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

Plain rush-plaited hassocks and little brass sconces where, on lenten nights, in the unwarmed church, glimmered the few candles that lit the devotion of the strong, rough sons of the glebe, hedgers and ditchers, who came there after daily labour to spell out simple prayer and praise. But it was best on the summer Sunday mornings, when the great spaces of blue, and the towering white clouds looked down through the diamond panes; and the iron-studded door, with the wonderful big key, which his hands were not yet strong enough to turn, stood wide open; and outside, amongst the deep grass that grew upon the graves, he could see the tortoise-shell butterflies sunning themselves upon the dandelions. Then it was that he used to think the outside the best, and fancy (with perfect truth, as I believe) that angels must be looking in, just as much as he was looking out, and gazing down, grave-eyed, upon the little people inside, as he himself used to watch the red ants busy in their tiny mounds upon the grass plot or the gravel path; and he wondered sometimes whether the outside or the inside was "God's House" most: the place where he was sitting, with rough, simple things about him that the village carpenter or mason or blacksmith had made, or the beautiful glowing world outside. And as he thought, with the grave mind of a child, about these things, he came to fancy that the eyes that looked out through the silver diamond-panes which kept out the wind and rain, mattered less than the eyes that looked in from the other side where basked the butterflies and flowers and all the living things he so loved; awful eyes that were at home where hung the sun himself in his distances and the stars in the great star-spaces; where Orion and the Pleiades glittered in the winter nights, where "Mazzaroth was brought forth in his season," and where through the purple skies of summer evening was laid out overhead the assigned path along which moved Arcturus with his sons.

APPENDIX I

SOME SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE STUDY OF OLD GLASS

Every one who wants to study glass should go to York Minster. Go to the extreme west end, the first two windows are of plain quarries most prettily leaded, and showing how pleasant "plain-glazing" may be, with silvery glass and a child-like enjoyment of simple patterning, unconscious of "high art." But look at the second window on the north side. What do you see? You see a yellow shield? Exactly. Every one who looks at that window as he passes at a quick walk must come away remembering that he had seen a yellow shield. But stop and look at it. Don't you like it—I do! Why?—well, because it happens to be by good luck just right, and it is a very good lesson of the degree in which beauty in glass depends on juxtaposition. I had thought of it as a particularly beautiful bit of glass in quality and colour—but not at all! it is textureless and rather crude. I had thought of it as old—not at all: it is probably eighteenth-century. But look what it happens to be set in—the mixture of agate, silver, greenish and black quarries. Imagine it by itself without the dull citron crocketting and pale yellow-stain "sun" and "shafting" of the panel below—without the black and yellow escutcheon in the light to its right hand—even without the cutting up and breaking with black lead lines of its own upper half. In short, you could have it so placed that you would like it no better, that it would be no better, than the bit of "builder's glazing" in the top quatrefoil of the next window, which looks like, and I fancy is, of almost the very same glass, but clumsily mixed, and, fortunately, dated for our instruction, 1779.

I do not know any place where you can get more study of certain properties of glass than in the city of York. The cathedral alone is a mine of wealth. The nave windows are near enough to see all necessary detail. There is something of every period. And with regard to the nave and clerestory windows, they have been so mauled and re-leaded that you need not be in the least afraid of admiring the wrong thing or passing by the right. You can be quite frank and simple about it all. For instance, my own favourite window is the fifth from the west on the south side. The old restorer has coolly slipped down one whole panel below its proper level in a shower of rose-leaves (which were really, I believe, originally a pavement), and, frankly, I don't know (and don't care) whether they are part of his work in the late eighteenth century or the original glass of the late fourteenth. I rather incline to think that they came out of some other window and are bits of fifteenth-century glass. The same with the chequered shield of Vernon in the other light. I daresay it is a bit of builder's glazing—but isn't it jolly? And what do you think of the colour of the little central circle half-way up the middle light? Isn't it a flower? And look at the petal that's dropped from it on to the bar below! or the whole of the left-hand light; well, or the middle light, or the right-hand light? If that's not colour I don't know what is. I doubt if it was any more beautiful when it was new, perhaps not so beautiful. Compare it, for example, with the window in the same wall (I think next to it on the west, which has been "restored"). The window exactly opposite seems one of the least retouched, and the least interesting; if you think the yellow canopies disagreeable in colour don't be ashamed to say so: they are not unbeautiful exactly, I think, but, personally, I could do with less of them. Yet I should not be surprised to be assured that they are all genuine fourteenth-century. In the north transept is the celebrated "Five Sisters," the most beautiful bit of thirteenth-century "grisaille" perhaps in existence. That is where we get our patterns for "kamptulicon" from; but we don't make kamptulicon quite like it. If you want a sample of "nineteenth-century thirteenth-century" work you have only to look over your left shoulder.

