Stained glass got its reputation for subliminal, breath-taking beauty first in medieval Europe, where it was incorporated into stunning Gothic cathedrals with their flying buttresses, rose windows, and sky-high ceilings. These graceful works of architecture wouldn’t be the same with out their rows and rows of stained glass windows, whose intricate designs and images seemed to glow in the sunlight, filling interior spaces with jewel-like color.
The process of adding ground-up metals to molten glass to give it color dates from ancient Roman times, when stained-glass windows first appeared. The technique was perfected around 1150, when pieces of colored glass were assembled into patterns and then fitted between soldered strips of lead. At first these windows were mostly geometric in design, but during the Renaissance, artists would actually paint on the colored glass to create enormous glass paintings, whose religious imagery was illuminated by natural light.
For centuries, the Catholic Church was the only organization in Europe wealthy enough to afford such extravagance. During the Victorian Era, secular stained glass did appear as coats of arms or diamond-shaped Dutch windows, but this was rare...
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that stained glass made its way into laypeople’s homes. In 1889, architect E.S. Prior developed a new kind of glass called slag glass, which had irregular texture and color. This kind of glass was favored by those in the Arts and Crafts movement, who employed stained glass in abstract, geometric patterns to produce slag glass lamps, among other objects. From this innovation, Christopher Whall invented a new style of stained glass that focused on the lines made by the lead and used very little paint.
Some of Whall’s students found their way to the Glass House studios, run by Mary Lowndes and A.J. Drury. Whall also influenced Sarah Purser who founded the Tower of Glass studio in Dublin, run by Whall’s colleague A.E. Childs—the studio led to a revival of stained glass in Ireland. Over the decades, Tower of Glass produced work by influential designers like Michael Healy, Wilhelmina Geddes, and Evie Hone.
Meanwhile, around the turn of the century, American artists John LaFarge and Louis Comfort Tiffany set out to put a modern-day spin on medieval ideas with their stained glass windows, lamps, and works of art glass. LaFarge, like Tiffany, began his career as a painter and brought a painterly sensibility to unpainted glass. Sometimes he would layer pieces of differently colored glass to achieve new hues, and in 1879 he even developed and copyrighted a type of opalescent glass. These two rivals made both church and home windows.
The work of these artists became more intricate as a new process allowed them to assemble their stained glass with copper instead of lead. Tiffany jumped on new electric lamp technology, making richly detailed and colorful lamp shades of stained glass for industrialist elites like the Vanderbilts and Astors. His work was widely copied, with cheap imitators offering less elaborate lamps to the lower classes.
After Tiffany’s and LaFarge’s experiments, stained glass became a more common medium for decorative artists, who made stained glass in patterns and images that reflected the movement du jour—Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, De Stijl, and Bauhaus. Frank Lloyd Wright designed stained-glass windows in geometric patterns intended to complement the serene lines and patterns of his rooms and their furniture. Piet Mondrian made stained-glass windows that echoed his famous black-on-white grid paintings with their colored squares. Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, and Henri Matisse are just a few of the other artists who executed pieces in stained glass.
During World War II, much of the medieval and Gothic style glass in Europe, usually featuring narrative religious scenes, was destroyed. After the war—particularly in Germany—it was replaced with stained glass in the abstract geometric patterns of the day. In fact, Germany is credited with completely breaking the art of stained glass from its pictorial past, starting with ’20s artists like Johann Thorn Prikker, and continuing after the war with Georg Meistermann, whose symbolic work had a sense of movement, and Ludwig Schaffrath, who created tremendous walls of light.
In France, artist Jean Crotti is credited with developing a technique in the 1930s known as gemmail, in which no lead or copper is used between the pieces of colored glass. Instead, the different pieces of glass are fused together, creating a 3D illusion. Many great paintings have been reproduced in glass using this method.
Stained glass thrived again as an art medium in the 1970s as artists, particularly on the West Coast, experimented with the design, imagery, and illusions that could be produced with glass. Their experiments often featured highly detailed imagery, optical illusions, organic shapes, or jokes on the nature of glass and windows. Jad Fair, Paul Marioni, Fred Abrams, Peter Mollica, Dan Fenton, Narcissus Quagliata, Otto B. Rigan, Kathie Stackpole Bunnell, James Hubbell, Dick Weiss, and Judy Raffael are among these modern innovators.
Interviews & Articles
Loetz Glass Collector Eddy Scheepers on the Pride of Bohemia

