Kiln-Fired Stained Glass Painting - Your Best Guide » Stained glass case studies

Stained Glass – The Literary Agent’s “Wow!” (Part 1)

Stephen Byrne — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:38:59 +0000

Just in from a loyal newsletter follower, Dorothy Collard, who writes:

There’s so much I want to ask you, but I’ll start with the Literary Agent’s front door. – Just how did you do it?

How?

There are several answers here.

And one answer – as some of you will remember – is that I got stubborn and refused to put up with bad smells in the studio …

Bad smells? Yes! -

And if you missed it, here’s how my precious nose – a veritable engine of progress, no less – gave birth to the Literary Agent’s stained glass rose window.

Yet there are at least two other kinds of answer you must also know:

The raw techniques, and
The evolution of the design itself

See, technical knowledge has no purpose on its own.

Nor is there any point if someone simply copies what we do – that kills the craft and does no good for anyone’s real worth.

The whole point about having conversations like the one we’re having right now is that as many of you as possible will master the raw techniques, then take them forward in your own way by enlisting them in the service of your own designs.

At that point, the techniques come alive.

Just as they did for us with this window. Because of course our design only evolved from visits and discussions.

And once it existed, it became necessary for us to decide how to make it in glass.

So today we’ll start with the design – with the question, so to speak. And next time, we’ll all get to grips with the raw techniques (the answer).

And here, for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, is the door itself.

First by night, looking in:

The Literary Agent asked for "Wow!"

Second by day, looking out:

A fine sight when the Literary Agent descends the stairs each morning

Already a major point here: when and from where is the window mainly to be seen?

When you design for glass, you must settle these questions with your client.

If you don’t, their expectations may be disappointed.

If you settle these questions early on, the client will understand that, although there is a difference between the design (on paper) and the actual window (on glass), you have understood their concerns and wishes for the impression the window makes on those who see it.

See, the design on paper can never ever convey the experience of the glass. So the client also need other ways of knowing we understand what they want.

And in this case, the Literary Agent, when pressed, said:

“When my authors’ cars pull up the drive in the evening, I want them to be dazzled and welcomed by the sight which meets their eyes.

And if they happen to stay up late discussing their latest novel with me, then I want them to be dazzled and welcomed when, the next day, they come down the stairs to breakfast in my morning room.”

And when I say “pressed”, it’s “pressed” I mean – it was some time after our first visit that the conversation flowed easily enough for such stipulations to emerge.

We were fortunate in that our Literary Agent was predisposed to giving important matters the time they deserve.

After all, our Literary Agent knows to trust his novelists when they appear bright-eyed and raving with a few scrawled paragraphs, claiming these will one day be on the Sunday Times and New Your Times Best Seller Lists …

It’s sometimes in every one’s interest to wait, to give time for the best ideas to emerge.

I wonder what you think about that?

How it began

We were invited to meet the Literary Agent because a fantastically talented interior architect (who knew of our work) was in the middle of designing him a new front door.

Here’s the view of the house as it was when we first arrived:

Before the "Wow!"

The proposal was to remove the existing door and reclaim space inside by installing a new arched door in front.

And here, right on cue, is the full-sized template which the interior designer proposed:

Full-sized template laid out on our studio floor

Well, anyone can see this new door just cries out for stained glass, doesn’t it?

So that’s how we became involved: through an interior architect who trusted us to design and make glass that would do justice to the proposed new door.

And, to get the ball moving, we quickly prepared three simple sketches – just to hear the Literary Agent’s reaction:

Three quick sketches to get the conversation going

So, while time is important, it is also important to take risks and test people’s responses. Stained glass designs, just like the Literary Agent’s novels, only emerge through a series of more or less confident drafts.

It’s the only way to keep things moving.

One can’t wait, idle, for the perfect design to emerge.

Again, I wonder what you think of that? Do you take calculated risks? Praise and rejection each pose their own set of problems here. Right now it’s only paper, after all – Easily misunderstood. But if one never says anything for fear of misunderstanding, then …

The Literary Agent’s choice

“None of them really,” he said, “although I do like what you’re suggesting for the middle of the second one.”

“Why?” we asked.

“Because I like the idea of having something as majestic as the passing of Summer into Autumn – the sort of spirit you sometimes catch in one of Turner’s paintings. Something that makes you say ‘Wow!’ because it’s both completely wonderful and also a little saddening …”

“Understood,” we said, and returned to Stanton Lacy.

Why you must be clear who a particular design is for

This is really important so pay close attention here.

It is possible that what you, the glass painter, require from a design is incompatible with the design the client needs.

You need instructions.

The client needs confidence.

