Windows : a book about stained & painted glass

Front matter

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Preface

Early training in the workshop, long practice in design, deep interest in glass, and loving study of it — these are my excuse for writing about it.

This book has grown out of an experience of forty years and more, during which glass-hunting has been my recreation and delight.

Minute investigation of purely antiquarian questions connected with the subject was not within m.y scope — it seemed to me safe enough in the hands of Winston, Mr. Westlake, and the many continental authorities with whose learned writings this more practical and in a sense more popular volume does not enter into competition. I have gone glass-hunting to get pleasure out of the glass, to learn something from it, to find out the way it was done, why it was done so, and what might yet perhaps be done in glass. All I have to tell is what windows have told me, or what I understood them to say.

My point of view is that of the artist in glass, and primarily, I should say, of the workman, workmanship being, to my thinking, at the root of art. We are workmen first and artists afterwards — perhaps.

What I have tried to do is this : — In Book I. to trace the course of workmanship, in Book II. to map out the course of design, in Book III. to discuss questions which, even though they may have something to do with design or workmanship, would have hindered or confused the strict account of it. M’hat little overlapping this may involve is compensated for by a simplicity which will, I hope, make the account even of technical matters comparatively easy to follow.

The illustrations have been chosen throughout to illustrate viii

the subject, not merely to beautify the book. Some of them are from pen drawings, not perhaps much more than diagrams, which at times explain a point as a picture would not; some are from finished studies in watercolour by artists who know all about stained glass, and these of course give the effect of the windows much better ; and some are from photographs, which, though difficult to take, have the stamp of absolute authenticity.

I have resisted the temptation of coloured illustrations. Theoretically, a book about windows ought to be illustrated in colour ; practically, the cost of doing that thoroughly well puts it out of the question — even if a rendering of stained glass which would satisfy those who know and care were to be got in colour printing. That has yet to be proved.

LEWIS F. DAY.

London.

Align si, 1909.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

In the twelve years since the publication of the first edition of “Windows” the author has gone much further afield in search of glass ; he has seen much which, in his determination to speak only of what he had with own eyes beheld, he was obliged before to pass over ; and the book should benefit greatly by his wider experience.

A third edition gives him the opportunity, not only of referring to many famous windows left unnoticed in the first two, but of carefully and thoroughly revising the text. He has, in fact, rewritten a considerable portion of it.

It is in the illustrations, however, that the greatest additions and alterations have been made. Processes of reproduction have improved so much of recent years that the plates in the book as it first appeared, though executed by the then best available means, are not equal to the standard of to-day, and they have all been engraved afresh by a newer and more satisfactory process. Further than that, a number of entirely new illustrations have been added.

Author and publisher are indebted to Mr. T. M. Rooke, Mr. Walter Lonsdale, l\Ir. William Davidson, and especially to Mr. J. R. Clayton and Air. J. C. Bell for the loan of admirable and trustworthy drawings, as well as to the authorities of the British Museum for permission to reproduce some of the unique drawings of the late Charles Winston. They have also to acknowledge their indebtedness to M. Magne and to Prof. Geiges for valuable illustrations.

Book I. The Course Of Craftsmanship

Chap. Page

I. The Beginnings of Glass ....... i

II. The Making of a Window. ...... 5

IV. Early Mosaic Windows . . . . . • 31

V. Painted Mosaic Glass ....... 43

VI. Glass Painting (Mediaeval) ...... 60

VII. Glass Painting (Renaissance) ...... 68

Vni. Enamel Painting 77

IX. The Needle-point in Glass Painting .... 87

X. The Resources OF the Glass Painter (a Recapitulation) 95

Book II. The Course Of Design

XI. The Design of Early Glass . . . . . .110

XII. Medallion Windows ........ 122

XIII. Early Grisaille ......... 136

XI\’. Windows of many Lights ....... 148

XV. Middle Gothic Glass ....... 158

XVI. L.\te Gothic Windows . . . . . . • 174

XVII. Sixteenth Century W'indows ...... ig6

XVIII. Later Renaissance Windows 214

XIX. Picture- Windows ........ 230

XX. Landscape in Glass ........ 244

XXL Italian Glass ......... 252 xii

(-'HAP. Page

XXII. Tracery Lights and Rose Windows .... 265

XXIII. Quarry Windows 276

XXIV. Domestic Glass 288

XXV. The Use of the Canopy ... . . 304

XXVI. A Plea for Ornament . 310

Book III. By The Way

XXVII. The Characteristics of Style ..... 314

XXVIII. Style in Modern Glass ....... 343

XXIX. Jesse Windows and Others ...... 349

XXX. Story Windows ........ 360

XXXI. How to see Windows 369

XXXII. Windows worth Seeing 374

XXXIII. A Word on Restoration ...... 396

XXXIV. Postscript 403

LIST OF PLACES MENTIONED . . . .405

INDEX 409

WINDOWS

A BOOK ABOUT STAINED GLASS BOOK 1.

