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Craftsman Stained Glass & Lead

I tend to customize things to make them my own: like the Mercedes-Benz hood ornament and trunk star on my Scion xB. The windows I am installing are plain and undivided. We like them, because they let in lots of light, but they are plain. I decided to give them a craftsman touch.

Craftsman style is enjoying a revival these days in an ironic form. Craftsman is the shorthand name for the American arts and crafts movement. This movement was a response to the dehumanization caused by the industrial revolution, with its concentration of wealth in the hands of those who controlled the means of production and an erosion of the middle class. The industrial revolution with its mass production meant that only the very rich could afford art and beauty; the middle class could afford cheap, mass produced ornamentation; the poor laborers were left with tenements. The British arts and crafts movement was part of a socialist response to these conditions. At its core, it was a democratization of art and an assertion of the value of manual labor and the human touch.

When the movement crossed the Atlantic to America, the philosophy remained the same, but the forms changed. True Craftsman decor is to be made of local materials, whenever possible, and made, or at least installed, by the homeowner himself. The artwork is incorporated into everyday functional things. A “trademark” of the work is that much of the time some part of the work is left intentionally and prominently unfinished. This was regarded as the signature if you will that the work was done by the lord of the manor who was free to finish it or not at his whim. It was not the product of a machine or a servant who had to satisfy someone else’s demands. Finally! I have a good, socialist explanation for all the unfinished projects around here! It’s not because I am in over my head, or because I am lazy or too busy. It’s because I am a free man!

Back to the topic. The current revival of the Craftsman style is ironic, because it is mass manufactured and professionally installed. Just about every house on TV shows these days is an oversized McMansion wrapped in vinyl clad Craftsman accessories.

Back to the windows. Since they need to be insulated glass, I don’t have the luxury to make them true stained glass with lead dividers. So I went to my local arts and crafts big box store and bought self adhesive lead strip on a ten meter roll and several bottles of liquid “glass stain”. They make solvent based and water based stain. so, if you value your health and your indoor air quality, read the fine print and get the water based.

cardboard guide, self-adhesive lead, burnisher and trimmer on sash

I varnished the interior of the window sash frame, then applied the lead using a piece of cardboard cut to 2-1/2″ wide as a guide. I pressed it against the glass, while holding it tightly against the edge of the cardboard. I was simultaneously holding the cardboard flat against the glass making sure it was tight against the frame. Then I used the burnishing tool to press the lead firmly against the glass. This flattens and straightens it slightly and makes sure it adheres to the glass.

Then I washed my hands with cold water and soap, then hot water. It is lead. You don’t want any of it to stay on your skin. The lead was manufactured in France. Most of the back of the package was covered by a huge label in fine print warnings about lead. Below this there were about five lines of instructions for its use in French. This is where my two years of college French came in handy. Sometimes you need to be able to read a foreign language to do something.

Then I squeezed the faux stain onto the glass a section at a time, carefully smoothing it out as I went. I mixed colors on the glass and experimented with textures, blends and patterns. The first set of sashes I did was for the upstairs bathroom. I could be more playful with them, since I had already decorated the bathroom with a yellow and blue rubber ducky theme. The stain is opaque like Elmer’s Glue when it is wet. It takes between 8 and 72 hours to dry to be more transparent. That is, unless it is supposed to be more opaque when it is dry.

I decided to try a different pattern for the upper sash, utilizing the double strip feature of the lead I was using.

The upper right square was a failed attempt to blend red and blue to make purple. It reminds me of Spiderman. The upper left is clear stain with champagne swirled in a spiral. The lower left of the upper sash is very nice swirls of blue and yellow making green.

Anyway, you get the idea.

Most of the windows, we are just adding the lead on the bottom sashes with random colors and textures in the corners.The top sashes will just get lead with the circle pattern, but no color.

Simple accent colors and textures to dress up the window.

Aspiring Artist

Yesterday, I painted and mounted this cross on our barn. I don’t let the fact that I have next to no artistic talent stop me from attempting to make beautiful things with paint. This cross was originally made last year as a temporary marker for Ressom Asfaha’s grave. Memory eternal! Our priests had been given small, hand-carved, wood crosses from Ethiopia by one of the Ethiopians in our church. I photocopied them and chose one for the design of this cross.

I had to guess at the colors, as the wood cross was unpainted. I did some research on-line into Ethiopian art and chose my colors. I did it entirely freehand, as the artwork I saw all seemed to be fairly organic and not absolutely symmetrical. In hindsight, I should have measured and marked some guidelines. This is what I did when I repainted it to coordinate with our barn.

