri is catching some blogosphere buzz over his Simpsons Series.

Google Patents 4 - "Dynamic Stain Glass Window"

As proof that people are still out there inventing new stained glass related technologies, there is this very recent patent. So recent that it's only a patent application, from May of 2009, just over 6 months ago.

DYNAMIC STAIN GLASS WINDOW
Don M. Ferris
Application number: 12/471,438
Publication number: US 2009/0233030 A1
Filing date: May 25, 2009

The idea is for a mechanism to revolve one circular stained glass window in front of another stationary stained glass window, to create some kind of light pattern. It's not specified if that light pattern is projected or only visible looking at the panels themselves. Even with the photos of the prototype (figures 11-13) it's a little hard to imagine what the effect is. The prototype appears to have a stationary window with square bevels, and a moving panel with an abstract design. I've never heard of Don M. Ferris and the only thing that comes up on a Google search is the patent.

I've noted before about how patents often patents are written in a way that they are hard to read. Kind of like that last sentence.

I thought it might be because most of the patents I've looked at are more than a hundred years old. But the same applies to this recent patent application. There must be something about patent applications that brings out the craziest language in people. For example, this is the first line of the 2009 patent application -

1. A dynamic stain glass window assembly utilizing a fixed traditional lead came stain glass window and a moveable traditional lead came stain glass window creating a moving light pattern to be displayed comprising in cooperative combination:

Maybe it would be a good idea if there were a requirement to read Strunk and White's 'Elements of Style' before applying for a patent.

Google Patents 3 - Pseudo Stained Glass or Proto-Fused Glass?

Call these "stained glass patent curiosities" - all of these either appear to look like stained glass or call themselves stained glass. Yet all of these patents seem to be for a "stained glass-like" appearance that is created with a form of melting glass into a metal matrix or fusing of the flat glass into a mold.

Manufacture of Decorative Glass Products,
Hollon F. Miles,
Chicago Illinois,
Patent number 287768, issued 1883

This appears to be at first glance a standard stained glass window, even in the cross sections. Only the bulging of the glass in figures 5,6,7 look unusual. In fact it is a method for melting glass into a pre-existing metal matrix. No details, like type of metal, etc. Hard to imagine this working under any circumstance, what with issues like contraction and expansion to deal with. I've never heard of or seen an example of any stained glass from that time constructed in this manner.



Manufacture of Stained Glass for Windows, etc.,
ARTHUR ROGER CARTER AND HENRY CLIFFORD HUGHES,
Patent number 477990, issued June 1892
The patent states that Arthur Roger Carter is a tobacco-manufacturer and Henry Clifford Hughes a stained glass manufacturer, both from London, England.

As far as I can tell from the arcane language, this is a straightforward fusing process, though done in a kind of mold made of platinum (used for its inoxidizabilty), mica, iron and fire-clay. There appears to be no attempt to simulate lead lines, though there is a mention of being able to fire the glass afterwards "with vitreous enamel color".

it's a little more legible sideways



Manufacture of Stained-Glass Panels,
Henry Clifford Hughes,
Patent number 519186, issued 1894
Specifically an elaboration of the last patent, as this is the same H.C. Hughes but without the tobacco-manufacturer. Again, it still seems to be for a kind of fusing process, where pieces of glass are placed on mica (instead of platinum) and kiln fired. This patent is a little clearer in its language, though not much. The pieces of glass are laid side by side, covered with a vitreous flux, and 'welded' together, including the idea of 'pressing on the glass joints with an iron tool' while at the 'welding point'. After cooling, the piece is then painted with 'vitrifiable enamel colors' and then covered with a piece of 'white glass' (I assume he means 'clear glass' in this case) and then 'welded' again to form the final stained glass panels.

Of course, you look at these patents and it makes you think - how is this easier, cheaper, or more effective than a traditionally made stained glass window.?

Then again, it is true that these patents could be seen as about 100 years ahead of their time, just waiting for the fusing/kiln-fired flat glass movement to happen.

Novoslobodskaya

For many years I've heard there was a unique set of stained glass windows in a Moscow Metro station. I vaguely remember seeing a few images in a magazine article, with little information. What I heard was intriguing, but there was nothing to follow up on.

This video popped up on YouTube recently and, although an amateur video and not specifically about the stained glass, it does give a sense of how the stained glass is experienced in this space. This is the Moscow Metro station Novoslobodskaya, opened in January of 1952. The architect was Alexey Dushkin and the artist was Pavel Korin.

This video, plus the wikipedia entries and the Flickr pictures, fill in only a few more bits. I suspect there is still a larger story to be told. The biggest and most obvious question being - How could something this ornate and colorful come about in the darkest and grayest period of Stalinist Soviet rule?

photos from SergeyRod's Moscow subway Flickr set