FIG. 46.Fig. 46.
It will be right here to explain what relation the extreme outside measurement of your work should bear to the daylight sizes of the openings that it has to fill.I think we may say that, whatever the "mouldings" may be on the stone, there is always a flat piece at exact right angles to the face of the wall in which the window stands, and it is in this flat piece that the groove is cut to receive the glass (fig. 47).
FIG. 47.Fig. 47.
Now, as the glazed light has tofillthe daylight opening, there must obviously be a piece beyond the "daylight" size to go into the stone. By slipping the glazed light insideways, and even, in large lights, bybendingit slightly into a bow, you can just get into the stone a light an inch, or nearly so, wider than the opening; but the best way is to use an extra wide lead on the outside of your light, and bend back the outside leaf of it both front and back so that they stand at right anglesto the surface of the glass (fig. 48). By this means you can reduce the size of the panel by almost 1/4 of an inch on each side; you can push the panel then, without either bending or slanting it much, up to its groove; and, putting one side as far as it will gointothe groove, you can bend back again into their former place the two leaves of the lead on the opposite side; and when you have done that slidethemas far as they will go intotheirgroove, and do the same by the opposite pair. You will then have the panel in its groove, with about 1/4 of an inch to hold by and 1/4 of an inch of lead showing. Some people fancy an objection to this; perhaps in very small windows it might look better to have the glass "flush" with the stone; but for myself I like to see a littleshowingof that outside lead, on to which so many of the leads that cross the glass are fastened. Anyway you must bear the circumstance in mind in fixing down your straight-edges to start glazing the work; and that is why I have made this digression bymentioning now something that properly belongs to fixing.
FIG. 48.Fig. 48.
Now before beginning to glaze you must stretch and straighten the lead; and this is done as follows (fig. 49—Frontispiece).
Hold the "calm" of lead in your left hand, and run the finger and thumb of your right hand down the lead so as to get the core all one way and not at all twisted: then, holding one end firmly under your right foot, take tight hold of the other end with your pliers, and pull with nearly all your force in the direction of your right shoulder. Take care not to pull in the direction of your face; for if you do, and the lead breaks, you will break some of your features also. It is very important to be careful that the lead is truly straight and not askew, otherwise, when you use it in leading, the glass will never keep flat. The next operation is to open the lead with a piece of hard wood, such as boxwood orlignum-vitæ(fig. 50), made to your fancy for the purpose, but something like the diagram, which glaziers call a "lathykin" (as I understand it). For cutting the lead you must have a thin knife of good steel. Some use an old dinner-knife, some a palette-knife cut down—either square across the blade or at an angle—it is a matter of taste (fig. 51).
FIG. 50.Fig. 50.
FIG. 51.Fig. 51.
Having laid down your leads A and B (fig. 52), put in the corner piece of glass (No. 1); two of its sides will then be covered, leaving one uncovered. Take a strip of lead and bend it round the uncovered edge, and cut it off at D, so that the end fits close and true against thecoreof lead A. And you must take notice to cut with a perfectlyverticalcut, otherwise one side will fit close and the other will leave a gap.
FIG. 52.Fig. 52.
In fig. 53 A represents a good joint, B a bad one. Bend it round and cut itoff similarly at E. Common sense will tell you that you must get the angle correct by marking it with a slight incision of the knife in its place before you take it on to the bench for the final cut.
Slip it in, and push it in nice and tight, and put in piece No. 2.
FIG. 53. A BFig. 53.
But now look at your cut-line. Do you see that the inner edges of pieces 2, 3, and 4 all run in a fairly smooth curve, along which acontinuouspiece of lead will bend quite easily? Leave, then, that edge, and put in, first, the leads which divide No. 2 from No. 3, and No. 3 from No. 4. Now don't forget! the long lead has to come along the inside edges of all three; so the leaf of it will overlap those three edges nearly 1/8 of an inch (supposing you are using lead of 1/4 inch dimension). You must therefore cut the two little bits we are now busy upon1/8 of an inch short of the top edge of the glass(fig. 54), for the inside leads onlymeeteach other; it is only theoutsidelead that overlaps.
FIG. 54.Fig. 54.
How the Loose Glass is held in its place while Leading.—This is done withnails driven into the glazing table, close up against the edge of the lead; and the best of all for the purpose are bootmakers' "lasting nails"; therefore no more need be said about the matter; "use no other" (fig. 55).
