There are many ways stained glass can be used to create artworks. Understanding the nature of the medium is essential when planning a design.

Understanding The Artform

Not much is known about the origins of stained glass. According to the Art Glass Association, "The technique probably came from jewelry making, cloisonné and mosaics." Stained glass is a material that has been coloured by adding metallic salts during its manufacture. Artworks created from glass can be very elaborate or designed extremely simply.

Leadlighting and stained glass pieces are most effective when they are placed in a position so that light can shine through from behind. This accentuates and illuminates the design as well as filters soft light into the room. This can have an enhancing effect on the environment. Understanding how the pieces of the image will fit together and imagining the design with light filtering through it is essential to planning the design.

The Technique

To make stained glass the artist must plan the layout of the design in great detail. The plan must then be executed carefully, making sure that all pieces are cut to fit into a frame or encasement exactly. This is so that the piece is well supported. Lead lines are extended to the edge of the design. This structural support can be crucial to the way the pieces of glass support each other inside the framed area. A badly supported piece of stained glass artwork may buckle and eventually break or drop out of the frame.

Special tools and materials are needed by the stained glass artist. It can become a very costly art form. There are many varieties of glass available and while there are low grades of glass, some of the glass can be quite expensive. If secondary firing is employed such as ‘slumping’, the cost can be increased even further.

Art works are created when small pieces of coloured glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures. The glass is held together by strips of lead and the work is supported by a rigid frame such as a window. If the stained glass features a figure, details such as a face might be hand painted. If this is done the design is then fired a second time, so that the painting remains as an integrated aspect of the artwork.

A Variety of Methods

Stained glass pieces can also be joined together to create sculptural forms and functional creations such as fountains, as this image from Water Works by Tracey illustrates. (Walrus Publications.) Lead lighted glass can be combined with other materials to create sculptural works such as the turtle fountain on the cover of Tracey's book. In this way, separate pieces of stained glass sculpture are combined to work together within an overall design.

Sometimes stained glass can be comprised of colours that have been painted onto the glass and then annealed in a furnace. This means that the glass is heated and then cooled in a controlled manner, thus making the handpainting permanent and giving the piece lasting strength.

Some smaller and more fragile works are joined by copper foiling instead of lead so that their fineness is not over shadowed by the thick lead lines.

Teaching Students About The Art Form

Once you have familiarized students with the idea behind the design of stained glass, you can allow them to become conversant with the style of planning by asking them to:

1. Draw up a design
2. Simplify it
3. Mark out where the spaces for the coloured patches will lie
4. Cut the shapes out of black cardboard
5. Adhere coloured cellophane behind the negative spaces in the cardboard with tape or glue
6. Place the construction over a closed window cardboard facing outwards

If you would like to turn the work into a hanging artform:

1. Cut two pieces of cardboard identically
2. Adhere the cellophane in place
3. Glue the second piece over the raw edges so that both sides are enclosed
4. Attach a cord and hang the work from the ceiling or other suitable space

If you have links to interesting sculptures that feature stained glass designs and you would like to talk about them post the link here. I would be very interested.

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