I knew from my research that the five blossoms should be red, as these represent the wounds of Christ: his hands, his feet, his head and his side. Ressom’s family told me that I had chosen the colors well. I made the cross out of a two foot square of 3/4″ plywood. It was one of many that the former owner of our house had used to cover holes in the floor in the second story of the barn. To make the shape, I measured equal distances from the corners and made a mark. Then I traced around a five quart sauce pan (that I use for candle-making) while holding the sides lined up with these marks. Then I cut them out with a sabre saw.

This was the third cemetery cross that I have made. I also made a three bar cross for dedication of ground for a mission. Each one is a little different, as I figure out better ways to do things with each go. They each were fastened to a metal fence post. The kind you can pick up for about $5 at Home Depot’s garden section. That way the wood does not come in contact with the ground, so no rot. Ressom’s brother-in-law wrote his name in his native language. That is what is painted above his name in English.

A Georgian St. Nina's Cross — A Georgian St. Nina’s Cross

I made a St. Nina’s Cross out of cherry. The “droop” on the cross bar was limited by the width of my board. The brown twining is stylized grapevine and the black crisscrossing the middle represents the Theotokos’s hair. Ksenia’s name is painted in English and Georgian in green; the dates of her birth and her repose are in red.

The picture of the cross on the barn also captured more of my work. The barn is over 150 years old, as far as we can tell. For many years, it had not been maintained, so the tongue and groove siding had shrunken to expose gaps for the wind to blow through. I added battens out of roughsawn pine to correct this. The first thing I did, however was to replace the old windows with modern, vinyl, insulated glass windows. (I didn’t know about how non-eco-friendly vinyl is at the time.) I fastened the flanges to the outside of the barnboards, then caulked and trimmed over the flanges as shown with roughsawn pine.

Rosalie, Pete, Jerome & Pops

Rosalie was born about two weeks before me in 1955. We’re both partially of Irish descent. We grew up at the same time in different parts of the same country in two very different worlds.

I first met Rosalie in 1985 when she was an inmate in the Women’s Detention Facility at the Philadelphia House of Corrections. We were both just exiting out twenties. She was a wild thing with a head of thick, curly, frizzy, red hair. I had a lot more brown than white in my beard and hair, wore no moustache and had aviator wireframe glasses. (They were the closest thing I could find to round at the time.)

Rosie told me her sad story of abuse and love. This was the first time I had heard this sort of tale, which by now has became all too familiar, of a woman who is physically abused by her mate, yet loves him still, to the point of endangering their children. Rosie was vivacious, persuasive, irrepressibly happy and a tease.

I saw her on and off through my four years as a chaplain in the Philadelphia prisons. She was one of our first students in the tutoring program I started in the WDF. She always was telling the tutors and the guards what a great guy I was, followed by some kind of left-handed compliment.

It was sometime in 1990, about the time we were turning 35, while I was serving sandwiches, iced tea and goodies at the wall of the “Love Park”, I heard this woman holler: “Hey Rev! How ya been?” Rosie ran up to me and gave me a big hug.

Since then, we have seen Rosie from time to time. Sometimes she was a regular customer. Other times, she would just stop by to say hello and catch up on the news.

We met her brother, Pete. Rosie had a couple of different boyfriends that she introduced to us. Then she got serious about Jerome several years ago. Pete befriended an older man whom he would look out for and help out. We only ever knew him as Pops. Pops got housing assistance. So Pete and Rosie and Jerome moved in with him. It was a way of surviving off the street by pooling their resources. Some nights we would take them all home after we were done serving.

Rosalie and Jerome got married several years ago by Judge Valentine on Valentine’s Day at City Hall. They all got evicted from the house. Rosie and Jerome ended up getting violent with each other. Jerome was arrested. There was a restraining order. Jerome says it was a horse apiece, that Rosie gave as good as she got, and I can believe it. She was feisty. They divorced.

For a time Rosie lived in New Jersey with relatives, but she still came over about once a month to see us and let us know she was all right. Her relatives moved and she was back on the street.

In 2005, about the time we were turning 50, Rosalie was diagnosed with leukemia. She went through one round of chemo. It seemed she was doing better, then not so much. She went through another round in the Spring of 2006. This is while living on the street. Her brother and Pops and a few other guys were looking out for her and trying to provide protection and moral support. Finally some health worker was able to figure out a way for her to get a room in a group home, as she was about to start her third round of chemo.

Pops passed away last year. Pete got a good job and a place of his own. Jerome spent most of the last year in jail. He just got out. Rosalie passed away sometime around our 53rd birthdays.

Rosie was a joy to know. She always gave thanks to God for even the smallest acts of kindness. I consider it a privilege and blessing to have been counted among her friends. May her memory be eternal.

The painting “Rosalie” is one of the first I did. I had no photographs. It portrays the emotional memory of the first time I met her in the WDF activity room. Read more about the painting at my art website.