I. The Beginnings Of Glass

The point of view from which the subject of stained glass is here approached relieves me, happily, from the very difficult task of determining the date or the whereabouts of the remote origin of coloured windows, and the still remoter beginnings of glass itself. The briefest summary of scarcely disputable facts bearing upon the evolution of the art of window making, is here enough. We need not vex our minds with speculation.

Egyptologists tell us that at least five if not six thousand years ago the Egyptians made jewels of glass. This, indeed, was the earliest use to which stained glass was put. In fact the very raison d'etre of glass making seems to have been a species of forgery. Scarabs of glass, in deliberate imitation of rubies and emeralds, sapphires and other preeious stones, have been found in some of the most ancient tombs. The glass beads found broadcast in three quarters of the globe were quite possibly passed off by Phoenieian traders upon the confiding barbarian as jewels of great price. At all events, glass beads were in use in the bronze age ; and, if we may trust the evidence of etymology, “ bedes ” are perhaps as ancient as praying.

Apart from trickery and fraud, to imitate seems to be a foible of humanity. The Greeks and their Roman successors made glass in imitation of agate and onyx and all kinds of precious marbles. They devised also coloured glass coated with white glass, which could be cut cameo fashion — a kind of glass much used, though in a different way, in later Mediaeval windows.

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The Venetians carried further the pretty Greek invention of embedding vitreous threads of milky white or colour in clear glass, the most beautiful form of which is that known as latticelli, or reticelli (reticulated or lace glass), from the elaborate twisting and crossing of the threads ; but nothing certain seems to be known about Venetian glass until the end of the eleventh century, although by the thirteenth the neighbouring island of Murano was famous for its production. The Venetians found a new stone to imitate, aventurine, and they imitated it marvellously.

So far, however, glass was used in the first instance for jewellery, and in the second for vessels of various kinds. Its use in architecture was confined mainly to mosaic, originally to imitate such semi-precious stones as lapis lazuli, or to supply the place of brighter tints not naturally forthcoming.

Of the use of glass in windows there is not very ancient mention. The climate of ancient Greece or Egypt, and the way of life there, gave scant occasion for it. But at Herculaneum and Pompeii, there have been found fair sized slabs of window glass, not of very perfect manufacture, apparently cast, and probably at no time very translucent. Remains also of what was presumably window glass have been found among the ruins of Roman villas in England. In the basilicas of Christian Rome the arched window openings were sometimes filled with slabs of marble, in which were piercings to receive glass (which may or may not have been coloured), foreshadowing, so to speak, the plate tracery of Early Gothic builders. According to M. Levy, the windows of Early Mediaeval Flemish churches were often filled in this Roman way with plaques of stone pierced with circular openings to receive glass.

Another Roman practice was to set panes of glass in bronze or copper framing, and even in lead. Here we have the beginning of the practice identified with Mediaeval glaziers.

There is no reason to suppose that the ancients practised glass painting as we understand it. Discs of Greek glass have been found which are indeed painted, but not (I imagine) with colour fused on to the material ; and certainly these were not used for windows.

The very early Christians were not in a position to indulge in, or even to desire, luxuries such as stained glass windows, but

St. Jerome and St. Chrj^sostom make allusion to them. It is pretty certain that these must have been simple mosaics in stained glass, unpainted : one reads that between the lines of records that have come down to us.

Stained and painted glass, such as we find in the earliest existing Mediaeval windows, may possibly date back to the reign of Charlemagne (800), but it may safely be said not to occur earlier than the Holy Roman Empire. A couple of hundred years later mention of it begins to occur rather frequently in Church records; and there is one particular account of the furnishing of the chapel of the first Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino with a whole series of windows in 1066 — which fixes the date of the Norman Conquest as a period at which stained glass windows can no longer have been uncommon. The Cistercian interdict, restricting the order to the use of white glass (1134), argues something like ecclesiastical over-indulgence in rich windows before the middle of the next century.

Fragments, more or less plentiful, of the very earliest glass still remain embedded in windows of a later period — the material was far too precious not to be carefully used up again — but archaeologists appear to be agreed that no complete window of the ninth or tenth century has been preserved, and that even of the eleventh there is nothing that can quite certainly be identi-

Augsburg. From a Drawing by Prof. F.

