HOME DESIGN : Stained Glass Growing in Popularity
Scott Van Dyke knew precisely what he wanted to do first to the Irvine townhouse he bought two years ago.
A neighbor’s house where he had grown up had “this beautiful stained glass. . . . I remembered the window. I had loved it as a child.”
And his new home had a nondescript, 2-by-4-foot window.
So he sought out stained-glass artisan Gretchen McKay and together they incorporated his memories into a glowing jewel of a window that is a mixture of soft blue and lavender glass accents around an oval of iridescent glass. The glass sparkles like an opal and reflects a rainbow of colors.
Judy Wright, meanwhile, wanted to add a special personal touch to the 5,800-square-foot, Southwest-style home she and her husband, Donald, built in the hills of Yorba Linda.
“We like Mexico. We like Hawaii. We like the tropical feeling,” Wright says. “I kind of wanted the feel of Acapulco.”
And that’s what she has in the stained-glass windows at the front of her house.
Tall glass sidelights on each side of the double oak doors in Wright’s entryway are curved at the top to match the doors. They depict a tropical lagoon with a combination of colored glasses and clear glass textured with a gentle swirl.
On one side, a large red, yellow and blue parrot perches atop a vine above banana leaves, bird of paradise and a lagoon of swirling shades of blue and green. The other side has more banana plant leaves, yellow flowers and a lagoon. Two small bathroom windows carry out the theme in opaque, colored glass.
Van Dyke and Wright have joined a growing Orange County trend--using stained glass and clear, textured leaded glass to personalize homes.
These custom works of art are being used in entryways, skylights, dropped ceilings in kitchens and bathrooms and in stairwell windows. They are being used to reduce sun damage by filtering sunlight from raked windows against cathedral ceilings.
They are being used as insets in kitchen cabinet doors, windows in kitchens, bathrooms and family rooms and to provide privacy when odd-shaped windows or placement of windows defy the use of conventional window coverings. And they are being used to enhance views or even obscure views that are unappealing.
Almost any windows--including casements, crank-outs and double-hung windows--can be changed to stained or leaded glass.
First, a custom design is created for a particular window. Next, glasses are selected from hundreds of choices of manufactured glasses that might be colored, clear or textured.
Then, individual pieces are cut and fitted together with lead much the same as a jigsaw puzzle is constructed. The window is then puttied to make it watertight and fitted into place where it should last as a permanent artwork for the life of the house.
And it’s not as expensive as one might think. Prices vary from studio to studio and depend on the amount of intricate detail in a design, but the going rate for a simple design ranges from $50 to $85 a square foot.
Scott Van Dyke’s window, for example, cost less than $500. The more detail a design has, however, the higher the cost because it means more labor. Certain glasses are also more expensive than others.
“The popularity is growing, very, very fast. It’s extremely in vogue. . . . When we started in business 14 years ago, we saw that it was quite popular then,” says Orris Barner of the Glasseye in Orange. Since then, Barner added, interest in stained-glass windows has “multiplied time and time again.”
Gretchen McKay of Contemporary Stained Glass in Villa Park says, “I’m so busy right now I have about six months’ minimum work.” She is working on designs for 18 windows in one house, including a skylight of eight 3-foot squares of stained glass. The skylight glass will have mother-of-pearl and peach tones and will be backlighted with neon.
Barner says leaded glass is popular for two reasons. It’s beautiful and it’s practical.
And, he says, traditional draperies have decreased in popularity and stained-glass windows are “a great, great way for people to overcome that, to afford themselves privacy or sun control or just a piece of beauty.”
Barbara Benson of Benson Design Studio Inc. in Anaheim agrees that sometimes stained-glass windows must be functional as well as beautiful.
“Sometimes we’re framing a view and we use very transparent glass. Other times we have a very heavy textured glass, either to obscure the view beyond or to protect the image inside,” says Benson. “If someone has a beautiful hilltop ocean view, you’re not going to put the bulk of your design right smack in the middle.”
McKay says that most of the people she deals with are not interested in blocking a view. “They’re more interested in enhancing a room,” she says.
For some people, however, privacy is an issue.
