New Windows

There are two basic mediums that we make stained glass windows in. The most comon is the 3/16 inch thick Leaded Stained Glass. The less comon variety is 1 inch thick Faceted Glass.

All of our windows are original works of art. We have no catalogs to choose from and we make no copies.

LEADED STAINED GLASS

For our leaded windows, we use a base glass called ‘mouth blown full antique’ stained glass. The “full antique” does not describe its age but the method used in blowing it. This base glass has been, and to this day still is, the nicest glass made in the world. Most of what we use is blown in west Germany.

Almost all stained glass was blown free form in the air from the twelfth through nineteenth centuries. Nothing would touch the glass as it was being blown into cylinders prior to flattening. As the glass bubble expanded, stretched and cooled, all the accidental magical crystalline lines would appear, much like frost starting on the surface of a lake or on a window pane. Once the cylinder reached a size approximately 3 1/2 feet long by 1 foot wide, scissors or tin snips would cut off the still soft bright orange hot base (creating rondels) along with the other end where it was attached to the blowing pipe. The cylinder would quickly cool so that it could be cracked down the side. At this point, it would be put back into a kiln and slightly heated so that it would fold out into a sheet of glass about 24 by 36 inches. Once the cooled glass flattened onto the tray, it essentially would be the first time anything had touched the surface other than air.

Only a handful of countries in the world mouth blow stained glass and the textures vary from country to country. We use these varieties of textures to help create three dimensional glass sculptures. Our intent for the viewer is twofold: when they look at a window they initially see color, then secondly subject matter. Finally, once they have become familiar with their windows, they start to notice all the wonderful more subtle differences between the glasses (bubbles, crystalline ridges, painting techniques, etc.), so that every time they look, they are constantly discovering new aspects and characters. The nicest windows have a three dimensional or sculptural feel. Combine this with shifting light at various times of the day and a recipe is born for an ever changing and evolving work of art.

FACETED GLASS

Throughout history, religious art has always been the purview of stained glass. For better than a thousand years, this usually was carried out in some form of mouth blown, leaded glass. Although there have been some lesser, divergent paths developed as curious asides, faceted glass is the most recent significant development. It is almost a new medium.

Faceted Glass actually was discovered by accident in France, almost as a direct result of the Second World War. When World War ll started, a French glass blowing company headed by Gabriel Loire, lost its blowers to the war effort. Thinking this would be of short duration, the owner decided to go ahead with mixing the silicas and metal oxides to color the glass, and cast them into big blocks so that when the blowers returned, the materials would be ready. Because of the nature of glass, these large blocks would literally explode, unless they were cooled very slowly. He cast them into thinner and thinner blocks until that aspect was controlled. However, he noticed
that, in moving, when the blocks hit each other, strange but beautiful ‘shell’ facets would flake off. And a new medium was born.

The earlier faceted glass commissions were set into concrete which worked well for a short time. However, the expansion and contraction coefficients of glass and concrete are enough different that structural cracks started to develop, leading to a serious question as to whether this medium should survive.

Through a considerable amount of experimentation with many many materials using a variety of techniques, Robert Frei and Robert Bemis developed a process here at the Studio of mixing epoxy resins and silicas in the same sized granules that go into the melting of glass, until they got the expansion and contraction rates exactly the same.

With the success of this development, a new process was possible. However, being a stained glass studio AND a chemical manufacturer, was not a desire so the patent rights were given to Bob Bemis who started the successful manufacturing company, BENESCO. It is now the only material used by all studios, throughout the world for faceted glass.