FIG. 55.Fig. 55.
And you tap them in with two or three sharp taps; not of a hammer, for you do not want to waste time taking up a fresh tool, but with the end of your leading-knife which is called a "stopping-knife" (fig. 56), and which lead workers generally make for themselves out of an oyster-knife, by bending the blade to a convenient working angle for manipulating the lead, and graving out lines in the lower partof the handle, into which they run solder, terminating it in a solid lump at the butt-end which forms an excellent substitute for a hammer.
FIG. 56.Fig. 56.
Now as soon as you have got the bits 1, 2, 3, 4 in their places, with the leads F, G and H, I between them, you can take out the nails along the line K, F, H, M, one by one as you come to them, starting from K; and put along that line one lead enclosing the whole lot, replacing the nails outside it to keep all firm as you work; and you must note that you should look out for opportunities to do this always, whenever there is a long line of the cut-line without any abrupt corners in it. You will thus save yourself the cutting (and afterwards the soldering) of unnecessary joints; for it is always good to save labour where you can without harm to the work; and in this case the work is all the better for it.
Now, when you have thus continued the leading all the way across the panel, put on the other outside lead, and so work on to a finish.
When the opposite, outside lead is put on, remove the nails and take another straight-edge and put it against the lead,and "knock it up" by hitting the straight-edge until you get it to the exact size; at the same time taking your set-square and testing the corners to see that all is at right angles.
Leave now the panel in its place, with the straight-edges still enclosing it, and solder off the joints.
Soldering—Handling the Leaded Panel—Cementing—Recipe for Cement—The Brush—Division of Long Lights into Sections—How Joined when Fixed—Banding—Fixing—Chipping out the Old Glazing—Inserting the New and Cementing.
If the leads have gottarnishedyou may brush them over with the wire brush (fig. 57), which glaziers call a "scratch-card"; but this is a wretched business and need never be resorted to if you work with good lead and work "fresh and fresh," and finish as you go, not letting the work lie about and get stale. Take an old-fashioned tallow "dip" candle, and put a little patch of the grease over each joint, either by rubbing the candle itself on it, or bymelting some of it in a saucepan and applying it with a brush. Then take your soldering-iron (fig. 58) and get it to the proper heat, which you must learn by practice, and proceed to "tin" it by rubbing it on a sheet of tin with a little solder on it, and also some resin and a little glass-dust, until the "bit" (which is of copper) has a bright tin face. Then, holding the stick of solder in the left hand, put the end of it down close to the joint you wish to solder, and put the end of the iron against it, "biting off" as it were, but reallymeltingoff, a little bit, which will form a liquid drop upon the joint. Spread this drop so as to seal up the joint nice and smooth and even, and the thing is done. Repeat with all the joints; then turn the panel over and do the opposite side.
FIG. 57.Fig. 57.
FIG. 58.Fig. 58.
How to Handle Leaded Lights.—I said "turn the panel over." But that brings to mind a caution that you need about the handling of leaded lights. You must not—as I once saw a man do—start to hold them as a waiter does a tray. You must note that thin glass in the sheet and also leaded lights, especially before cementing, are not rigid, and cannot be handled as if they were panels of wood; you must take care, when carrying them, or when they lean against the wall, to keep them as nearly upright as they will safely stand, and the inside one leaning against a board, and not bearing its own weight. And in laying them on the bench or in lifting them off it, you must first place them so that the middle line ofthem corresponds with the edge of the bench, or table, and then turn them on that as an axis, quickly, so that they do not bear their own weight longer than necessary (figs. 59 and 60).
How to Cement a Leaded Light.—The next process is the cementing of the light so as to fill up the grooves of the lead and make all weather-proof. This is done with a mixture composed as follows:—Whitening, 2/3 to plaster of Paris 1/3; add a mixture of equal quantities of boiled linseed-oil and spirit of turpentine to make a paste about as thick as treacle. Add a little red lead to help to harden it, some patent dryer to cause it to dry, and lamp-black to colour.
This must be put in plenty on to the surface of the panel and well scrubbed into the joints with a hard fibre brush; an ordinary coarse "grass brush" or "bass brush," with wooden back, as sold for scrubbing brushes at the oil shops, used in all directions so as to rub the stuff into every joint.
But you must note that if you have "plated" (i.e.doubled) any of the glass you must, before cementing,puttythose places. Otherwise the cement may probablyrun in between the two, producing blotches which you have no means of reaching in order to remove them.