And it doesn’t follow he’ll get confidence from seeing your own instructions. Yes, we all love our own designs – they mean so much to us .. and that’s just what I mean!

Here’s a case in point …

We truly understood the impression the Literary Agent was after. We would have bet our lives on it. We’d talked enough with him, and seen his country house in various seasons and also at different times of the day.

So the first step was for us to articulate our understanding to ourselves. (You have to get it out of your head in order to be sure you’ve got it right. Again, you can’t be frightened of making a mistake. There’s no point. You’re going to make a mistake. That’s the whole purpose of doing a draft!)

Now we knew for sure we wouldn’t use glass paint – it would do all the wrong things with the light.

It was going to be silver stain. And the question was, How was it going to be stain?

To work this out, we simply worked with light and dark – that is, with graphite (dark) on paper (light). Thus we used the graphite represents our proposed shading with silver stain.

The Literary Agent had talked about the passing of the seasons and also mentioned Turner. So, especially given the architectural opening, it was natural to imagine something suggestive of the fiery late afternoon sun. Here:

This stained glass design is fine for us (but not really for the client)

Of course it’s not prudent to assume that black & white will get the right message to the client.

So, having worked things out for ourself, it was a quick task to add a touch of colour to the client’s version:

The client's second sketch

Along with this sketch, we also took along some samples of glass to which we’d applied stain in the proposed manner.

This did the trick.

And so we were ready to choose the glass, then cut and stain it.

The Literary Agent's "Wow!" - to be continued ...

From the Case Book – an Arched Top and 3 Forged Rows – Video Demonstration

David Williams — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:27:56 +0000

Our ever-collecting client, just because he liked it, had bought a 19th century window from an auction house in Paris, France.

The trouble was, it was the wrong shape and too short by 10 inches for the particular place he had in mind within his ornate lakeside villa.

Thus it fell to Williams & Byrne not just to add an arched top but also to paint and include a number of forgeries in the exact style that you see here:

Some of these are forgeries ...

Here’s the painting sequence – how one process follows another – for you to see.

Watch this short film and you will see how, just by re-combining and adjusting techniques which you learn from our studio’s stained glass painting manual, you can achieve these perfectly stunning effects.

We want you to see how techniques can often be slightly changed and used in a different order, thus producing new effects.

So here is the sequence for you to watch – no spoken narration, just captions and music:

Now imagine what you will be able to paint when you follow this same sequence:

Undercoat
Trace and strengthen
Oil overcoat – stippled and softened
Light oil tones – and softened
Darker oil tones – and softened
Highlight – and softened
Clean up

All in just one firing.

Isn’t that a wonderful sequence for you to use?

Announcement

The studio downloads are only available until 31st March.

We give you one-to-one support by e-mail.

Therefore we must limit the “class size”.

And we have a project-packed 2010 ahead of us here at the studio.

The next intake will be later in the year when we have worked alongside those of you who are already using this material.

Video content will always be available for subscribers to watch as often as you wish. (And you can of course have free repeat downloads – e.g. if you lose your copies – at any time.)

Important: the studio downloads are only available until 31st March.

Any Questions?

As always, if you have questions about this post or video, please write them below, and one of us will gladly do our best to help.

Remember the 31st March closing date for studio downloads including Glass Painting Techniques & Secrets and How to Paint a Stained Glass Head.

The Fitting

David Williams — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:12:13 +0000

Here’s a shot of the fitting …

Fitting the Hereford Window

Today

Stephen Byrne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:27:57 +0000

It works, that’s what people say. They are astonished by the effect of the glass on the space around it.

Photographs come later – tonight some sleep.

Tomorrow

David Williams — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:33:22 +0000

You spend weeks and months on the design – moving from tiny black-and-white sketches to 1:10 half-toned approximations; and then onwards to a full-sized water-colour painting, plus a full-sized black-and-white tonal drawing (to give a clear instruction to us painters about where the light must pass through really clearly) …

And then you finally come to cut the glass, and paint it, and silver-stain it, and also plate it (in order to create the perfect colour as you see it in your mind), then you paint and silver-stain the plating.

At last the piece is encased in lead, with neatly mitred joints to show each graphic angle. Cemented and polished. Fitted in its various frames with steel armatures.

So, tonight, it lies “finished” and strapped against our A-frames, in readiness for tomorrow’s installation, but – exactly because it is an architectural piece – until tomorrow, when we fit it, who knows what this window really is?

That is our responsibility as designers and painters of stained glass. Responsibility to the donor and his memories and his loss. Responsibility to the building itself. And responsibility to the people who will enter the building, each with their own particular memories and their own particular loss.

