Stained glass
Stained glass is glass coloured by adding metallic salts when it is made. The coloured glass is made into stained glass windows. Small pieces of glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures. The glass is held together by strips of lead and supported by a rigid frame.
Painted details and yellow stain are often used to improve the design. The term stained glass is also applied to windows in which the colours have been painted onto the glass and then fused to the glass in a kiln.
Stained glass is much used in Christian art but other themes are not rare.[1] It is still popular today, and often called art glass.[2] It is often used in luxury homes and commercial buildings.[3]
Some colours are added to stained glass by the salts of:
- Copper: metal gives dark red glass
- Gold: metal in tiny amounts (0.001%) produces ruby red glass
- Silver, usually silver nitrate, gives range of red to yellow colours
- Cobalt: brilliant blue
- Manganese dioxide: green
- Iron(II) oxide: blue-green
- Chromium: dark green
De Stijl abstraction by Theo van Doesburg, Netherlands (1917): an example of modern art in glass
The Bald Eagle, Dryden High School, USA. Dynamic figures are unusual in stained glass
Stained Glass Media
The north rose window of the Chartres Cathedral (Chartres, France), donated by Blanche of Castile. It represents the Virgin Mary, surrounded by Biblical kings and prophets. Below is St Anne, mother of the Virgin, with four righteous leaders. The window includes the arms of France and Castile.
Grisaille stained glass (15th century)
Swiss armourial glass of the Arms of Unterwalden, 1564, with typical painted details, extensive silver stain, Cousin's rose on the face, and flashed ruby glass with abraded white motif.
Detail from a 13th-century window in the Basilica of Saint-Quentin depicting the creation of a stained-glass window in Middle Ages.
Renaissance roundel using only black or brown glass paint, and silver stain. The bishop-saint Lambrecht of Maastricht stands in an extensive landscape, 1510–20. Diameter Lua error in Module:Convert at line 452: attempt to index field 'titles' (a nil value).. Designed to be placed low, close to the viewer.
Detail of German panel (1444) of Visitation; pot metal, including white glass, black vitreous paint, yellow silver stain, and olive-green enamel. The plant patterns in the red sky are formed by scratching away black paint from the red glass before firing. Restored with new lead cames.
German glass, Nuremberg, after a drawing by Sebald Beham, c. 1525. Silver stain produces a range of yellows and gold, and painted on the reverse of the blue sky, gives the dark green of the cross.
13th-century window from Chartres showing extensive use of the ubiquitous cobalt blue with green and purple-brown glass, details of amber and borders of flashed red glass.
A 19th-century window illustrates the range of colours common in both Medieval and Gothic Revival glass, Lucien Begule, Lyon (1896).
A 16th-century window by Arnold of Nijmegen showing the combination of painted glass and intense colour common in Renaissance windows.
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References
- ↑ Sarah Brown 1994. Stained glass: an illustrated history. Bracken Books. ISBN 1-85891-157-5
- ↑ Lawrence Lee, George Seddon & Francis Stephens 1976. Stained glass. Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 0-600-56281-6
- ↑ Features of stained glass glazing of a private house