FIG. 59.Fig. 59.
You can, if you like, clean away all the cement along the edges of the leads; but it is quite easy to be too precise and neatin the matter and make the work look hard. If you do it, a blunted awl will serve your turn.
FIG. 60.Fig. 60.
One had better mention everything, and therefore I will here say that,of course, a large light must be made in sections; and these should not exceed four feet in height, and less is better. In fixing these in their place when the window is put up (an extra wide flat lead being used at the top and bottom of each section), they are made to overlap; and if you wish the whole drainage of the window to pass into the building, of course you will put your section thus—(fig. 61 A); while if you wish the work to be weather-tight you will place it thus—(fig. 61 B). It is just as well to make every question clear if one can, and therefore I mention this. Most people like their windows weather-tight, and, of course, will make the overlapping lead the top one; but it's a free country, and I don't pretend to dictate, content if I make the situation clear to you, leaving you to deal with it according to your own fancy. All is now done except the banding.
FIG. 61 A.Fig. 61a. Fig.61 b.
How to Band a Leaded Light.—Banding means the putting on of the little ties of copper wire by which the window has to be held to the iron crossbars that keep it in its place. These ties are simply short lengths of copper wire, generally about four inches long, but varying, of course, with the size of the bar that you mean to use; and these are to be soldered vertically (fig. 62) on to the face of the light at any convenient places along the line where the bar will cross. In fixing the window, these wires are to be pulled tight round the bar and twisted up with pliers, and the twisted end knocked down flat and neat against the bar.
And this is the very last operation in the making of a stained-glass window. It now only remains to instruct you as to what relates to the fixing of it in its place.
How to Fix a Window in its Place.—There is, almost always, a groove in the stonework to receive the glass; and, except in the case of an unfinished building, this is, of course, occupied by some form of plain glazing. You must remove this by chipping out with a small mason's chisel the cement with which it is fixed in the groove, and common sensewill tell you to begin at the bottom and work upwards. This done, untwist the copper bands from the bars and put your own glass in its place, re-fixing the bars (or new ones) in the places you have determined on to suit your design and to support the glass, and fixing your glass to them in the way described, and pointing the whole with good cement. The method of inserting the new glass is described atp. 135.
FIG. 62.Fig. 62.
But that it is good for a man to feel the satisfaction of knowing his craft thoroughly there would be no need to go into this, which, after all, is partly masons' work. But I, for my part, cannot understand the spirit of an artist who applies his art to a craft purpose and has not, at least, a strongwishto know all that pertains to it.
Introductory—The Great Questions—Colour—Light—Architectural Fitness—Limitations—Thought—Imagination—Allegory.
The foregoing has been written as a handbook to use at the bench, and therefore I have tried to keep myself strictly to describing the actual processes and the ordinary practice and routine of stained-glass work.
But can we leave the subject here?
If we were speaking of even the smallest of the minor arts and crafts, we should wish to say something of why they are practised and how they should be practised, of the principles that guide them, of the spirit in which they should be undertaken, of the place they occupy in human affairsand in our life on earth. How much more then in an Art like this, which soars to the highest themes, which dares to treat, which is required to treat, of things Heavenly and Earthly, of the laws of God, and of the nature, duty, and destinies of man; and not only so, but must treat of these things in connection with, and in subservience to, the great and dominant Art of Architecture?
We must not shrink, then, from saying all that is in our mind: we must ask ourselves the great questions of all art. We must investigate the How of them, and even face the Why.
Therefore here (however hard it be to do it) something must be said of such great general principles as those of colour, of light, of architectural fitness, of limitations, of thought and imagination and allegory; for all these things belong to stained-glass work, and it is the right or wrong use of these high things that makes windows to be good or to be bad.
Let us, dear student, take the simplest things first, not because they are the easiest (though they perhaps are so), but because they will gradually, I hope, warm up our wits to the point of consideringthese matters, and so prepare the way for what is hardest of all.
And I think a good subject to begin with is that of Economy generally, taking into consideration both time and materials.
Of Economy—The Englishman's Wastefulness—Its Good Side—Its Excess—Difficulties—A Calculation—Remedies.