A similar glance to the right will show you "nineteenth-century fifteenth-century" work—and show it you in a curious and instructive transition stage—portions of the two right-hand windows of the five being old glass worked in with new, while the right-hand one of all is a little abbot who is nearly all old and has shrunk behind a tomb, wondering, as it seems to me, "how those fellows got in," and making up his mind whether he's going to stand being bullied by the new St. Peter. In the south transept opposite, all the five eastern windows are fifteenth-century, and some of them very well preserved, while those in the southern wall are modern. The great east window has a history of its own quite easily ascertainable on the spot and worthy of research and study. Then go into the north ambulatory, look at the third of the big windows. Well, the right-hand light; look at the bishop at the top in a dark red chasuble, note the bits of dull rose colour in the lower dress, the bit of blackish grey touching the pastoral staff just below the edge of the chasuble, look at the bits of sharp strong blue in the background. Now I believe these are all accidents—bits put in in releading; but when the choir is singing and you can pick out every separate note of the harmony as it comes down to you from each curve of the fretted roof, if you don't think this window goes with it and is music also, you must be wrong, I think, in eye or ear. But indeed this part of the church and all round the choir aisles on both sides is a perfect treasure-house of glass.

If you want an instance of what I said (p. 212 (#x5_x_5_i127)) as to "added notes turning discord into harmony," look at the patched east window of the south choir aisle. Mere jumble—probably no selection—yet how beautiful! like beds of flowers. Did you ever see a bed of flowers that was not beautiful?—often and often, when the gardener had carefully selected the plants of his ribbon-bordering; but I would have you think of an old-fashioned cottage garden, with its roses and lilies and larkspur and snapdragon and marigolds—those are what windows should be like.

In addition to the minster, almost every church in the city has some interesting glass; several of them a great quantity, and some finer than any in the cathedral itself. And here I would give a hint. Never pass a church or chapel of any sort or kind, old or new, without looking in. You cannot tell what you may find.

And a second hint. Do not make written pencil notes regarding colour, either from glass or nature, for you'll never trouble to puzzle them out afterwards. Take your colour-box with you. The merest dot of tint on the paper will bring everything back to mind.

Space prevents our making here anything like a complete itinerary setting forth where glass may be studied; it must suffice to name a few centres, noting a few places in the same district which may be visited from them easily. I name only those I know myself, and of course the list is very slight.

York. And all churches in the city.

Gloucester. Tewkesbury, Cirencester.

Birmingham. (For Burne-Jones glass.) Shrewsbury, Warwick, Tamworth, Malvern.

Wells.

Oxford. Much glass in the city, old and new. Fairford.

Cambridge. Much glass in the city, old and new.

Canterbury.

Chartres. (If there is still any left unrestored.) St. Pierre in the same town.

Sens.

Troyes. Auxerre.

Of the last two I have only seen some copies. For glass by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Madox-Brown, consult their lives.

There are many well-known books on the subject of ancient glass, Winston, Westlake, &c., which give fuller details on this matter.

APPENDIX II

ON THE RESTORING OF ANCIENT WINDOWS

Let us realise what is done.

And let us consider what ought to be done.

A window of ancient glass needs releading. The lead has decayed and the whole is loose and shaky. The ancient glass has worn very thin, pitted almost through like a worn-out thimble with little holes where the alkalis have worked their way out. It is as fragile and tender as an old oil-painting that needs to be taken off a rotten canvas and re-lined. If you examine a piece of old glass whose lead has had time to decay, you will find that the glass itself is often in an equally tender state. The painting would remain for years, probably for centuries yet, if untouched, just as dust, without any attachment at all, will hang on a vertical looking-glass. But if you scrape it, even only with the finger-nail, you will generally find that that is sufficient to bring much—perhaps most—of the painting off, while both sides of the glass are covered with a "patina" of age which is its chief glory in quality and colour, and which, or most of which, a wet handkerchief dipped in a little dust and rubbed smartly will remove.