These unimaginable things matter – nothing else.

The Hereford Saga Part 2: The Owl and the Brief

Stephen Byrne — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:41:25 +0000

First-time visitors, click here to start at the beginning of this bizarre tale of stained glass design …

It was P.R. Exec. #1 who broke the silence: “Where did you say that this new stained glass window was going?”

I stood my ground (though a less brave man would have been reduced to ashes): “A crematorium …”

P.R. Exec. #1: “A crematorium!”

Indeed. Anyone would have thought we’d proposed a two-week holiday in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Yes, people always behave strangely when one mentions crematoria: only a few days earlier, we’d had a visit from Patrick Reyntiens, the stained glass artist with whom David did his 8-year apprenticeship.

Just guess what Patrick said about this project?

Patrick said: "A crematorium, dear boy - surely you mean 'crème brûlée'!"

Ouch!

When I described the incident to Sir Roy Strong, this gentle and eminent art historian and former director of the Victoria & Albert Museum soothingly replied:

“Patrick can indeed be a devastating putter-down. Don’t worry about it: just count yourselves lucky to have the work.”

And, whilst we gladly accepted Sir Roy’s advice, it was really no surprise that even the combined majesty of P.R. Exec. #1 and P.R. Exec. #2 should grow pale at the thought of one of our stained glass windows – no matter how magnificent – in a place of sorrow, a melancholy crematorium.

Do you know what? - I even see their point.

When we win that commission to design and make some extraordinary stained glass windows for a celebrity-packed Hollywood night-club, you can be sure that our wonderful P.R. executives will drum us up so much publicity that journalists and papparazi will travel from all over the world to ignore the celebrities and admire our stained glass.

A crematorium is altogether different: people always assume it can’t make headlines like a night-club can …

But David and I had leapt at the idea the moment that our client suggested it.

Oh, yes!

***

The Hereford Saga had all begun a few weeks earlier: Mr. R.C. had rang and asked to visit us at our studios at Stanton Lacy.

The Williams & Byrne studios at Stanton Lacy

“Crematoria are always such depressing and miserable places,” he began (and we agreed).

“But they’re building a new one at Hereford,” he continued (and we listened).

“Here’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make this crematorium different!

“My idea is to pay for a beautiful stained glass window.

“So – and I see it’s a quite a tricky task – could you please design and paint a window that will lift people’s spirits and help make this crematorium ‘happy’ and ‘light’?”

Now please consider this.

Our client, R.C., wanted to make a gift of this window to a public crematorium – a building that is run by the state.

Which means of course that public officials would also want to influence the design.

But our immediate loyalty was to our client, R.C.

Therefore, rather than approaching those public officials straight away, we chose firstly to spend more time with R.C. in order to get a clear idea of the stained glass window that he wanted to give.

Conversations and meetings are necessary between us and our clients, precisely because we do not have a monolithic “studio style” – we can design and paint in many styles: that’s the whole point of why we do architectural stained glass.

Perhaps it’s excellent to be known for a particular style, but we feel we might as well be known for always repeating ourselves in conversation! It’s not how we do things. For one thing, we’d get bored if we worked like that, imposing a single style on every stained glass window that we made.

Therefore, when we talk with a client, we don’t pull out our catalogue and say: “You can have this design one in red and green, or yellow and mauve. And purple is very popular this year …”

By contrast, what we often do is this: we look through our portfolio of stained glass designs and discuss the ideas and features which, in the client’s view, stand out.

Or we might also talk about:

The kind of art that the client likes
Whether they like puzzles
The countries they have visited
How they like to travel
The food they like, the shapes, colours, tastes and textures

And so forth: in this way, design-ideas emerge.

It’s such an exciting process. Something invariably clicks, and everyone says, “Yes, that’s it!”

(Just the other day, a different client announced: “The Fibonacci sequence: that’s that we want!” And this is a series of stained glass windows that we’ll design and paint in 2009.)

And, even though we’ve not yet committed anything to paper, everyone knows instinctively that something was created right then.

No matter how big or small the stained glass window is, we always establish a brief.

Sometimes the client articulates the brief directly; other times we work together and talk and listen until the brief emerges, which takes as long as it takes.

The window will endure for decades. Its design is its essence. The design emerges from the brief.

Talking with our client, R.C., it quickly became clear that colours were important due to the sense of calm that he wanted: shades of blue, green and yellow.

Here R.C. also mentioned that he liked paintings by Claude Monet.

"I really like that!", said the client, pointing at one of David's water-coloured designs that he'd once painted just for the sake of painting!