Those who know work in various countries must surely have arrived at the conclusion that the Englishman is the most wasteful being on the face of the globe! He only thinks of getting through the work, or whatever it may be, that he has purposed to himself, attaining the end immediately in view in the speediest manner possible without regard to anything else, lavish of himself and of the stuff he works with. The picture drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson in "Treasure Island" of John Silver and his pirates, when about to start on their expedition, throwing the remainder of their breakfast on the bivouac fire, careless whence fresh supplies might come, is"English all over." This is the character of the race. It has its good side, this grand disdain—it wins Battles, Victoria Crosses, Humane Society's medals, and other things well worth the winning; brings into port many a ship that would else be lost or abandoned, and, year in, year out, sends to sea the lifeboats on our restless line of coast. It would be something precious indeed that would be worth the loss of it; but there is a medium in all things, and when a master sees—as one now at rest once told me he often had seen—a cutter draw his diamond down a bit of the margin out of which he had just cut his piece, in order to make it small enough to throw away, without being ashamed, under the bench, he must sometimes, I should think, wish the man were employed on some warlike or adventurous trade, and that he had a Hollander or Italian in his place, who would make a whole window out of what the other casts away.
At the same time, it must be confessed that this is a very difficult matter to arrange; and it is only fair to the workman to admit that under existing conditions of work and demand, and even in many cases of the buildings in which the work is done,the way does not seem clear to have the whole of what might be wished in this matter. I will point out the difficulties against it.
First, unless some system could be invented by which the amount of glass issued to any workman could be compared easily and simply with the area of glazed work cut from it, the workman has no inducement to economise; for, no record being kept of the glass saved, he knows that he will get no credit by saving, while the extra time that he spends on economy will make him seem a slower workman, and so he would be blamed.
Then, again, it is impossible to see the colour of glass as it lies on the bench; he has little choice but to cut each piece out of the large sheet; for if he got a clutter of small bits round him till he happened to want a small bit, he would never be able to get on.
There is no use, observe, in niggling and cheese-paring. There should be a just balance made between the respective values of the man's time and the material on which it is spent; and to this end I now give some calculations to show these—calculations rather startling,considered in the light of what one knows of the ordinary practices and methods.
The antique glasses used in stained-glass work vary in price from 1s. a foot to 5s., the weight per foot being about 32 oz.
The wage of the workmen who have to deal with this costly material varies from 8d. to 1s. per hour.
The price of the same glass thrown under the bench, and known as "cullet," is £1 per TON.
Let us now do a little simple arithmetic, which, besides its lesson to the workers, may, I think, come as a revelation even to some employers who, content with getting work done quickly, may have hardly realised the price paid for that privilege.
Therefore these glasses are worth respectively—56 times, 140 times, and 280 times as much upon the bench as they are when thrown below it! And yet I ask you—employer or employed—is it not the case that, often—shall we not say "generally"?—in any given job as much goes below as remains above if the work is in fairly small pieces? Is not the accompanying diagram a fair illustration (fig. 63) of about the average relation of the shape cut to its margin of waste?
FIG. 63.Fig. 63.
Employers estimate this waste variously. I have heard it placed as high as two-thirds; that is to say, that the glass, when leaded up, only measured one-third of the material used, or, in other words, that the workman had wasted twice as much as he used. This, I admit, was told me in my character ascustomer, and by way of explaining what I considered a high charge for work; but I suppose that no one with experience of stained-glass work would bedisposed to place the amount of waste lower than one-half.
Now a good cutter will take between two and three hours to cut a square foot of average stained-glass work, fairly simple and large in scale; that is to say, supposing his pay one shilling an hour—which is about the top price—the material he deals with is about the same value as his time if he is using the cheapest glasses only. If this then is the case when the highest-priced labour is dealing only with the lowest-priced material, we may assume it as the general rule for stained-glass cutting,on the average,that "labour is less costly than the material on which it is spent," and I would even say much less costly.
But it is not to be supposed that the little more care in avoiding waste which I am advocating would reduce his speed of work more than would be represented by twopence or threepence an hour.
But I fear that all suggestions as to mitigating this state of things are of little use. The remedy is to play into each other's hands by becoming, all of us, complete, all-round craftsmen; breaking down all the unnatural and harmful barriers that exist between "artists" and"workmen," and so fitting ourselves to take an intelligent interest in both the artistic and economic side of our work.
The possibility of this all depends on the personal relations and personal influence in any particular shop—and employers and employed must worry the question out between them. I am content with pointing out the facts.
