Vitreosity

The Angels and Devils of Fairford

Recent postings on the Stained Glass Network email discussion forum have reminded me of a place I've always wanted to go - Church of St. Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire, UK.

Though I've never visited the church itself, I've seen much of the glass though books and the web over the past 25 years, and the stained glass here is amongst my favorites. Amazing compositions and even more amazing details.

The most famous and most reproduced image from St. Mary's -
from The Last Judgement Window

I probably first saw this image in the book Stained Glass, by Lawrence Lee et al, the well illustrated, oversized and always useful book published by Crown publishers and amazingly cheap as a used book on Amazon these days.

Best web source for St. Mary's images and info - photo gallery at sacred-destinations.com.

A quick scattershot of other images from a small selection of windows
below the fold...

St. Louis City-Wide Open Studios 2008

FYI - I will be participating this Saturday in the 3rd Annual St. Louis City-Wide Open Studios.

If you are going, get a map, preferably the real printed map - you can pick one up at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. You can also download a pdf map on this page - unfortunately, it's so big you can't print on any conventional printer. Finally, you might also try the rather interesting Google Map STL Open Studio page, where you can browse the different individual locations in Google maps.

Blogging the SGAA Conference 2008

Elizabeth Steinebach from the Canadian-based organization Artists in Stained Glass gives an account of her time at the SGAA 2008 Conference in Oakland CA. -

Pre-Conference Class Day
Official Opening Day
Saturday Report
Sunday report

Interesting stuff, especially seeing that I was intrigued by the prescence of distinctly non-SGAA type artists like Paul Marioni, Dick Weiss and Cappy Thompson. I only wish more people did this type of conference blogging. Multiple perspectives would help enormously...

The Medieval Bestiary

Surprised I haven't stumbled on this before - The Medieval Bestiary - Animals in the Middle Ages. Looks like a great site for reference material. Just a quick look so far, but the galleries look very good, if a bit confusing to navigate.

On top of that, the site also hosts Chimera, the Bestiary Blog, which led me to Per Omnia Saecula - Adventures in Medievalism, a medievalist blog which has a slew of links to other medievalist websites and blogs. This could take days to fully explore. I love it when I hit a new vein of interesting and useful information on the internet...

Frédéric Back

I've known of the animation of Frédéric Back for more than 25 years, so I was surprised when I found out he did stained glass.

I was doing a search on Flickr (for 'stained glass metro') and found this image of the Montreal Place-des-Arts Metro Station Mural. The Frédéric Back Glass Mural was the first commission for the Metro system, completed in 1967, and has a theme centered on the history of music in Montreal.

Make sure to check out the Frédéric Back website which is one of the most amazingly comprehensive websites for any living artist I've ever seen. I wasn't expecting to see anything beyond the animation, but his stained glass work is well represented. There is even a section devoted to his role in environmental activism.

Image from wikipedia entry for the Place-des-Arts commission

Detail - image from Flickrite marjolabiche

Detail - from the Montreal Metro Art Commission page -

Again, Frédéric Back is best known for his animated films, the best known of those being The Man Who Planted Trees (in full at lower resolution on Google video here)

Personally, I still think I like Crac even better. On top of that, it has a musical theme, just like the stained glass - just enjoy...

Max Pechstein Stained Glass at the Busch Reisinger

I've posted about expressionism and stained glass before and mentioned that I had seen a window by Max Pechstein but did not have any photos. I finally took some photos and finally got around to posting them.

Max Pechstein (also a wikipedia entry)
at the Busch Reisinger Museum, in Cambridge, Mass., USA.

photos by me, circa 2006

It's called "Woman with Animals" and is dated from 1912. No other background information was given on the wall placard and I could find no other info on the web. Still, I have detail photos and a little context...

[update: June 29, 2008 - I guess this panel will not be on display for awhile since the building housing it, Otto Hall, though only 17 years old, is being demolished, because of structural defects that happened due to an elaborate climate control system that failed. Personally, I never much liked Otto Hall and much preferred it when all the Busch-Reisinger collection was displayed in Adolphus Busch Hall, un-modern and non-climate controlled as it was.]

Tools of the Trade 1 - Glass Cutting

A new feature showing off the tools of the stained glass trade. Nothing comprehensive, just a description of how I use them myself and some comments on how the tools are changing (or not) within the current workplace.

First up, glass cutting tools.

My current glass cutting tools -

St. Bartholomew War Memorial Window

This is the War Memorial Window in St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, Canada, by the Irish stained glass artist Wilhelmina Geddes.

On the page for the Registry of Stained Glass Windows in Canada 'Featured Windows', you can download a very good article (pdf) from Irish Arts Review 1994 by Shirley Ann Brown. This article gives the best and most complete story of the commission.

no photographer credited
photos are from the Irish Arts Review pdf, unless otherwise noted.

I could find no general biography of Geddes on the web, except for a few behind academic curtain walls. This was her only North American Commission.

I saw this window nearly 20 years ago while attending an animation festival in Ottawa and I've been trying to describe it to friends and colleagues ever since.

Rose Trellis Installation video

This video is of an installation in a house in Massachusetts.
Rose Trellis, by Lisa Tiemann.

Lisa was one of the first people I worked for in stained glass, nearly 30 years ago. I worked on this panel, but only for a few weeks of cutting, while on vacation in Boston in the summer of 2006. I can attest that many many hours went into making this window. It's nice to see the video because I never saw the finished piece.

The next video shows some of the foiling being done by Lisa's then assistant Serra. Serra's the one who did the 2 videos as well.

Artist and Patron

More video comic relief - this time from The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball.

Again, not related directly to stained glass, though it does explore the unique and mysterious relationship that exists between an artist and a patron. As art commission situations go, this is actually not too far off the mark - at least it can feel like this sometimes.