light made solid

When you tell people that you're a stained glass painter, most people don't understand what that means. They assume you mean you're the person who takes clear glass, and somehow injects it with color. In most cases, this isn't so. In fact, color is ordinarily added to glass as part of the production process at the factory.

From there, glass is shipped to studios. Artists at studios then choose glass for their projects by looking at colors and textures of factory glass samples. Some stained glass windows never actually get painted at all. Once glass samples are chosen, pieces are cut to the proper size and shape, and then leaded together into a window and installed.

The kind of work we really enjoy and specialize in at Glass Threshold is actually a bit more involved than that. As a quick rundown of the process: once colored glass has been chosen and cut to size, we then paint it. Stained glass painting is a little like painting with brush and ink, although the texture of the glass makes for a much different experience. Stained glass paints generally come in powdered form. This is then mixed with a small amount of gum arabic which helps adhere the paint together. We then mix in a small amount of water to get a sort of "runny yogurt" consistency.

Most of the painting we do on stained glass is actually in blacks and browns - although sometimes we do apply other colors (yellow is the next most frequent). We may apply linework, solid blocks of color, or we may apply tones, washes and textures. Once paint is applied, it's allowed to dry. We then use a sharpened piece of wood, shaped like a pencil, to scratch out additional texture or touch up line work. After that, the glass is placed in a kiln and fired. In the intense heat, the glass softens, and metals and other materials in the glass paint become fused into the surface of the ultra-hot glass. This way, when the glass cools off later, it's bonded right into the glass and won't come off.

Find out more technical details about our glass painting process by checking out our more detailed tutorial on it, as well as our glass painting services page.