Of Perfection—In Little Things—Cleanliness—Alertness—But not Hurry—Realising your Conditions-False lead lines—Shutting out Light—Bars—Their Number—Their Importance—Precedence—Observing your Limitations—A Result of Complete Training—The Special Limitations of Stained-Glass—Disguising the lead line—No full Realism—No violent Action—Self-Effacement—No Craft-Jugglery—Architectural Fitness founded on Architectural Knowledge—Seeing Workin Situ—Sketching in Glass—The Artistic Use of the Lead—Stepping Back—Accepting Bars and Leads—Loving Care—White Spaces to be Interesting—Bringing out the "Quality" of the Glass—Spotting and Dappling—"Builders-Glazing"versusModern Restoring.
The second question of principle that I would dwell upon is that ofperfection.
Every operation in the arts should be perfect. It has to be so in most arts, from violin-playing to circus-riding, before the artist dare make his bow to the public.
Placing on one side the question of the higher grades of art which depend upon special talent or genius—the great qualities of imagination, composition, form and colour, which belong to mastership—I would now, in this book, intended for students, dwell upon those minor things, the doing of which well or ill depends only upon good-will, patience, and industry.
Anyone can wash a brush clean; any one can keep the colour on his palette neat; can grind it all up each time it is used; can cover it over with a basin or saucer when his work is over; and yet these things are often neglected, though so easy to do. The painter willneglectto wash out his brush; and it will be clogged with pigment and gum, get dry, and stick to the palette, and the points of the hair will tear and break when it is removed again by the same careless hand that left it there.
Another will leave portions of hiscolour, caked and dry, at the edges of his palette for weeks, till all is stale; and then, when the spirit moves him, will some day work this in, full of dirt and dust, with the fresher colour. Everything, everything should be done well! From the highest forms of painting to tying up a parcel or washing out a brush;—all tools should be clean at all times, the handles as well as the hair—there isno excusefor the reverse; and if your tools are dirty, it is by the same defect of your character that will make you slovenly in your work. Painting does not demand the same actualswiftnessas some other arts; nevertheless each touch that you place upon the glass, though it may be deliberate, should be deft, athletic, perfect in itself; the nerves braced, the attention keen, and the powers of soul and body as much on the alert as they would need to be in violin-playing, fencing, or dissecting.
This is not to advocatehurry. That is another matter altogether, for which also there is no excuse. Never hurry, or ask an assistant to hurry. Windows are delayed, even promises broken (though that can scarce be defended), there may be "ire in celestial minds"; but that is all forgottenwhen we are dead; and we soon shall be, but not the window.
Another thing to note, which applies generally throughout all practice, is the wisdom, of getting as near as you can to your conditions. For instance, the bits of glass in a window are separated by lead lines; pitch-black, therefore, against the light of day outside. Now, when waxed up on the plate in the shop for painting, these will be separated by thin cracks of light, and in this condition they are usually painted. Can't you do better than that? Don't you think it's worth while spending half-an-hour to paint false lead lines on the back of the plate? A ha'p'orth of lamp-black from the oil-shop, with a little water and treacle and a long-haired brush, like a coach-painter's, will do it for you (see PlateXIII.).
Another thing: when the window is in its place, eachlightwill be surrounded with stone or brick, which, although not so black as the lead lines, will tell as a strong dark against the glass. See therefore that while you are painting, your glass is surrounded by dark, or at any rate not by clear, glittering light. Strips of brown paper, pinned down the sides of thelight you are painting, will get the thing quite near to its future conditions.
As you have been told, the work is fixed in its place by bars of iron, and these ought by no means to be despised or ignored or disguised, as if they were a troublesome necessity: you must accept fully and willingly the conditions of your craft; you must pride yourself upon so accepting them, knowing that they are the wholesome checks upon your liberty and the proper boundaries of the field in which you have your appointed work. There should, in any light more than a foot wide, be bars at every foot throughout the length of the light; and these bars should be 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch, or 1 inch in section, according to the weight of the work. The question then arises: Should the bars be set out in their places on the paper, before you begin to draw the cartoon, or should you be perfectly free and unfettered in the drawing and thenmakethe bars fit in afterwards, by moving them up and down as may be needed to avoid cutting across the faces, hands, &c.
