Vitreosity

Stained Glass as Nanotechnology??

Articles originating out of Queensland, Australia with titles like Gold nanoparticles purified air in old churches and Solar-Powered Nanotech-Purified Air In Medieval Churches and Stained glass windows painted with gold 'purify air' are hitting the news and blog sites for the past few days.

As much as I would like to see stained glass associated a with cool-sounding 'green'-oriented 21st century technology, I'm skeptical.

The glaziers who created gold-painted stained glass windows for medieval churches in Europe inadvertently developed a solar-powered nanotech air-purification system. According to Zhu Huai Yong, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, the gold paint used in medieval-era stained glass windows purified the air when heated by sunlight.

"For centuries people appreciated only the beautiful works of art, and long life of the colors, but little did they realize that these works of art are also, in modern language, photocatalytic air purifier with nanostructured gold catalyst," said Zhu in a statement.
Zhu said that tiny gold particles found in medieval gold paint react with sunlight to destroy air-borne pollutants like volatile organic chemicals/compounds (VOCs), which are emitted from paints, lacquers, and glues, among other things.

I won't pretend to even begin to comprehend the science behind this but there are some basic questions that come to mind. What are they talking about as the 'gold paint' in Medieval stained glass windows? Gold in the fired in paint? Gold in the glass itself? I've never heard of there being gold in stained glass paint, other than the rare occasional use of ruby enamel, which I always thought came into existence later than Medieval times. There is of course actual gold in pink glass - it's even called gold pink glass, but again that is rare and that would not be referred to as 'gold paint'. If there is a suggestion that gold was a trace element in fired in black paint in Medieval churches, it's news to me. Very puzzling.

It's a nice idea that stained glass has some hidden scientific or environmental benefit. I'm just want them to get the facts right.

NYC Subway Cityscapes

Article in the NY Times today called Set in Glass, Artist’s Ode to Bronx Life Is Acclaimed, touting the public art awards received for a series of stained glass panels designed by Daniel Hauber and fabricated in Dalle de Verre by Larry Gordon. There's also a NY Times blogpost about the same thing, with live links.

Mango Vendor

I like the way the black lines work into the shadows of the elevated rail.

The commission came from the surprisingly prolific Arts In Transit program in New York City. Check out the Permanent Art Section of the New York City Transit area and browse through the different commissions - a surprising number are in stained glass, almost always Dalle de Verre. There is some further background in a 1994 NY Times article called Raising Artistic Sights of Riders in Nether and Upper Regions.

The idea of the subway cityscape reminds me of these great abstracted cityscape windows at The Westchester Square-East Tremont station on the No. 6 East Side IRT line in the Bronx. Designed by Romare Bearden and fabricated by Benoit Gilsoul and Helmut Schardt.

Here is the same photo magnified to show the undulating lines and the glassiness of the faceted glass. Very nice.

Garth whiffs Cologne

Garth at Extreme Craft blogs about "A Whiff of Cologne" - his visit to the see the Gerhard Richter Cologne Cathedral Window.

Many-Colored Glass in The New Yorker

This is a first. A 3,000+ word article about stained glass, called Many-Colored Glass, in the venerable magazine The New Yorker. It's written by Peter Schjeldahl about contemporary German painters Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, and their individual forays into stained glass. Richter for the recently dedicated window at Cologne Cathedral, and Polke for the unfinished set of windows going into the Grossmünster, in Zurich, Switzerland.

It crosscuts between profiles of Richter and Polke, all the while interspersed with Schjeldahl's exasperated and slightly maddening history and assessment of stained glass. I've got to mull this one over before I comment further.

A technical note - the article does clear up one technical question about the Cologne window. As suspected, the panels were laminated and not fused. There would not have been the boasting about using handblown glass if they had been fused, as the fusing would destroy the texture of the handblown glass. My guess is that the individual panes of glass are sandwiched between two layers of plate glass.

