Stained Glass Work: A text-book for students and workers in glass

Fig. 67.

A CONVENIENT EASEL

Fig. 68 is a diagram of the kind of easel I would suggest. It can either stand on the bench or on the floor, and with the touch of a hand can be lifted, weighing often well over a hundredweight, to any height the painter pleases, till it touches the roof, enabling him to see at any moment the whole of his work at a distance and against the sky, which one would rather call an absolute necessity than a mere convenience or advantage.

Some of these things were thought out roughly by myself, and have been added to and improved from time to time by my painters and apprentices, a matter which I shall say a word on by-and-by, when we consider the relations which should exist between these and the master.

AN IMPROVED TOOL FOR WAXING-UP

Meanwhile here is another little tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that it should retain the heat. This youth argued: "If they use copper for soldering-bits because it retains heat so well, why not use copper for the waxing-up tool? besides, it can be made into a pen which will hold more wax."

Fig. 68.

Fig. 69.

So said, so done; nothing indeed to make a fuss about, but part of a very wholesome spirit of wishing to work with handy tools economically, instead of blundering and wasting.

AN EASEL WITH MOVABLE PLATES

But to return for a moment to the easel. I find it very convenient not to have it made all of one plate of glass, but to divide it so that about four plates make the whole easel of five feet high. These plates slip in grooves, and can be let in either at the top or bottom, the latter being then stopped by a batten and thumbscrews. By this means a light of any length can be painted in sections without a break. For supposing you work from below upwards, and have done the first five feet of the window, take out all the glass except the top plate, shift this down to the bottom, and place three empty plates above it, and you can join the upper work to the lower by the sample of the latter left in its place to start you.

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF A ROOM

The great point is to be able to get away as far as you can from your work. And I advise you, if your room is small, to have a fair-sized mirror (a cheval-glass) and place it at the far end of your room opposite the easel where you are painting, and then, standing close by the side of your easel, look at your work in the mirror. This will double the distance at which you see it, and at the same time present it to you reversed; which is no disadvantage, for you then see everything under a fresh aspect and so with a fresh eye. Of course, by the use of two mirrors, if they be large enough, you can put your work away to any distance. You must have seen this in a restaurant where there were mirrors, and where you have had presented to you an endless procession of your own head, first front then back, going away into the far distance.

HOW TO HANDLE CARTOONS

Well, it's really like insulting your intelligence! And if I hadn't seen fellows down on their hands and knees rolling and unrolling cartoons along the dirty floor, and sprawling all over the studio so that everybody had to get out of the way into corners, I wouldn't spend paper and ink to tell you that by standing the roll upright and spinning it gently round with your hands, freeing first one edge and then another, you can easily and quietly unroll and sort out a bundle of a dozen cartoons, each twenty feet long, on the space of a small hearth-rug; but so it is (fig. 70), and in just the same way you can roll them up again.

NEATNESS AND CLEANLINESS

You should have drawers in the tables, and put the palettes away in these with the colour neatly covered over with a basin when you leave work. Dust is a great enemy in a stained-glass shop, and it must be kept at arm's length.

YOU MUST TEAR OFF THE SELVAGE EDGE OF YOUR TRACING CLOTH,

otherwise the tracing cloth being all cockled at the edge, which, however, is not very noticeable, will not lie flat, and you will be puzzled to know why it is that you cannot get your cut-line straight; tear off the edge, and it lies perfectly flat, without a wrinkle.

HOW TO DRY A BIG BRUSH OR BADGER AFTER IT IS WASHED

I expect you'd try to dry it in front of the fire, and there'd be a pretty eight-shilling frizzle! But the way is this: First sweep the wet brush downwards with all your force, just as you shake the worst of the wet off a dripping umbrella, then take the handle of the brush between the palms of your hands, with the hair pointing downwards, and rub your hands smartly together, with the handle between them, just as an Italian waiter whisks up the chocolate. This sends the hair all out like a Catherine-wheel, and dries the brush with quite astonishing rapidity. Come now! you'd never have thought of that?

Fig. 70.

And why have I reserved these hints till now? surely these are things of the work-bench, practical matters, and would have come more conveniently in their own place? Why have I—do you ask—after arousing your attention to the "great principles of art," gone back again all at once to these little matters?

Dear reader, I have done so deliberately to emphasise the First of principles, that the right learning of any craft is the learning it under a master, and that all else is makeshift; to drive home the lesson insisted on in the former volumes of this series of handbooks, and gathered into the sentence quoted as a motto on the fly-leaf of one of them, that "An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it."

These little things we have just been speaking of occurred to me after the practical part was all written; and I determined, since it happened so, to put them by themselves, to point this very lesson. They are just typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by master to pupil. Years—centuries of practice have made them the commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.

Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them; how many centuries of sailing, think you, passed by before men knew that the tides went with the moon?

Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?

Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling, and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the conditions of the craft, and from the interchange of ideas amongst those who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that are ever changing.

However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-glass work surely is that of Colour.

CHAPTER XVI

OF COLOUR

But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual colour cannot be shown!

Nevertheless, let us try.

… One thinks of morning and evening; … of clouds passing over the sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a shell; of purple bloom and azure haze, and grass-green and golden spots, like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the charm.

And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue, which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or evening hymn.

Of what use is it to speak of these things? The words fall upon the ear, but the eye is not filled.

All stained-glass gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the showing forth of it cannot be in words.

Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the copse?

One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of stained-glass is a very good way to learn colour, or as much of it as can come by learning.

For, consider:—

A painter has his colour-box and palette;

And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his colour into harmonies;

Doing a little first, cautiously;

Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:

Exhausting, as much as he can, the possibilities of one or two pigments, and then adding another and another;

But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw upon;

All the infinity of the whole world of colour being in his own hands, and the difficulty of dealing with it laid as a burden upon his own shoulders, as he combines, modifies, mixes, and dilutes them.

He perhaps has eight or ten spots of pure colour, ranged round his palette; and all the rest depends upon himself.

This gives him, indeed, one side of the practice of his art; and if he walks warily, yet daringly, step by step, learning day by day something more of the powers that lie in each single kind of paint, and as he learns it applying his knowledge, bravely and industriously, to add strength to strength, brightness to brightness, richness to richness, depth to depth, in ever clearer, fuller, and more gorgeous harmony, he may indeed become a great painter.

But a more timid or indolent man gets tired or afraid of putting the clear, sharp tints side by side to make new combinations of pure and vivid colour.