I find more difficulty in answering this than any othertechnicalquestion in this book. I do not think it can be answeredwith a hard and fast "Yes" or "No." It depends on the circumstances of the case. But I incline towards the side of making it the rule to put the bars in first, and adapt the composition to them. You may think this a surprising view for an artist to take. "Surely," you will say, "that is putting the cart before the horse, and making the more important thing give way to the less!" But my feeling is that reasonable limitations of any kind ought never to be considered as hindrances in a work of art. They are part of the problem, and it is only a spirit of dangerous license which will consider them as bonds, or will find them irksome, or wish to break them through. Stained-glass is not an independent art. It is an accessory to architecture, and any limitations imposed by structure and architectural propriety or necessity are most gravely to be considered and not lightly laid on one side. And in this connection it must be remembered that the bars cannot be made to goanywhereto fit a freely designed composition: they must be approximately at certain distances on account of use; and they must be arranged with regard to each other inthe whole of the window on account of appearance.
You might indeed find that, in any single light, it is quite easy to arrange them at proper and serviceable distances, without cutting across the heads or hands of the figures; but it is ten chances to one that you can get them to do so, and still be level with each other, throughout a number of lights side by side.
The best plan, I think, is to set them out on the side of the cartoon-paper before you begin, but not so as to notice them; then first roughly strike out the position your most important groups or figures are to occupy, and, before you go on with the serious work of drawing, see if the bars cut awkwardly, and, if they do, whether a slight shifting of them will clear all the important parts; it often will, and then all is well; but I do not shrink from slightly altering even the position of a head or hand, rather than give a laboured look to what ought to be simple and straightforward by "coaxing" the bars up and down all over the window to fit in with the numerous heads and hands.
If, by the way, I see fit in any case toadopt the other plan, and make my composition first, placing the bars afterwards to suit it, I never allow myself to shift them from the level that is convenient and reasonable for anythingexcepta head; I prefer even that they should cut across a hand, for instance, rather than that they should be placed at inconvenient intervals to avoid it.
The principle of observing your limitations is, I do not hesitate to say, the most important, and far the most important, of all principles guiding the worker in the right practising of any craft.
The next in importance to it is the right exercise of all legitimate freedomwithinthose limitations. I place them in this order, because it is better to stop short, by nine-tenths, of right liberty, than to take one-tenth of wrong license. But by rights the two things should go together, and, with the requisite skill and training to use them, constitute indeed the whole of the practice of a craft.
Modern division of labour is much against both of these things, the observance of which charms us so in the ancient Gothic Art of the Middle Ages.
For, since those days, the craft hasnever been taught as a whole. Reader! this book cannot teach it you—no book, can; but it can make you—and it was written with the sole object of making you—wishto be taught it, and determine to be taught it, if you intend to practise stained-glass work at all.
Modern stained-glass work is done by numerous hands, each trained in a special skill—to design, or to paint, or to cut, or to glaze, or to fire, or to cement—but none are taught to do all; very few are taught to do more than one or two. How, then, can any either use rightful liberty or observe rightful limitations? They do not know their craft, upon which these things depend. And observe how completely also these two things depend upon each other. You may be rightly free,becauseyou have rightly learnt obedience; you know your limitations, and,therefore, you may be trusted to think, and feel, and act for yourself.
This is what makes old glass, and indeed all old art, so full of life, so full of interest, so full of enjoyment—in places, and right places, so full even of "fun." Do you think the charming grotesques that fill up every nook andcorner sometimes in the minor detail of mediæval glass or carving could ever be done by the method of a "superior person" making a drawing of them, and an inferior person laboriously translating them infacsimileinto the material? They are what they are because they were the spontaneous and allowed license and play of a craftsman who knew his craft, and could be trusted to use it wisely, at any rate in all minor matters.
THE LIMITATIONS OF STAINED-GLASS.
The limitations of stained-glass can only be learnt at the bench, and by years of patient practice and docile service; but it may be well to mention some of them.
You must not disguise your lead line.You must accept it willingly, as a limitation of your craft, and make it contribute to the beauty of the whole.
"But I have a light to do of the 'Good Shepherd,' and I want a landscape and sky, and how ugly lead lines look in a pale-blue sky! I get them like shapes of cloud, and still it cuts the sky up till it looks like 'random-rubble' masonry." Therefore large spaces of pale sky are "taboo," they will not do for glass, and you must modify your whole outlook, your whole composition, to suit whatwilldo. If you must have sky, it must be like a Titian sky—deep blue, with well-defined masses of cloud—and you must throw to the winds resolutely all idea of attempting to imitate the softness of an English sky; and even then it must not be in a large mass: you can always break it up with branched-work of trees, or with buildings.