Geiges.

fied. After that doctors begin to differ.

But the general consensus of opinion is, that there is comparatively little that can be incontrovertibly set down even to the fiwelfth century. The great mass of Early Gothic Glass belongs to the thirteenth century ; and when one speaks of Early Glass it is usually thirteenth century work which is meant.

The remote origin of glass, then, remains for ever lost in the mists of legendary days. There is even a fable to the effect that

B 2 it dates from the building of the Tower of Babel, when God’s fire from heaven vitrified the bricks employed by its too presumptuous builders.

Coloured glass comes to us from the East ; that much it is safe to conclude. From ancient Egypt, probably, the art of the glass-worker found its way to Phoenicia, thence to Greece and Rome, and so to Byzantium, Venice, and eventually France, where stained glass windows, as we know them, first occur.

It is probably to the French that Europe owes the introduction of coloured windows, a colony of Venetian glass-workers having, they say, settled at Limoges in the year 979.

Some of the earliest French glass is to be found at Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, Reims, and Chalons-sur-Marne ; and at the Musee des Arts Decor atifs, at Paris, there are some fragments of twelfth century work which can be more conveniently examined than the work in sitii. The oldest to which one can assign a definite date is that at S. Denis (1108) but its value is almost nullified by expert restoration.

In Germany the oldest date is ascribed to some small windows at Augsburg (i), executed, it is said, by the monks of Tegernsee about the year 1000. There is also a certain amount of twelfth century work incorporated in the later windows at Strasbourg. In the cloisters at Heiligen Kreuz in Austria are some remains of Romanesque twelfth century grisaille of considerable interest when once you have succeeded in picking them out from a mass of modern imitation. The oldest remains of glass in England are, in all probability, certain fragments in the nave of York Minster. The more important windows at Canterbury, Salisbury, and Lincoln are of the thirteenth century.

2. Intrusted Glass Mosaic— Burmese— in the British Museum.

II. The Making Of A Window

It is proposed to approach the subject of stained glass in the first place rather from the workmanlike and artistic than from the historical or antiquarian point of view ; and it may be as well, therefore, to begin by explaining precisely what a stained glass window is.

It is usual to confound “stained” with “painted” glass. Literall}- speaking, these are two quite distinct things. Stained glass is glass which is coloured, as the phrase goes, “ in the pot ; ” that is to sa}', there is mixed with the molten white glass a metallic oxide which stains it green, yellow, blue, purple, and so on, as the case may be ; for which reason the self-tinted glass is called “ pot-metal.” This is a term which will recur again and again. Once for all, “ pot-metal” is glass in which the colour is in the glass and not painted upon it.

It goes without explanation that, each separate sheet of pot-metal glass being all of one colour, a vari-coloured window can only be produced in it by breaking up the sheets and putting pieces together in the form of a mosaic. That is, in fact, how the earliest windows were executed ; and they go by the name of mosaic glass. The glass is, however, not broken up into tesserae, but shaped according to the details of the design. In short, those portions of it which are white have to be cut out of a sheet of white glass, those which are blue out of a sheet of blue glass, those which are yellow out of a sheet of yellow, and so on ; and it is these pieces of variously tinted glass, bound together by strips of lead, just as the tesserae of a pavement or wall picture are held in place by cement, which constitute a stained glass window. The artist is, to begin with, not concerned in painting, but in glazing — that is to say, putting together little bits of glass, just as an inlayer does, or as a mosaic worker puts together pieces of wood or marble, or burnt clay, or even opaque glass. At the head of this chapter (2) is shown a piece of old Burmese incrusted decoration, a mosaic of white and coloured glass (bound together by strips of metal) which, were it but clear instead of silvered at the back, would be precisely the same thing as an early mosaic window, even to the drawing of the features in lines of paint — of which more presently.

In painted glass, on the other hand, the colour is not in the glass but upon it, more or less firmly attached to it by the action of the fire. Finely powdered coloured glass, is used as a pigment, precisely as ceramic colours are used in pottery painting. The painted glass is then put into a kiln and heated to the temperature at which it is on the point of melting, and the colour actually does melt on to it. By this means it is possible to paint a coloured picture upon a single sheet of white glass. Astonishingly clever things in this way have been done by the porcelain painters at Sevres.

