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Pittsburgh Live has an interesting profile of two local glass artists. Peter O'Rourke is an Irish immigrant who came to work in Pittsburgh's glass industry in the 1970's. He specializes in glass wares, rather than stained glass, so that means he makes things like bowls, vases, cups, and other objects.

Peter Jandura is another long-time Pittsburgh glass artisan, but he works in stained glass and leaded glass. Of the industry, Jandura says:

"This place is in great need of glass artists. There is a church on every corner and neighborhoods full of Victorian houses, all with stained and leaded glass artistry in need of restoration," he said. "My type of art speaks for itself; it isn't something that needs advertising."

Interesting stuff.

The Union Project is an interesting collaborative effortin Pittsburgh to restore the Union Baptist Church. Their goal is "to provide gathering and working space for artists, community builders and people of faith." They also run an innovative stained glass teaching workshop, which they are using to not only teach people the craft of stained glass, but also to have the community participate in the rebuilding of the windows and the church itself. There are over a hundred stained glass windows in the church, so it's no small project. To find out more, visit their website where you can rent space, donate money to the project or participate in one of their programs.

Jayne Crowley is a self-taught stained glass artist who has built herself a lively business in Branford, CT. Starting with only books and personal experimentation, Crowley has developed her hobby into a 30+ year career. Her company is called ArtGlass Designs, LLC, and she shares a space with another company called Bittersweet Glassworks LLC. She creates a variety of glass objects including plates, cups, ornaments, golf putters, clocks and ceremonial tribal masks, various windows, glass doors and cabinets. She's also done some work restoring windows for nearby churches, on which she offers the following insights:

"With a lot of the churches now, you're starting to find that the lead is deteriorating," she said. "So you have to take the window completely apart and then reassemble it with new lead. When your doing that, you want to make sure you try to use all the original glass. You want to keep as much of the integrity of the original window as you possibly can."

Her example should definitely serve as an inspiration to amateur stained glass artists everywhere.

Here's an interesting stained glass news item out of Somerville, NJ: (page 1, page 2). St. John's Episcopal Church has recently undergone a massive renovation/restoration project. Almost all of St. John's 18 stained glass windows were restored, including several Tiffany windows. The project cost $1.5 million and was paid for through a combination of parish fund-raising and matching grants from the Garden State Historic Preservation Trust Fund. A New Jersey architecture firm named Historic Building Architects, LLC was employed to assist in the restoration. The church was originally built in 1852, and rebuilt in its current form in 1892.

Here's an interesting item in the news today that relates to the history of glass. A site was found in Egypt where glass may have been manufactured from raw materials as early as 1250 BC. The process they likely used is described as:

Glass was made using finely crushed quartz powder which was melted with other materials inside the ceramic crucibles, which then were broken to get the glass out, they reported.

The glass ingots "would then have been transported to other, artistic workshops where they were re-melted and worked into objects," Pusch and Rehren reported.

Most of the glass is said to have been red in color because of copper used in the mixing process, although some was blue or colorless. Historians believe that glass was an important and valuable export from Egypt to the rest of the ancient world. They've also discovered other interesting glass finds, such as an ancient shipwreck bearing glass ingots off the coast of Turkey.

In Weymouth, Massachusetts, a recent fire ruined Sacred Heart Church. The church was consecrated in 1872 and has been a local landmark. The fire is believed to have been caused by a refrigerator malfunction in the church. Many of the stained glass windows in the church melted from the extreme heat. Others were broken out by firefighters in order to vent the flames and dissipate the heat. The church was since demolished on account of the vast amount of damage.

Sacred Heart's pastor, Fr. Riley said:

The windows are a great teaching tool to communicate faith in a really wonderful way," said the Reverend Daniel Riley, pastor of the gothic revival-style church in Weymouth Landing. "They provide a lot of warmth and character and color to what is a beautiful church. And they are of tremendous artistic value."

Sacred Heart also had two Tiffany windows, one of the Crucifixion and one of the Resurrection.

Among stained glass hobbyists, it seems there is a trend towards using some software to help them with their projects. Most of the software is designed to help you work with glass patterns. The primary functions are to help you scale or resize patterns, choose and preview glass, and also do rough estimates on how much of each type of glass you will need. At Glass Threshold we ordinarily use graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop for designs, but these more specific stained glass programs might be a good idea for anyone who is just getting started in the field. These seem to be the most popular packages available, although we've not tried any of them personally:

1. Dragonfly Glass Eye 2000
   
2. Rapid Resizer and Pattern Wizard
   
3. Oaktree SG has a few different programs
   
4. Dekor Studio also offers some stained glass software

One of the most important requirements to making a good stained glass window is having a good pattern to work from. The pattern is different from the sketch. The sketch is the preliminary visual tool to draw out and decide how your window design will look. Once you have a great design, you need to have a way to cut your glass to fit it though. This is where the pattern comes in. You trace or otherwise transfer your drawing onto a nice thick paper. Then you need pattern shears to cut out the individual shapes of glass. Pattern shears are great because they take a tiny sliver out between the pieces. This helps you to make an allowance for lead widths in your glass pattern.

If you'd like to learn more about stained glass patterns, as well as be able to download some for free, we've put together the following resource list. Enjoy!

1. Art Glass World has some free stained glass patterns.
   
2. Chantal's Stained Glass has some more to download and try out for free.
   
3. Warner Crivellaro also has a bunch of great patterns.
   
4. Glass Patters Quarterly is a periodical about stained glass pattern-making.
   
5. There are a variety of patterns available fore free at StainedGlassPatterns.com

Bella Online has a nice introductory article for anyone interested in the history of stained glass. It begins:

Although stained-glass windows were first seen in ancient Rome, the art of using stained glass for windows reached its height during the Middle Ages, where this art form was used for the windows of the magnificent cathedrals of Europe. Much of what we know of the process of making medieval stained-glass windows comes from a text written by a German monk called Theophilus in the thirteenth century who carefully studied the techniques of the various craftsmen who played a role in creating these masterpieces of stained glass.

Click here to read the rest.

If you live in the Michigan area, you might like to check out a stained glass exhibition starting next week. The show is sponsored by Flint's Clio Area Art Society and will feature local stained glass artists. The show runs from June 7 through June 28. There is a reception on June 8th at 8:00pm. Directions and further information can be found at the site linked above. Enjoy!

We just posted a new window design for a chapel. The design is based on Psalm 42:1-3

As a hind longs for the running streams, so do I long for thee, O God.

With my whole being I thirst for God, the living God. When shall I come to God and appear in his presence?

Day and night, tears are my food: "Where is your God?" they ask me all day long?

Here are some more window sketches, along with more religious windows we have created.