And an abstract design, he said, not a literal one: nothing definite, nothing recognizable - no landscapes, no human figures, no animals, no fish, no birds …

“Apart from an owl,” he mysteriously added, “a hidden owl: only my friends will know it’s there”.

“And I really like that,” he said, pointing to a design which David had painted a few years ago, but which we’d never made. (It’s surprising how often it is that things which are purely done for their own sake will also come in useful one day.)

The last two features were the size - roughly 1 metre wide and 5 metres high (which is about 3 feet wide and 15 feet high) – and, of course, the function of the building: a public crematorium.

(Owners of celebrity-packed Hollywood night-clubs: don’t delay, telephone today!)

***

Now we couldn’t go and visit the building, because they hadn’t even begun building it yet.

So we rang the architect and discovered the size of each individual section – there were four in all:

Architect's early sketch for the gable end of the new crematorium at Hereford

This information was enough for us to get started with. We found our water-colour paints and started the long journey of design:

Uplifting, calm
Abstract, suggestive, non-literal (apart from one owl – hidden), impressionistic (Claude Monet)
Blues, yellows and greens
The design which R.C. saw and liked in our studio
Scale proportions of 1:5
A state-owned crematorium.

Stained glass design is a process that moves from doubt and hypothesis toward conviction and agreement. Then the actual painting and making is relatively straightforward.

Sometimes, once we have a brief, we might feel as if we could draw the final design immediately.

But we’ve learned from experience that this feeling, however strong, is misleading.

Therefore, even when we’re absolutely convinced about what it is that we ultimately want to do, the design always begins in a provisional, tentative and explorative way.

In some measure, the whole process of design requires us to put our egos on one side: we always remember we are using our skills for individual clients and particular buildings.

A good stained glass designer is like a magnificent cook. Such a cook knows a vast quantity of recipes and is an excellent judge of how to prepare a huge range of ingredients. But he or she still wants to produce a meal that his customers will adore. Otherwise it’s a waste of fine ingredients.

Our way, at Williams & Byrne, is to begin with small sketches.

These sketches are rough and incomplete. But they can of course be beautiful.

They can also be exciting, because they suggest and promise something new.

We then have further conversations with our client. And this allows us to become increasingly confident not just of what the client wants but also what the building wants.

In this case, for R.C., and all the time bearing in mind the six-point brief that we’d established until now, we then prepared two sketches, each one about 2 inches wide by 10 inches tall.

Here are the two sketches that we presented to R.C.

Two sketches for the central stained glass window at the new Hereford Crematorium

So, once we had re-assured R.C. that we had not forgotten his owl, our next question was:

“Given this window is going in a crematorium (and not a night-club), which one of these two sketches begins to convey the right impression?”

The Hereford Saga Part 1: The Mystery of the Terrified PR Executives

Stephen Byrne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:28:07 +0000

Are you new here? Well, for the story so far, you must click here!

…

Our Public Relations team looked shocked. Anyone would have thought that we’d dismissed them and moved to a different Agency.

"It's the end of the world!"

Or (much the same thing) that a particularly terrifying prophecy in the Book of Revelation had come to pass.

What on earth had we done?

I checked that my hands were in full view on the boardroom table, still holding the architect’s crumpled drawing.

What on earth had we said to cause such fright?

Surely we’d only been describing our latest stained glass project?

David and I were actually quite excited about it: a massive stained glass window in a magnificent new building in the nearby city of Hereford …

The huge centre window in a row of five …

Architect's drawing (crumpled)

The possibility that we would also be asked to design and make the other four windows …

This was certainly news to celebrate!

"I'm a journalist and I'm hungry!"

Now I know these PR people can sometimes be a bit cautious, always imagining that the Press is a multi-headed Hydra which feeds on the blood of unsuspecting innocents and all that.

Personally, I don’t think they’re half as bad as some people make them out to be.

In fact, journalists have often said nice things about us, such as this and this.

And even the BBC said this about us. (And if anyone wants to know how even the BBC can transform Beauty into Beast, just click here!)

So what on earth had made our valiant team take fright?

No …

No, no, surely not …

I mean to say, our PR team is made from Stern Stuff, with a firmness of will and clarity of vision to make grown men shake.

But, sudden as a bolt of summer lightning, it had occurred to me that there could be only one explanation for their startled expression.

"I promise not to eat much of you if you get it wrong!"

However improbable, it was …

[TO BE CONTINUED ... ]

Remember this: Williams & Byrne is a design and stained glass painting studio with a reputation to be proud of.

But what do you think it was that terrified our valiant PR executives?

You can write your ideas just below. Professional explanations only, please!

So … read or add to the comments … or, for Part 2, just click here.