Strictly speaking, then, stained and painted glass are the very opposite one to the other. But in practice the two processes of glazing and painting were not long kept apart. The very earliest glass was no doubt pure mosaic. It was only in our own day that the achievement (scientific rather than artistic) of a painted window of any size, independent of glazier’s work, was possible. Painting was at first always subsidiary to glazier’s work ; after that, for a time, glazier and painter worked hand in hand upon equal terms ; eventually the painter took precedence, and the glazier became ever more and more subservient to him. But from the twelfth to the seventeenth century there is little of what we call, rather loosely, sometimes “stained” and sometimes “ painted ” glass, in which there is not both staining and painting — that is to say, stained glass is used, and there is painting upon it. The difference is that in the earlier work the painting is only used to help out the stained glass, and in the later the stained glass is introduced to help the painting.

That amounts, it may be thought, to much the same thing ; and there does come a point where staining and painting fulfil each such an important part in the window that it is difficult to say which is the predominating partner in the concern. For the most part, however, there is no manner of doubt as to which practice was uppermost in the designer’s mind, whether he set out with the idea of painting or glazing ; and it makes all the difference in the work — the difference, for example, between a window of the thirteenth century and one of the sixteenth, a difference about which a child could scarcely make a mistake, once it had been pointed out to him.

It will be as well to describe, once for all, the making of a mosaic window, and the part taken in it by tbe glazier and the painter respectively : it will be easier then to discriminate between the two processes employed, and to discuss them each in relation to the other.

The actual construction of an early window is very much like the putting together of a puzzle. The puzzle of our childhood usually took the form of a map ; and it has occurred to me to show (3) how an artist working strictly after the manner of the thirteenth century — the period, that is to say, when painting was subsidiary to glazing — would set about putting into glass a map of modern Italy. In the first place, he would draw his map to the size required. This he would do with the utmost precision, firmly marking upon the paper (the mediaeval artist would have drawn directly on his wooden bench) the boundary line of each separate patch of colour in his design. Then, according to the colour each separate province or division was to be, he would take a separate sheet of “ pot-metal ” and lay it over the drawing, so as to be able to trace upon the glass itself the outline of such province or division. That done, he would proceed to shape the various pieces of glass to pattern. In the case of a simple and compact province, such as Rome, Tuscany, Umbria (overleaf), that would be easy enough. On the other hand, a more irregular shape, say the province of Naples, with its promontories, would present considerable difficulties — difficulties practically insuperable by the early glazier, to whom the diamond as a cutting instrument was unknown, and whose appliances for shaping glass were of the rudest and most rudimentary.

If with the point of a red-hot iron you describe upon a sheet of glass a line, and then, taking the material between your two hands, proceed to snap it across, the fracture will take approximately the direction of the line thus drawn. That is how the thirteenth century glazier went to work, subsequently, with a notched iron instrument, or “ grozing iron ” as it was called, laboriously chipping away the edges until he had reduced each piece of glass to the precise shape he wanted.

It will be seen at once that the simpler the line and the easier its sweep the more likely the glass would be to break clean to the line, whereas in the case of a jagged or irregular line there would always be great danger that at any one sharp turn in it the fracture would take that tempting opportunity of going in the way it should not. For example, the south coast of Italy would be dangerous. You might draw the line of the sole of the foot, but when it came to breaking the glass the high heel would be sure to snap off (there is a little nick there designed as if for the purpose of bringing about that catastrophe), and similarly that over-delicate instep would certainly not bear the strain put upon it, and would be bound to give way. There is again a jutting promontory on the coast of Africa, which, even if safely cut, would be sure to break sooner or later. It should be mentioned that even were such pieces once safely cut (which would nowadays be possible) the glass would surely crack at the points indicated by the dotted lines the first time there was any pressure of wind upon the window ; and so the prudent man would still forestall that event by designing his glass as it could conveniently be cut, without attempting any tour de force, and strengthening it at the weak points with a line of lead, as has been done in the glass map opposite.

The scale of execution would determine whether each or any province could be cut out of a single sheet of glass ; but the lines of latitude and longitude would give an opportunity of using often three or four pieces of glass to a province without introducing lines which formed no part of the design. That,

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J \ I \ I however, would be contrary to early usage, which was never to make use of the leads as independent lines, but only as boundaries between two colours. There is a reason for this reticence. You will see that in the surface of the sea, where the latitudinal and longitudinal lines come in most usefully, it is necessary to use also other leads, which mean nothing but that a joint is there desirable. These constructional leads, when they merely break up a background, are quite unobjectionable — they even give an opportunity of getting variety in the colour of the ground — but when some of the leads are meant to assert themselves as drawing lines and some are not, the result is confusion.