There should be no full realism of any kind.
No violent action must assert itself in a window.
I do not say that there must not, in any circumstances, be any violent action—the subject may demand it; but, if so, it must be so disguised by the craftsmanship of the work, or treated so decoratively, or so mixed up with the background or surroundings, that you do not see a figure in violent action starting prominently out from the window as you stand in the church. But, after all, this is a thing of artistic sense and discretion, and no rules can be formulated. The Parthenon frieze is of figures in rapid movement. Yet what repose! And in stained-glassyou must aim at repose. Remember,—it is an accessory to architecture; and who is there that does not want repose in architecture? Name me a great building which does not possess it? How the architects must turn in their graves, or, if living, shake in their shoes, when they see the stained-glass man turned into their buildings, to display himself and spread himself abroad and blow his trumpet!
Efface yourself, my friend; sink yourself; illustrate the building; consider its lines and lights and shades; enrich it, complete it, make people happier to be in it.
There must be no craft-jugglery in stained-glass.
The art must set the craft simple problems; it must not set tasks that can only be accomplished by trickery or by great effort, disproportioned to the importance of the result. But, indeed, you will naturally get the habit of working according to this rule, and other reasonable rules, if you yourself work at the bench—all lies in that.
There must be nothing out of harmony with the architecture.
And, therefore, you must know somethingof architecture, not in order to imitate the work of the past and try to get your own mistaken for it, but to learn the love and reverence and joy of heart of the old builders, so that your spirit may harmonise with theirs.
Do not shrink from the trouble and expense of seeing the workin situ,and then, if necessary, removing it for correction and amendment.
If you have a large window, or a series of windows, to do, it is often not a very great matter to take a portion of one light at least down and try it in its place. I have done it very often, and I can assure you it is well worth while.
OF MAKING A SKETCH IN GLASS.
But there is another thing that may help you in this matter, and that is to sketch out the colour of your window in small pieces of glass—in fact, to make a scale-sketch of it in glass. A scale of one inch to a foot will do generally, but all difficult or doubtful combinations of colour should be sketched larger—full size even—before you venture to cut.
Work should be kept flat by leading.
One of the mainartisticuses of the leadwork in a window is that, if properly used, it keeps the work flat and in one plane, and allows far more freedom in the conduct of your picture, permitting you to use a degree of realism and fulness of treatment greater than you could do without it. Work may be done, where this limitation is properly accepted and used, which would look vulgar without it; and on the other hand, the most Byzantine rigidity may be made to look vulgar if the lead line is misused. I have seen glass of this kind where the work was all on one plane, and where the artist had so far grasped proper principles as to use thick leads, but hadcurved these leads in and out across the folds of the drapery as if they followed its ridges and hollows—the thing becoming, with all its good-will to accept limitations, almost more vulgar than the discredited "Munich-glass" of a few years ago, which hated and disguised the lead lines.
You must step back to look at your work as often and as far as you can.
Respect your bars and lead lines, and let them be strong and many.
Every bit of glass in a window should look "cared for."
If there is a lot of blank space that you "don't know how to fill," be sure your design has been too narrowly and frugally conceived. I do not mean to say that there may not be spaces, and even large spaces, of plain quarry-glazing, upon which your subject with its surrounding ornament may be planted down, as a rich thing upon a plain thing. I am thinking rather of a case where you meet with some sudden lapse or gap in the subject itself or in its ornamental surroundings. This is apt specially to occur where it is one which leads rather to pictorial treatment, and where, unless you have "canopy" or "tabernacle" work, as it is called, surrounding and framing everything, you find yourself at a loss how to fill the space above or below.
Very little can be said by way of general rule about this; each case must be decided on its merits, and we cannot speak without knowing them. But two things may be said: First, that it is well to be perfectly bold (as long as you are perfectly sincere), and not be afraid, merely because they are unusual, of things that you really would like to do if the window were for yourself.There are no hard and fast rules as to what may or may not be done, and if you are a craftsman and designer also—as the whole purpose of this book is to tell you you must be—many methods will suggest themselves of making your glass look interesting. The golden rule is to handle every bit of it yourself, and then you willbeinterested in the ingenuity of its arrangement; the cutting of it into little and big bits; the lacework of the leads; thickening and thinning these also to get bold contrasts of strong and slender, of plain and intricate; catching your pearly glass like fish, in a net of larger or smaller mesh; for, bear in mind always that this question relates almost entirely to thewhiterglasses. Colour has its own reason for being there, and carries its own interest; but the most valuable piece of advice that I can think of in regard to stained-glasstreatment(apart from the question of subject and meaning) is tomake your white spaces interesting.