“I just recently did a house down in the Dana Point area that had three windows right on the bathtub,” says Patrick Shane of Patrick Shane Glass Studio in Tustin. “The bottom of the windows was bathtub height . . . People could look right in.”
The homeowners had not used the bathroom, says Shane, who replaced the windows with opaque textured glass in a contemporary design; the homeowners can now bathe in privacy.
Sometimes an installation may require privacy and the opportunity to enjoy a beautiful view. In this instance, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds by using more opaque glass at the bottom of the window and more transparent glass toward the top of the window.
In other instances, the homeowner may just want a beautiful window.
“To me it’s like a work of art, a picture,” Scott Van Dyke says of his iridescent window. “The great thing is when the sun comes out and is right on it and the colors are real vivid. It’s just fantastic. . . . I get a lot of pleasure out of it.”
He bought his townhouse because the development’s white wood buildings with patios and latticework fences reminded him of his native New England. The window enhances that feeling. It faces a sidewalk and has attracted quite a bit of attention.
People just come by, he says, and knock on his door to ask about his window and “just say they love it.”
Van Dyke has plans to add stained glass to some kitchen cabinets and two small windows in his front door.
Kris Mackey was also looking for beauty when she decided on stained glass for the lakeside Irvine townhouse she shares with her husband, Wes.
She first fell in love with stained glass when she saw some antique church windows at an auction. She had a small panel done in a floral design by her front door and then decided to replace a stairwell window.
She worked on the design with Shane, basing the window on a photo of a contemporary window in a German church. The result is a window with clear, lightly textured glass at the top, followed by clear glass with a heavier texture and a geometric design that seems to suggest flowing water with deep blues, light green and rust colors. The sound of running water from the home’s atrium waterfall adds to the feeling.
“It lets a lot of light in and yet it gives you privacy,” says Mackey. “Once I had the one put in the stairwell, I just loved it. I felt so good. It had so much warmth. . . . It’s not something you would do for every window, but for certain areas, it’s just right.”
The window cost $925, which Mackey feels is reasonable for a work of art that is also a permanent window covering. In fact, Mackey is waiting for approval from her homeowner’s association for another stained-glass window in her bathroom.
Judy Wright likes stained glass because “it personalizes your house. . . . To me it brings you into the house. It’s like something I designed.”
In addition to the entry doors and bathroom windows, Wright has stained glass on her second-story bedroom door, which can be seen from downstairs. A half-circle window tops two French doors. The design of a trellis intertwined with blue morning glories starts in the half circle and winds its way about halfway down the doors. The clear background glass has a slight texture for privacy.
Wright has more glass in her living room and library, where she chose clusters of beveled glass on a background of clear and textured leaded glass for half-circle windows above French doors and for an octagon window over her fireplace.
Bevels are pieces of glass that have been ground and polished into prisms that refract light, creating a rainbow of colors. Bevel clusters are several pieces of beveled glass leaded together in a design.
Right now, beveled and textured glass without color are more popular than colored glass. However, intricate beveled designs are usually much more expensive than colored and textured glass.
Richard Ashoff, owner of Amethyst Glass in Irvine, says that 90% of his work is centered on the bevel. “Our design is usually done in bevels, with the background done in clear textures,” he says. Sometimes pale, soft colors are used on the border of these windows, but heavy color is rarely used in Amethyst’s designs.
Ashoff believes many people are reluctant to use color because they are redecorating sooner and because “most of our clients will move in three to four years.” He says that an odd color might discourage potential buyers.
Benson and McKay say most clients are selecting leaded glass without much color. “The trend towards non-colored stained glass coordinates with the trend towards light-colored wood,” McKay says.
Ashoff says a clear leaded-glass skylight with bevels has been Amethyst’s most difficult project so far. The skylight is a 4-by-12, barrel-shaped dome in a Huntington Harbour home. The project took three months to complete because the glass had to be painstakingly cut and leaded into a curved shape. The dome has no color, but it takes on the color of the sky and sparkles with rainbows as sunlight streams through the bevels and 300 lead crystals that adorn the skylight.
“As your light conditions change from morning to sundown, you get an ever-varying appearance to the glasswork,” says Barner. “I’ve often referred to it as art that is alive.”