Quick links for Gerhard Richter and the Cologne Cathedral window -
My previous posts on Richter's Cologne Cathedral Commission here and here.
Wikipedia entry for Gerhard Richter
Fun context - Cologne window as pixel art (SG about 3/4 down page)

Quick links for Sigmar Polke and the Grossmünster -
New York Times article from 2007 called The Alchemist's Moment
Wikipedia entry for Sigmar Polke
Wikipedia entry for the Grossmünster
Pictures of the Grossmünster

New Window - St. Martin in the Field

A favorable review by Rebecca Geldard in the Guardian, called New Window in St. Martin's Past, about a stained glass window by Iranian born artist Shirazeh Houshiary created as part of a mojor renovation and expansion of St. Martin in the Fields, in London, England.

photo by Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Meanwhile, in another article in the Guardian, called New Look of St. Martin's, Jonathan Glancey praises the restoration in general but does not seem to like the stained glass so much, referring to it as the "one controversial note struck in the otherwise impeccable interior".

photo by Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Personally, I think the stained glass works remarkably well. Admittedly, my first reaction was that it's a bit minimalist for my taste. But looking over the images in context in the "New Look - St. Martin's" photo tour, it became clear that the design works beautifully for the space. Color, certainly bold color, would have been totally wrong for an 18th century classical space. The same with figural imagery. In terms of style, the question would be how to integrate with the classical 18th century surroundings while acknowledging that this is a new window. Most contemporary artists, when asked to do a commission like this, simply impose their own style, with the result looking jarring and disjointed. I do wish the Guardian had published all five commissioned designs when they were on display in 2006.

I imagine they did indeed make the best choice. It is impressive that Housiary working with Pip Horne, her architect husband, tried to balance the different aspects. A design that attempts to acknowledge the sacred space and also work within the design elements of the classical past while trying to make it clear that this is a new part of the church, and obviously from a design aesthetic of the present. That's not an easy balance, but it was handled well here.

photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Stained Glass - on a License Plate

News today that Florida will likely not approve the idea of a Christian themed license plate.

I'm more or less indifferent regarding the idea of a Christian themed license plate.

My problem is this - I don't like to see the image of a stained glass window used as a generic symbol for religion. I see it all the time, and I don't like it. If you must, think of it as my own call for 'brand protection'. I do not want stained glass shown as inherently or exclusively religious.

I was raised a Christian, specifically a Lutheran, but the particular church building I knew as a child did not have stained glass. My parents were not overly religious, neither were they interested in religious art, so we never made a practice of visiting other churches. Therefore, I never developed the notion of "stained glass equals religion".

I became interested in stained glass through the arts & crafts movement of the 1960's, specifically through seeing it for the first time at the Guilford Handicraft Festival, now the Guilford Craft Expo, in Guilford CT. Here, and for the 10 or so years after I first became interested in stained glass, I came across no subject matter specifically related to religion.

In the many years of working in the field of stained glass as a professional, I've grown to know, love and admire religious stained glass. I've met and known colleagues in the field who work in stained glass primarily because of their faith and I can respect that. I've worked on many religious stained glass windows in studios over the years, and have designed and fabricated some on my own.

Nevertheless, I still don't think of stained glass inherently, and certainly not exclusively, as a religious art. Instead, I see stained glass as a unique combination of materials and techniques that makes for especially striking, dramatic, colorful and beautiful artwork. I'm content with that.

I suppose my fear is that if more and more people associate stained glass exclusively with religion, the less stained glass will be seen as appropriate for public or commercial situations, or even for non-religious personal commissions.

I don't remember this practice of using the stained glass window as a generic symbol for religion being so pervasive 20 years ago. Was I just not noticing it as much then? Or am I just bothered by it more as I get older?

Whatever the answer, I say to Florida, if you must have a Christian themed license plate, fine - just please leave off the stained glass window.

Oddly enough, I came upon this story in yet another reference to stained glass on The Colbert Report. The world gets curiouser and curiouser...

[update, June 21, 2008 - Florida may not be doing it but South Carolina has approved the idea, inspiring even more satirical articles.]

CraftBoston and Providence Windows Project

The Boston School of Stained Glass gets busy -

This coming weekend - Friday-Sunday, March 28-30, 2008
Nancy Nicholson, Dan Maherand Kate Gakenheimer are all showing (and selling) their work at CraftBoston. It's unusual to see three stained glass artists in an upper echelon craft show. Nice to see.

A bottle bottom panel, part of Dan's amazing Houseware Graveyards Series

and this is one of Kate's dazzling pattern panels, inspired by Japanese Textiles.

and one of Nancy's Cityscapes

Best of luck to them all. Sell Well!

