Stained Glass Express - The Blog / History of Glass

RESTORATION

Glass has clearly (pun intended) evolved all through the centuries. Here is a bit of a timeline.

In the 1700's window glass was mouth blown and spun into a disk. It was small and distorted. I think it is quite beautiful. Even when it was big enough to cut with straight edges, it was very distorted.

In the 1800's the process evolved to a mechanically blown cylinder machine. Sheets were larger and the quality was better. Because the sheets were bigger you are now seeing a more traditional window glass. They were large enough to cut square or into a rectangle.

In the 1900's the invention of the Fourcault machine allowed for vertically drawn glass. This was the end of the imperfections except for vertical drawn lines. The end of the waves and the end of the seeds and bubbles.

Even though the quality of glass improved there is often a desire to replace what was there. To keep it looking the same. Glass is available to reproduce each century of glass.

COLONIAL

A glass called colonial is a glass with slight distortion and occasional seeds are present. The thickness varies a bit. It is very much like the 1800's glass. Just imagine trying to copy a procedure where the manufacturing was trying to make it perfect but were not being totally successful.

 

GNA RESTOVER+

This is a more affordable alternative to colonial. However, it is not a close replication of the 1800. Not for a restoration project where historical integrity is important.

 

This glass is beautiful. It has fine lines through. Really not a great piece for restoration but totally a step up from window glass. It has a classic timeless look.

This is a glass blog, so before I launch into trompe l’oeil, I will say something about glass. In Readfield, Maine, there is a building called the Union Meeting House. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. We had the good fortune of being asked to repair some of the building’s stained glass windows several years ago. This week, I was at the Union Meeting House for a David Mallett concert and got to visit our repaired windows, which are holding up great. The building has some non-leaded, colored stenciled glass windows, shown above on the right side of each photo. They are very rare and are only used in one other church in Maine. As years went by, they were replaced with more traditional stained glass windows, which appear on the left in each photo. Normally, I am “all about the glass,” but this building has something even better! This building, in this very small town, has one of the finest examples of trompe l’oeil there is, the reason it was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Trompe l’oeil is French for “to fool the eye.” The walls and ceilings of this building are painted plaster, which appears to be three-dimensional. There are columns (like you see in the pictures above), medallions, wall plaques and arches that look like they protrude, but they are flat. They are so realistically painted that you just can’t believe they are actually flat and really want to touch them. However, this sign sits on a sill: This shows more examples of trompe l’oeil. All of this is flat!

How beautiful is this VASE!? (I FEEL LIKE I COULD JUST POST THE PICTURE AND IT WOULD BE ENOUGH!)

This vase was made c. 1910. It is Aventurine Lava Blown Glass by Tiffany Studios. This is currently on display in the new exhibition at the Morse Museum called “Iridescence—A Celebration”. This vase was among Tiffany’s treasured A-Coll (Artist Collection) pieces exhibited at Laurelton Hall. It is a striking vase and was made by draping lava like aventurine glass over iridescent gold glass. The name aventurine references the quartz-like glass with sparkling particles developed in Murano, Italy around 1910 when this was made. You can use aventurine glass for your treasures also. Available from Bullseye and Oceanside in flat glass and frit. Usually available in black, blue or green. It has been a little tough to get lately but we have some. Click here to order.

In one of the articles I read about Oceanside Glass (the new owners of Spectrum and Uroborus Glass) they mentioned that one of their first big breaks was getting to replicate the vintage tile for the Roman Pool at Hearst Castle. This interested me on several levels. One is that last year I saw the Roman Baths in Bath England. A fascinating place. Next was that in my mid 20s Patty Hearst was kidnapped. I was riveted to the story. Read the book and was totally on Patty’s side. Then the glass! How thrilling. The article compared this big break to Eric Lovel and Uroboros getting to recreate Tiffany glass for restoration. It also made me think of our early years in the glass business when we got the contract to make air control panels for a state funded program. A lot of good steady work. Certainly not as sexy as doing Tiffany or Hearst work but we were over the moon. I asked my husband how he was going to make this product that was specific in its requirements. “No idea. I never saw anything like it, I don’t think it exists, but it is a great idea”. So, he quizzed every sales person he could and found metal and a gasket that would work. The metal came from a place called Mason (still in business) and the metal number was E208. We named the air control panel an OPE208. The OP was from Oakes & Parkhurst Glass, the name of our business (also still in business). Many competitors tried to get in on that action but could never figure out where we were buying the ope208. Little did they know we were manufacturing them ourselves. They were inside panels, the gasket made them air tight. We could make them with acrylic when they were for older people who might not be able to lift them with glass. They were held on with clips that were hidden behind curtains. Easy on and easy off! We made thousands. Days, nights, weekends. One Thanksgiving afternoon our family helped so we would not miss a deadline since our employees (rightly so) wanted Thanksgiving off! But I digress! This is a picture of the Roman Pool at Hearst Castle. The tile patterns were inspired by mosaics found in the 5^th Century Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy. Some also represent the marine monster themes that are in the ancient Roman baths. The tiles are 1” square and go ceiling to floor. These glass tiles, called smalti, are either mostly colored blue or orange or are clear with fused gold inside.