Stained Glass
Coloured glass cut and joined with lead into windows and panels that turn daylight into image and colour.
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About
Stained glass is made from pieces of glass coloured with metal oxides during manufacture, cut and held together by grooved lead strips called cames. Details are painted on in dark vitreous paint and fired, and from the early 14th century silver stain let glaziers add yellows to clear glass. Seen by transmitted light, the image changes with the weather and the hour.
The medium reached its height with Gothic cathedrals. Chartres keeps much of its 13th-century glass, known for deep blues, and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, consecrated in 1248, has upper walls almost entirely of glass. The Gothic Revival renewed the craft in the 19th century, and John La Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany developed opalescent glass. Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and, at Cologne Cathedral in 2007, Gerhard Richter designed modern windows. Look for lead lines, painted detail and how colours shift with the light.