Meanwhile, Alice Johnson and Kate Gakenheimer (busy woman) are displaying work at the Providence Windows Project.

New Panel by Alice Johnson

Requiem for a Stained Glass Window

Just today, news from this AP article (and picked up by many sites like USA Today) announcing that the demolition of the Robert Sowers JFK Airport Window was started last week, ending in failure a long effort to save what was in its time believed to be the largest single stained glass window in the world.

You get a little more info at the rescue website called Save America's Window.
Curiously, I could find no other pictures than this on the web.

Sad, but not surprising, conclusion. We live in the age of planned obsolescence, or in this case, not-well-planned obsolesence. As much as the artistic and historical significance was acknowledged, the prevailing factors were space and money - too big and too costly to move as a whole. Plus, let's be honest, Robert Sowers is not exactly a household name. Well known within the world of stained glass to be sure, but not a mass market iconic name.

It's ironic that Ken VanRoenn is the one quoted in the initial AP article, since he is the first stained glass artist/architect I ever heard use the term 'economic life of a building', in a keynote address at a SGAA conference in 1992. He was making the point that stained glass studios, if they hoped to market their work in commercial, office or public buildings, would need to deal with the fact that the average economic life of a building is 35 years. I remember it sent chills down my spine, since this notion is not conducive to the traditional idea of stained glass, where the artwork is created for the ages, not the next 35 years.

I suppose there's some lesson I'm supposed to take away from this - vanity of vanities, all is vanity, etc, etc, blah, blah blah.

In any case, just do the best work you can and hope for the best.

[update feb 22, 2008 - New York Times article including pictures of workers dismantling the window. painful.]

A Glass Half Empty

An interesting and entertaining article, by arts writer Waldemar Januszczak, called A glass half empty at the National Gallery's Art of Light in the TimesOnline. It's a review of the 'Art of Light: German Renaissance Stained Glass' exhibition at London's National Gallery. I should note that it's a mostly negative review of the exhibit though tempered by an enthusiastic rave about stained glass.

just one among a number of curious kernels of thought -

... His contention was that stained glass avoids the brain altogether and appeals directly to the nervous system. In other words, you can’t help feeling what you feel in front of coloured glass. It doesn’t matter if the artist who made it is good or bad. When light passes through glass, it does something to you.

By way of contrast, here is another, more straightforward, review of the exhibition. This one has a number of images from the exhibit...

...including this one of the Tobias and Sarah panel described by Januszczak in the TimesOnline article.

German (Lower Rhine), Tobias and Sarah on their Wedding Night, about 1520. © V&A Images/ Victoria and Albert Museum, London

And one more article, this time by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. He muses about the limited value of showing stained glass in a museum setting. He has a point. There is nothing like natural light.

2007 Orin E. Skinner Annual Lecture

The Charles Connick Stained Glass Foundation hosts an annual lecture. This year it's on Monday, November 5 at 6:30 p.m. at Moseley Hall, Church of the Advent, 30 Brimmer Street, Boston. The speaker is Mark David Baden, Ph.D. Title of lecture: "We Met in a Crypt." Subject of lecture: the windows by Connick in Nazareth Hall, Northwestern College, St. Paul, Minnesota. The windows in Nazareth Chapel date from 1923-1925, which is when the Connick Studio was in its prime. I also noticed that the full program of windows at Nazareth are by Connick - a rare treat.

Samuel window, Nazareth Hall, Northwestern College, Minnesota

(photo by Brian Tanning)

TIME warp

It's unusual to see a print magazine fully archive their articles on the web and doubly unusual to see a print magazine archive pre-web articles on the web. That's why it's so strange to see this article on the web about stained glass, called Stained Glass, Back and Blooming, originally published by TIME magazine in March of 1978!

The funny thing is that I very well remember this article when it first came out. It was quite something at the time that a 'major news weekly magazine' was recognizing stained glass. I remember the photo shown with the article (not shown on the website) of a Ray King window - abstract, sort of Schaffrath-lite. This came on the heels of the relative success of the book "New Glass", and a number of the artists in that book are in the TIME article. I was a teenage stained glass hobbyist less than 2 years away from my first professional job in stained glass and it was nice to see stained glass getting some ink in a well circulated magazine.

All in all, a curious flashback.