Loetz was a Bohemian company. It was a factory; and the region’s biggest and best glass manufacturer. There were other contemporar… [more]
U.S. Studio Art Glass, Before and After Chihuly

Marvin Lipofsky introduced me to glass while I was getting a bachelor’s degree in ceramics at the California College of Arts in Oa… [more]
Reyne Haines Spills on Tiffany, Chihuly, and Loetz

I started becoming interested in art glass when I moved from Texas to New York, and wanted to decorate my apartment with New York-… [more]
Best of the Web (“Hall of Fame”)
Loetz.com

This fabulous site is a guide to Bohemian art glass makers from 1885 to 1920. Loetz was the premier Bohemian glass … [read review or visit site]
Cloud Glass Reference Site

Chris and Val Stewart’s impressive attempt to create a complete catalogue of all known cloud glass, a decorative … [read review or visit site]
Antiquesaltshakers.com

This website, home of the Antique and Art Glass Salt Shaker Collector's Society, offers a beautiful photo gallery s… [read review or visit site]
Clubs & Associations
- Stained Glass Association of America
- Antiquesaltshakers.com
- The Glass Art Society
- The Glass Association
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Recent News: Stained Glass
Source: Google News
Photos: The Three & a Half-Ton Stained Glass 'Austin Wall'
KUT News, June 18thClifford Ross' passion for art has led him down an unusual path. Painting, sculpting, photography and camera-design have all led him to today, the day that his latest piece is displayed to the community. His three and a half ton stained glass mural...Read more
Sugar Land stained glass artist adds color to area art scene
Your Houston News, June 18thSugar Land stained glass artist adds color to area art scene. Stained glass pieces by Edward Riesenburg on display at the Sugar Land Art Center and Gallery in Sugar Land. Sugar Land stained glass artist adds color to area art scene. Photo by Alan...Read more
Vandal breaks 168-year-old stained glass window at 19th century church
WTAE Pittsburgh, June 17th3 Shock and sadness today at a church in Somerset County after someone tossed a rock through a PRICELESS stained glass window. Channel 4 Action News reporter Ashlie HardwayLincoln -- to get a closer 3 3 THIS WINDOW - AND THOSE LIKE IT ...Read more
Martin family remembered in stained glass
Stockton Record, June 17thTwo magnificent stained glass windows in Morris Chapel at University of the Pacific bear the name of the family that owned The Record for generations. The Jacob and Joseph window (it depicts the Biblical figures Jacob and Joseph) bears the donor name...Read more
Stained glass windows at burned Denver church get artisan treatment
Denver Post, June 15thPhil Watkins from Watkins Stained Glass Studio carefully removes the Holy Penance window on Friday to be taken to his Englewood studio for restoration. The process to restore the stained glass in the Church of the Ascension is expected to take about...Read more
Happy birthday: St. Anthony's gets new stained-glass window
WatertownDailyTimes.com, June 14thAfter 100 years, a stained-glass window at St. Anthony's Church in Watertown was replaced this week by Lynchburg Stained Glass, of Lynchburg, Va. Seen in the window Wednesday are Jeff C. Speake, Tom McQuaid and Troy Kidd. See additional photos at ...Read more
Historic American Fork church gets new stained glass
ksl.com, June 9thAt age 93, she's watching improvements to the church she has attended for 67 years — new stained glass windows. Each of the four windows is a scene of the life of Christ. Debra Maughn, an elder of the congregation, has led a committee that for years...Read more
Stained Glass Labs launches the app directory for Google Glass (updated)
VentureBeat, June 6th[Disclosure: Stained Glass Labs founder Redg Snodgrass is a consultant for VentureBeat's MobileBeat conference, July 9-10 in San Francisco.] Google Glass is still in its developer testing phase, but one of the first app directory for Google's digital...Read more
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