Stained Glass and Modern Art

One thing I like about stained glass: It's hard to ruin a big piece with idiotic "artistic" aspirations.

People who know me very well are familiar with my abject disdain for "modern art." And I'm certainly not alone; this passionate disdain is shared by others. I accept that different people have different tastes, and some enjoy these modern visual oddities. I'd simply ask that they not call it "art." Call it anything else. ("Visually-assisted academic BS" perhaps? This website explores definitions of art much better than I.) For me personally, "art" should at a minimum incorporate one of two things, and ideally both:

1. Be remotely aesthetically pleasing. Not this. Sorry, no.
2. Require more skill to create than a layperson or animal can muster. For example, no. And no.

Granted, some modern art succeeds on both prongs but more often seems to fail on both. This piece by Mark Lawrence is pretty neat.


So, back to my original point. Stained glass is difficult to ruin with grandiose modernity. Even a "minimalist" piece will require a fair amount of effort and resources to make, and the more minimalist it gets, the more it resembles a normal window or an architectural highlight. The modern glass aesthetic also traces its path through people like Frank Lloyd Wright, who made some nifty designs. Furthermore, pieces that follow the modern canvas art traditions still look nice to me, since they inevitably incorporate color and seem more substantial, somehow, than splatters and rectangles on canvas.


In the end, larger stained glass pieces are functional; perhaps they are artistic craft rather than pure art. I tend to like what I see at craft fairs and that may be an insight into my taste and definition of art. Indeed, the Art vs. Craft debate an ongoing affair, so I'll sign out with this essay.

Glass Profile: Uroboros glass brand

My projects take long enough that a daily update isn't practical. For that reason, here is another fun tangential topic: Uroboros brand glass.

First, I have to give kudos for their company name. The uroboros is an ancient artistic motif, incorporating a serpent or dragon that circles around to bite its own tail. The motif can represent creation, the cyclical nature of time, or infinity. That's just cool.

According to Wikipedia:

"Plato described a self-eating, circular being as the first living thing in the universe—an immortal, perfectly constructed animal.

'The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus...'"

The uroboros symbol also appears in many modern media, including the Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan.

The second thing going for the Uroboros glass company is that many high-end patterns recommend their glass for the pieces. The glass is particularly good for organic subject matter, which is what I'm most interested in making. Look at these samples of glass for sale on the Uroboros website:

Glass Profile: Silver Staining

A Bit of Art History

Silver staining is what gave rise to the term "stained glass." According to P.E. Michelli:

"Silver stain was fired onto clear glass to produce a translucent yellow - or any colour between murky brown and deep amber. It was discovered around the beginning of the fourteenth century, apparently in France, and was used sparingly at first, and then very creatively to produce local contrasts on coloured glass."

Granted, I'm no art historian. But if you examine older stained glass, you'll see that there are relatively few colors - red, yellow, blue and green. This parallels the paintings and illuminated text of that time. In the Medieval era, the artistic emphasis of stained glass was placed on the painting and staining of relatively simple glass shapes. These were religious icons, made in glass to resemble their painted predecessors as closely as possible.


Silver staining was apparently easier to use than a yellow glass. Also, for the purposes of fine detail, staining gives more flexibility; multiple coatings and firings of the silver stain can enhance the color. In this way, different hues from beige to gold can be achieved on the same piece of glass. Silver staining was also used to turn blue glass into green glass.

Today

Modern silver staining is less common but may still be used for traditional works. There is the occasional contemporary piece, like this close-up of a window by Williams and Byrne.


I would argue that today, while styles of stained glass are much more diverse, there is generally more use of shapes, colors and textures of the glass itself. I don't know that I'd use the silver stain technique. I could simply purchase yellow glass, or plate some yellow glass behind the main layer. Still, it's a fun bit of history!