In short, here is a work of art as beautiful and precious as a picture by Titian or Holbein, and probably, as being the chief glory of some stately cathedral, still more precious, which ought only to be trusted to the gentle hands of a cultivated and scientific artist, connoisseur, and expert. The glass should all be handled as if it were old filigree silver. If the lead is so perished that it is absolutely impossible to avoid taking the glass down, it should be received on the scaffold itself, straight from its place in the stone, between packing-boards lined with sheets of wadding—"cotton-wool"—attached to the boards with size or paste, and with, of course, the "fluffy" side outwards. These boards, section by section, should be finally corded or clamped ready for travelling before being lowered from the scaffold; if any pieces of the glass get detached they should be carefully packed in separate boxes, each labelled with a letter corresponding to one placed on the section as packed, so that there may be no chance of their place ever being lost, and when all is done the whole window will be ready to be gently lowered, securely "packed for removal," to the pavement below. The ideal thing now would be to hire a room and do the work on the spot; but if this is impossible on account of expense and the thing has to bear a journey, the sections, packed as above described, should be themselves packed, two or three together, as may be convenient, in an outer packing-case for travelling. It should be insured, for then a representative of the railway must attend to certify the packing, and also extra care will be taken in transit.

Arrived at the shop, the window should be laid out carefully on the bench and each bit re-leaded into its place, the very fragile pieces between two bits of thin sheet-glass.

Unless this last practice is adopted throughout, the ordinary process of cementing must be omitted and careful puttying substituted for it. While if it is adopted the whole must be puttied before cementing, otherwise the cement will run in between the various thicknesses of glass. It would be an expensive and tedious and rather thankless process, for the repairer's whole aim would be to hide from the spectator the fact that anything whatever had been done.

What does happen at present is this. A country clergyman, or, in the case of a cathedral, an architectural surveyor, neither of whom know by actual practice anything technically of stained-glass, hand the job over to some one representing a stained-glass establishment. This gentleman has studied stained-glass on paper, and knows as much about cutting or leading technically and by personal practice, as an architect does of masonry, or stone-carving—neither more nor less. That is to say, he has made sketch-books full of water-colour or pencil studies, and endless notes from old examples, and has never cut a bit of glass in his life, or leaded it.

Well, he assumes the responsibility, and the client reposes in the blissful confidence that all is well.

Is all well?

The work is placed in the charge of the manager, and through him it filters down as part of the ordinary, natural course of events into the glazing-shop. Here this precious and fragile work of art we have described is handed over to a number of ordinary working men to treat by the ordinary methods of their trade. They know perfectly well that nobody above them knows as much as they, or, indeed, anything at all of their craft. Division of labour has made them "glaziers," as it has made the gentlemen above stairs, who do the cartoons or the painting, "artists." These last know nothing of glazing, why should glaziers know anything of art? It is perfectly just reasoning; they do their very best, and what they do is this. They take out the old, tender glass, with the colour hardly clinging to it, and they put it into fresh leads, and then they solder up the joints. And, by way of a triumphant wind-up to a good, solid, English, common-sense job, with no art-nonsense or fads about it, they proceed to scrub the whole on both sides with stiff grass-brushes (ordinarily sold at the oil-shops for keeping back-kitchen sinks clean), using with them a composition mainly consisting of exactly the same materials with which a housemaid polishes the fender and fire-irons. That is a plain, simple, unvarnished statement of facts. You may find it difficult of belief, but this is what actually happens. This is what you are having done everywhere, guardians of our ancient buildings. You'll soon have all your old windows "quite as good as new." It's a merry world, isn't it?

APPENDIX III

Hints for the Curriculum of a Technical School for Stained-Glass—Examples for Painting—Examples of Drapery—Drawing from Nature—Ornamental Design.

Examples for Painting.—I have already recommended for outline work the splendid reproductions of the Garter Plates at Windsor. It is more difficult to find equally good examples for painting; for if one had what one wished it would be photographed from ideal painted-glass or else from cartoons wisely prepared for glass-work. But, in the first case, if the photographs were from the best ancient glass—even supposing one could get them—they would be unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, because ancient glass, however well preserved, has lost or gained something by age which no skill can reproduce; and secondly, because however beautiful it is, all but the very latest (and therefore not the best) is immature in drawing. It is not wise to reproduce those errors. The things themselves look beautiful and sincere because the old worker drew as well as he could; but if we, to imitate them, draw less well than we can, we are imitating the accidents of his production, and not the method and principle of it: the principle was to draw as well as he could, and we, if we wish to emulate old glass, must draw as well as we can. For examples of Heads nothing can be better than photographs from Botticelli and other early Tuscan, and from the early Siennese painters. Also from Holbein, and chiefly from his drawings. There is a flatness and firmness of treatment in all these which is eminently suited to stained-glass work. Hands also may be studied from the same sources, for though Botticelli does not always draw hands with perfect mastery, yet he very often does, and the expression of them, as of his heads, is always dignified and full of sweetness and gentleness of feeling; and as soon as we have learnt our craft so as to copy these properly, the best thing is to draw hands and heads for ourselves.

