TREASURE HUNTING : Stained Glass
FIFTEEN OR 20 years ago, it was an almost forgotten art form, but now many local studios make, sell, repair and restore stained glass for use in windows and doors.
Early on, stained glass filled the windows of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals, until Protestant sects began equating them with “darkness and superstition.” Here in the United States, a Dutchman set up a stained-glass studio on Wall Street soon after New York was purchased, but local output was largely ignored in favor of European imports until the 1870s. That was when two New York artists, John Le Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany, independently developed opalescent glass.
Young Tiffany, the jeweler’s son, tricked Le Farge out of an exclusive patent, rediscovered ancient techniques and ultimately created a worldwide boom in colored glass. He learned to mottle, fracture, etch and facet glass and to taffy-roll it for drapery. Soon there was no color, texture or effect he could not reproduce.
Victorians adored him. Every house had its kaleidoscopic transom, skylight, fanlight, staircase light, rose window and “privacy screen.” The less affluent bought stencils, painted muslin and varnished lace overlays, Vitromania decals, even cardboard-and-tissue-paper “epiphanies” to imitate his work.
The landscape window was Tiffany’s triumph. Lakes, forests, gardens, trellised wisteria, peacocks and pillars, constantly changing from sunrise to sunset, guaranteed each home a sensational view.
Tiffany was lionized until President Teddy Roosevelt ripped his “decadent” Art Nouveau furnishings out of the White House. When urban churches began following parishioners to suburbs, plate glass sufficed. Only Tiffany’s lamp studio, founded to recycle window scraps, sustained him until his death in 1933. Today, however, in everything ranging from ancient patterns to Chagall abstracts, art glass is back.
Architectural Imports in Pasadena sells art glass salvaged from churches and castles. Glass Horizons in Studio City sells antiques and makes reproductions. New art glass is custom-designed at the Beaux-Arts Studios in Manhattan Beach and Long Beach. Stained Glass Overlay, with six shops in the L.A. area, does on-site lamination of existing glass and mirror.
