How To Draw Stained Glass Four Seasons Tree
Stained glass: an introduction
Stained-drinking glass windows, made up of coloured and painted glass pieces held together by lead strips, were especially popular in Europe in the flow between 1150 and 1550, when they were a prominent characteristic of cathedrals and other churches, every bit well as metropolis halls and homes for the aristocracy. Its translucent qualities made stained glass especially popular in religious contexts, where large windows with scenes from the bible and the lives of saints could animate a sacred infinite with colourful glimmering lights, and subtly change the atmosphere depending on the time of day, and the changing of the seasons.
Much of what we know about how medieval stained glass was fabricated comes from the treatise On the Various Arts (De Diversis Artibus in Latin), a text written in the early on twelfth century by a German monk who used the pseudonym Theophilus. He describes the basic steps needed to brand sheets of coloured glass, and how to use these sheets to create stained-glass images. Apart from minor innovations, the techniques of stained-glass making take barely changed since Theophilus' time.
The main ingredients for making glass are sand (silica) and ash (alkali). When heated together, they grade a more or less homogenous viscous mass which transforms into drinking glass when cooled. From about the yr 1000 onwards, drinking glass makers largely used woodland ash in drinking glass product. This resulted in drinking glass which, although durable, was not always resistant to weathering and decay. Stained-glass windows, often subject field to breakage, needed regular maintenance, and had to be repaired and restored regularly. They oft survive merely in fragmented and altered form.
In the Middle Ages, glass makers used two types of methods to produce sheet glass. When post-obit the so-called wide sheet or muff method, they took a bubble of nonetheless malleable glass onto a blowpipe and then worked it into a cylinder. This cylinder was then cut open up along its length, reheated and pressed flat into a sheet.
An alternative way of making sail glass was the crown method. The glassmaker transferred a bubble of glass from the blowpipe to a metal rod called a pontil. The bubble was opened upwardly and spun around the pontil. The centrifugal forces caused the hollow chimera to flatten into a round deejay, the crown, which was thicker at the eye than at the edges. Stained-glass painters rarely made their own canvas glass. They bought it from merchants who dealt directly with the glasshouses. These were often located near forests and woodland, shut to the raw materials they needed for their work.
To colour glass, the glassmaker added powdered metallic oxides to the bones sand and ash mixture during the melting process. This resulted in tinted glasses known as pot-metals. Not all drinking glass was, however, coloured throughout. Pot-metal red glass, as well known as ruby, was very night and not translucent enough for the light to pass through. Medieval glassmakers creatively solved this challenge by dipping colourless 'white' glass into a pot of molten red and working the 2 together. The event was and then-chosen 'flashed drinking glass', which consisted of a thinner, streaky layer of ruby-red on a colourless base. Coloured glass was much more expensive than plain white glass, and therefore frequently reused in stained-glass windows.
The procedure of making a stained-glass window began with a design. In medieval times, this was known as the vidimus, the Latin word for 'we have seen'. Earlier paper became more readily bachelor around the year 1400, stained-glass painters drew a scaled-up design, sized to fit the bodily window opening, onto a wooden trestle table coated with chalk or whitewash. This drawing was marked with messages and symbols to indicate the colours of the individual pieces of glass to be used. It also showed the near of import painted lines and highlights the glass painter had to include. The drawing on the table so served every bit a guide for the person cutting the glass, and every bit a guide for the drinking glass paint. Finally, it was used as a workbench to assemble the window.
Nosotros don't know exactly how the design process of medieval stained-glass windows worked. Theophilus implies that the glass painters and makers were also the designers. In many cases this must have been the instance, while in others, the person who commissioned the piece of work supplied the makers with sketches drawn by other artists such as panel painters. Evidence for this increases in the 15th century. In about 1508, the Southern German language painter Hans Baldung Grien supplied a sketch for a stained-drinking glass window to be made for the Convent of Hohenberg. This sketch includes written instructions for its makers. With the increasing availability of paper, full-size cartoons for stained-glass windows would become the norm. They could be saved, reused and handed down from glazier to glazier. This made stained glass an exceptionally collaborative fine art.
Once a decision on the appearance and layout of a stained-glass window was reached, the glazier or glass maker selected and cut the glass. In the medieval period, the sheets of glass were cut into smaller pieces past applying a heated iron to their surface. The glass maker then worked the rough shapes with a so-called 'grozing' iron, a metallic slot or hook into which the edge of the glass was slipped and chipped into shape. From the 16th century onwards, diamond cutters for cutting glass became more widespread. They left much cleaner edges, and helped the makers achieve their shapes more easily.
Once the glass was cut into the desired shapes, the most skillful part of producing a stained-glass window followed: painting the drinking glass. Glass painters used so-chosen vitreous or drinking glass paint, which had to be fired to adhere to the glass slice. It was made of iron or copper oxide, basis glass, glue arabic, and a binder such as water, wine or vinegar. The pigment, whose color varied from grey-black to brown, could exist diluted to various textures and consistencies, depending on the desired effects. The painters used a dense ink-like consistency for basic trace-lines, and a thinner wash to achieve shading and modelling. They practical the pigment with brushes made of various animal hair. Sticks, needles, quills, and fingers could also be used to texture and scratch out the pigment to add depth, and to control the light passing through the glass.
To assemble a stained-glass window, the stained-drinking glass maker finally laid the pieces of coloured and painted drinking glass out according to the design, and fitted the edges of each piece into H-shaped strips of lead, called cames. These strips were then soldered to one another so that the panels were secured. They non just held the single glass pieces in place, but were an integral part of a window's pattern. Once the cames were in place, the maker then rubbed putty into the spaces betwixt the glass and the lead to make the window panel waterproof. Finally, the panel was attached with lead strips to the armature or ferramenta – the iron-work set into the window opening to support the weight of the finished window.
In the 14th century, a highly important innovation appeared in the painting of stained glass: silver stain. This solution of mainly silver nitrate, which gave stained glass its name in English, tin be practical with a castor, like glass pigment. It is applied to the reverse of the glass and burns into the surface when fired. The colours of silvery stain range from pale lemony yellows to deep dark oranges, and so offered stained-drinking glass painters heady new possibilities for adding colour at the stage of painting the glass.
Monochrome paintings in neutral colours, also known as grisailles, existed throughout the medieval menses, but used in combination with silver stain, they became very popular, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries. They oftentimes took the form of roundels, consisting of only ane piece of glass, which were inserted into the windows of residences and other secular spaces such every bit for instance urban center halls.
Around the middle of the 16th century, new vitreous enamel colours were discovered. Like silver stain, these could be painted on to the surface of colourless drinking glass. The new green, blue and purple colours all used basis glass as flux, and helped drinking glass painters to achieve increasingly complex compositions, adjustment stained glass much more closely to other forms of painting.
Watch a medieval stained drinking glass console in our collection being reproduced using centuries-erstwhile techniques:
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Background epitome: Panel showing a King from a Tree of Jesse window, almost 1210 with afterwards restorations, probably Champagne, France. Museum no 6D-1881. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Source: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/stained-glass-an-introduction
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