Examples of Drapery.—To me there is no drapery so beautiful and appropriate for stained-glass work in the whole world of art, ancient or modern, as that of Burne-Jones, and especially in his studies and drawings and cartoons for glass; and if these are not accessible, at least we may pose drapery as like it as we can, and draw it ourselves and copy it. But I would, at any rate, earnestly warn the student against the "crinkly-crankly" drapery imitated from Dürer and his school, which fills up the whole panel with wrinkles and "turnovers" (the linings of a robe which give an opportunity for changing the colour), and spreads out right and left and up and down till the poor bishop himself (and in nine cases out of ten it is a bishop, so that he may be mitred and crosiered and pearl-bordered) becomes a mere peg to hang vestments on, and is made short and dumpy for that end.

There is a great temptation and a great danger here. This kind of work, where every inch of space is filled with ornament and glitter, and change and variety and richness, is indeed in many ways right and good for stained-glass; which is a broken-up thing; where large blank spaces are to be avoided, and where each little bit of glass should look "cared for" and thought of, as a piece of fine jewellery is put together in its setting; and if craftsmanship were everything, much might be said for these methods. There is indeed plenty of stained-glass of the kind more beautiful as craftsmanship than anything since the Middle Ages, much more beautiful and cunning in workmanship than Burne-Jones, and yet which is little else but vestments and curtains and diaper—where there is no lesson taught, no subject dwelt on, no character studied or portrayed. If we wish it to be so—if we have nothing to teach or learn, if we wish to be let alone, to be soothed and lulled by mere sacred trappings, by pleasant colours and fine and delicate sheen and the glitter of silk and jewels—well and good, these things will serve; but if they fail to satisfy, go to St. Philip's, Birmingham, and see the solemnities and tragedies of Life and Death and Judgment, and all this will dwindle down into the mere upholstery and millinery that it is.

Drawing from Nature.—There is a side of drawing practice almost wholly neglected in schools, which consists, not in training the eye and hand to correctly measure and outline spaces and forms, but in training the finger-ends with an H.B. pencil point at the end of them to illustrate texture and minute detail. It is necessary to look at things in a large way, but it is equally necessary to look at them in a small way; to be able to count the ribs on a blade of grass or a tiny cockle-shell, and to give them in pencil, each with its own light and shade. I find the whole key to this teaching to lie in one golden rule—not to frighten or daunt the student with big tasks at first. A single grain of wheat, not a whole ear of corn; some tiny seed, tiny shell; but whatever is chosen, to be pursued with a needle-pointed pencil to the very verge of lens-work. I must yet again quote Ruskin. "You have noticed," he says,[9 - "Ariadne Florentina," p. 108.] "that all great sculptors, and most of the great painters of Florence, began by being goldsmiths. Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is so fruitful? Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work and mind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo learned his business by dashing or hitting at it?"

Ornamental Design.—It is impossible here to enter into a description of any system of teaching ornament. At p. 294 I have given just as much as two pages can give of the seed from which such a thing may spring. In some of the collotypes from the finished glass the patterns on quarry or robe which spring from this seed may be traced—very imperfectly, but as well as the scale and the difficulties of photography and the absence of colour will allow.

What I find best, in commencing with any student, is to start four practices together, and keep them going together step by step, side by side, through the course, one evening for each, or some like division.

Technical Work.—Cutting, glazing, &c.

Painting Work.—By graduated examples, from simple outline up to a head of Botticelli.

Ornament, as described; and

Drawing from Nature, in the spirit and methods we have spoken of.

Moulding the whole into a system of composition and execution, tempered and governed as it goes along by judiciously chosen reading and reference to examples, ancient or modern.

NOTES ON THE COLLOTYPE PLATES

It is obvious that stained-glass cannot be adequately shown in book-illustration.

For instance, we cannot have either the scale of it or the colour—two rather vital exceptions. These collotypes are, therefore, put forth as mere diagrams for the use of students, to call their attention to certain definite points and questions of treatment, and no more pretending than if they were black-board drawings to give adequate pictures of what glass can be or should be.