All that the glass gives us in our mosaic map is the local colour of sea and land — the sea, let us say, dark blue, the countries, provinces, and islands each of its own distinctive tint. When it comes to giving their names, it would be possible, where the scale allows it, to cut the letters out of darker coloured glass, and glaze them in, as shown in the title word “ Italy.” That would involve, as will be seen, a network of connecting lead lines. As for the small lettering there would be nothing for it but to have recourse to the supplementary process, and paint the words Germany, Austria, Turkey, Naples, Sicily, and the rest in opaque colour upon the translucent glass.

But, once we have begun to use paint, there are intermediate ways between these two methods of inscription, either of which would be adopted according to the scale of the lettering. These are shown in the names of the seas. In the word “ Mediterranean ” each separate letter would be contained within a piece of glass corresponding in shape as nearly as possible to its general outline, and its form would be made perfect by ” painting out ” — that is to say, by obscuring with solid pigment that part of the glass (indicated by dots in the drawing) which was meant to retire into the background. Presuming this wording to be in a light colour and the background darkish, this amount of painting would, as a matter of fact, be quite lost in the dark colour. In the lesser descriptions “Tyrrhenian” and “ Adriatic Sea,” each separate word, instead of each letter, would be contained within one piece of glass (or perhaps two in the longer words), and the background would be painted out as already described. By means of paint again the rivers would be indicated, the mountains, the towns, as well as

II indentations in the coastline too minute to be followed by the thick lead.

As a matter of practice, it is usual to paint a marginal line of opaque colour round the glass extending just a little beyond that portion eventually to be covered by the flange of the lead, and thus make sure that that will not by any chance cut off from view the subtler outline of the design. For example, the mere projection of a lead which too nearly approached the delicate prohle of a small face might easily destroy its outline. The glazier’s lead, it should be explained, is a wire of about a quarter of an inch diameter, deeply grooved on two sides for the insertion of the glass. Imagine the surfaces exposed to view on each face of the window to be flattened, and you have a section very much like the letter H, the uprights representing the flanges, and the cross-bar the “core,” which holds them together and supports the glass mosaic.

The process of painting employed so far is of the simplest ; it consists merely in obscuring the glass with solid paint. This is laid on with a long-haired pencil or “ tracing brush.” The paint itself may be mixed with oil, gum and water, or an}' medium which will temporarily attach it to the glass and disappear in the kiln ; for the real fixing of the paint is done solely by the action of the fire. The pigment employed consists, that is to say, of per-oxides of iron and manganese ground up with a sufficient amount of powdered flint-glass or some equivalent silicate, which by the action of the fire is fused with the glass (reduced to very nearly red heat), and becomes practically part and parcel of it. Whenever a glass painter speaks of painted glass he means to say that the colour is thus indelibly burnt in.

After the middle of the sixteenth century sundry metallic oxides were used to produce various more or less transparent pigments (enamel colours, as they are called to distinguish them from the pot-metal colours); but in the thirteenth century transparent enamel colours were as yet unknown to the glass painter, and he confined himself to the solid deep-brown pigment already spoken of — strictly speaking, an enamel also, but by no means to be confounded with the enamel colours of later centuries. Those were colours used for colour’s sake ; this is simply an opaque substance used solely as a means of stopping out so much of the colour of pot-metal glass as may be necessary in order to define form and give the drawing of detail. In effect the brown, when seen against the light, does not tell as colour at all but merely as so much blackness. The only colour in the window is the colour of the various component pieces of glass. Thus in the case of an early figure (i, 23) the face would be cut out of a sheet of pinkish glass and the features painted upon it in brown lines ; each garment would be cut out of the tint it was meant to be, and the folds of the drapery drawn in outline upon the pot-metal. In like manner a tree would be cut out of green glass, its stem out of a more neutral colour, and only the forms of the leaves, and their veining, if any, would be traced in paint. In the execution of the map (3) there is no occasion for further painting than this simplest and fittest kind of work, little more than the glazier would himself have done had his means allowed him. And in the very earliest glass the painter was almost as sparing of paint as this : he did, however — it was inevitable that he should — use lines, whether in drawing the features of a face or the folds of drapery, which were not quite solid, and which consequently only deepened the colour of the pot-metal, without quite obscuring it : he went so far even as to pass a smear of still thinner colour, a half tint or less, over portions of the glass which he wished to lower in tone. He began, in fact, however tentatively, to introduce shading. Happily he was careful always to use it only as a softening influence in his design, and not to sacrifice to it anything of the intrinsic beauty and brilliancy of coloured glass.