The old painters felt this when they diapered their quarry-glazing and did such grisaille work as the "Five Sisters" window at York. Every bit of this last must have been put together and painted by a real craftsman delighting in his work.The drawing is free and beautiful; the whole work is like jewellery, the colour scheme delightfully varied and irregular. The work was loved: each bit of glass was treated on its merits as it passed through hand. Working in this way all things are lawful; you may even put a thin film of "matt" over any piece to lower it in tone and give it richness, or to bring out with emphasis some quality of its texture. Some bits will have lovely streaks and swirling lines and bands in them—"reamy," as glass-cutters call it—or groups of bubbles and spots, making the glass like agate or pebble; and a gentle hand will rub a little matt or film over these, and then finger it partly away to bring out its quality, just as a jeweller foils a stone. This is quite a different thing from smearing a window all over with dirt to make it a sham-antique; and where it is desirable to lower the tone of any white for the sake of the window, and where no special beauties of texture exist, it is better, I think, to matt it and then take out simplepatternsfrom the matt: notoutlinedat all, but spotted and streaked in the matt itself, chequered and petalled and thumb-marked, just as nature spotsand stripes and dapples, scatters daisies on the grass and snowflakes in the air, and powders over with chessboard chequers and lacings and "oes and eyes of light," the wings of butterflies and birds.
So man has always loved to work when he has been let to choose, and when nature has had her way. Such is the delightful art of the basket and grass-cloth weaver of the Southern seas; of the ancient Cyprian potter, the Scandinavian and the Celt. It never dies; and in some quiet, merciful time of academical neglect it crops up again. Such is the, often delightful, "builders-glazing" of the "carpenters-Gothic" period, or earlier, when the south transept window at Canterbury, and the east and west windows at Cirencester, and many such like, were rearranged with old materials and new by rule of thumb and just as the glazier "thought he would." Heaven send us nothing worse done through too much learning! I daresay he shouldn't have done it; but as it came to him to do, as, probably, he was ordered to do it, we may be glad he did it just so. In the Canterbury window, for instance, no doubt much of the old glass never belonged to that particular window; itmay have been, sinfully, brought there from windows where it did belong. At Cirencester there are numbers of bits of canopy and so forth, delightful fifteenth-century work, exquisitely beautiful, put in as best they could be; no doubt from some mutilated window where the figures had been destroyed—for, if my memory serves me, most of them have no figures beneath—and surrounded by little chequered work, and stripes and banding of the glaziers' own fancy. A modern restorer would have delighted to supply sham-antique saints for them, imitating fifteenth-century work (and deceiving nobody), and to complete the mutilated canopies by careful matching, making the window entirely correct and uninteresting and lifeless and accomplished and forbidding. The very blue-bottles would be afraid to buzz against it; whereas here, in the old church, with the flavour of sincerity and simplicity around them, at one with the old carving and the spirit of the old time, they glitter with fresh feeling, and hang there, new and old together, breaking sunlight; irresponsible, absurd, and delightful.
A Few Little Dodges—A Clumsy Tool—A Substitute—A Glass Rack—An Inconvenient Easel—A Convenient Easel—A Waxing-up Tool—An Easel with Movable Plates—Making the most of a Room—Handling Cartoons—Cleanliness—Dust—The Selvage Edge—Drying a "Badger"—A Comment.
Here, now, follow some little practical hints upon work in general; mere receipts; description of time-saving methods and apparatus which I have separated from the former part of the book; partly because they are mostly exceptions to the ordinary practice, and partly because they are of general application, the common-sense of procedure, and will, I hope, after you have learnt from the former parts of the book the individual processes and operations, help you to marshal these, in order and proportion, so as to use them to the greatest advantage and with the best results. And truly our stained-glass methods are most wasteful and bungling. The ancient Egyptians, they say, made glass, and I am sure someof our present tools and apparatus date from the time of the Pyramids.
A CLUMSY KILN-FEEDER.
What shall we say, for instance, of this instrument (fig. 64), used for loading some forms of kiln?