Stained Glass Windows

Emmanuel Baptist Church

Today, I want to talk about the stained glass windows in my church, Emmanuel Baptist, in Alexandria, Louisiana.  These windows were placed in our current sanctuary in 1949-1950.  I was seven years old and have always been fascinated with these windows.  I do believe my artistic senses were greatly influenced by seeing them week after week.  Even today, when I open the building on Sunday morings, I pause to reflect and admire their beauty. It is a religious experience, at it's best, to sit in an empty sanctuary at seven in the morning on a sunny day, lights off, and witness the sun streaming through the glass sending awe-inspiring light into the room.  

Today I will focus on the technical aspects of the windows.  Another blog will share individual windows, color and religious symbols.

The windows in this sanctuary are traditional leaded stained glass windows. And were crafted by the Jacoby Stained Glass Studio in St. Louis, Missouri.

These windows were installed when this sanctuary was built. Our windows are placed in chronological order from birth to resurrection. (note: during the Heart of Spain tours of our windows, we met some people from Belgium who had visited many countries and church windows and said these were the first they ever saw that were in chronological order)

The windows were purchased by individual members.  Originally, a plaque was to be placed under each window to indicate who purchased and to whom the windows were in memory of.  Jacoby Glass Company would not allow us to place a plaque under each window until all the windows were completed and installed.  Our compromise was to place the plaques at the back of the sanctuary.

Our windows were designed and cartooned by James Blackford, a master craftsman who came from England to work with Jacoby . They were painted by Tom Dixon who also came with Blackford from England.

The Jacoby web page indicates that there are some noted Blackford Stained Glass windows in America.  Ours is one.

They are: 

St. John's Episcopal in Ft. Worth, Texas,

Emmanuel Baptist, Alexandria and

St. James Episcopal in Wichita, Kansas.

JACOBY STAINED GLASS, ST. LOUIS, MO. is signed on the lower right side of the Baptistery window.

All of these windows were fabricated using handmade, mouth blown antique glass (antique class was required to be 100 years old) and painted in the traditional Trace and Matte technique of glass painting:  Using the drawing as a template, the glass is selected and cut, and each piece of glass is individually painted using glass paint. The paint is then fired, heating the glass to approximately 650 degrees centigrade in a furnace. When all of the glass has been painted it is assembled into panels by bending 'H' section strips of lead around the pieces of glass and soldering the strips together where they meet.

The style of these windows is a mixture. The figurines and robes are in the Munich style and the borders, background, symbols and the quotes are a modernized version of the Gothic Revival style.

Note: Most Munich school windows have a very distinct characteristic. The figures are highly realistic, painted in a German Baroque style.

Gothic Revival Style was one of the most influential styles in the 19^th century. Designs were based on forms and patterns of the Middle Ages.

Some of the antique glass is “flashed” which means that the base glass color (usually clear) is fused to another thin layer of color. This enables the glass artist to sandblast or acid-etch one of the layers to create special color shading and effects in a single piece of glass.

 There is some use of silver stain.

Silver stain is a combination of chemicals blended with pipe clay and applied to clear glass. (usually silver nitrate or silver sulphide) Pipe clay is a fine white clay .

Producing a strong clear yellow was difficult in early stained glass because it relied upon the careful control of heated furnace. The introduction of silver stain in the early 14^th century provided a solution to this difficulty, and also allowed greater flexibility in the way in which colour could be used. It enabled a more flexible approach to glass painting, allowing, for example, the hair of a figure to be painted on the same piece of glass as the head. It was also used to highlight details.

The majority of the glass that is used in the windows from the Jacoby Art Glass Co. is antique glass made in the traditional pot metal method.

(When the glasses are in a molten state in a metal pot, chemicals are introduced to create the different colors. Then a gather (a soft blob of glass) is attached to the end of a blowpipe. A glassblower blows the glass into the shape of a large cylinder about 30 inches long. The cylinder is detached from the pipe, the top and bottom removed, and scored along the side. The glass is then put into an oven where, as it is heated it uncurls, and becomes a flat sheet about 30 inches by 30 inches.

Because of the way it is made, by hand and by utilizing mouth-blowing techniques, there are faults (streaks, bubbles and striations) in the glasses. Also the glass is not of uniform thickness throughout the entire sheet. The streaks, bubbles and striations break up the light as it passes through the glass creating vibrant highlights that make the glass seem to sparkle. The varying thickness makes certain areas of the glass seem deeper and richer in their coloring.

Because each sheet of glass is somewhat unique, the antique glass allows the glass artist a very large pallet with which to work. He can use the glass as it is, or he can paint the glass with glass paint. With acid or sandblasting, he can etch the glass to create more than one color in an individual glass. He can stain the glass or he can plate the glass (superimposing one or more glasses over a base glass to create a special color or visual effect).

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.