Stained Glass Pieces Made in 2020

Four Season Tree Circles

When we moved to Tweed Marie and Fred Northey were often up from Toronto to help us build our dream house. Later they too bought property in the are and we spent 15 years there raising our young children together. Since Marie went back to work I babysat her kids before they went to school and later after school. So her three girls were like my second family. They watched me develop my stained glass skills and noticed my windows full of pieces for sale. So it is only fitting that they should each have a memory from these years in their own homes when they grew up.

When Brooke got married in 2012 I made her a Bird of Paradise piece. In 2019 I made a second abstract piece to welcome Laura’s first baby, Alastair. Laura then enquired about commissioning a piece for Jacqueline’s 40th birthday and also for her new home in 2020 which Fred helped to build on their property.

Deciding what to make (theme) and developing the pattern is perhaps the hardest part of the process. Some suggestions that evolved during our discussions were:

- a sunrise over the lake at their grandma's cottage

- red maple in fall or apple tree in bloom

- something a bit more abstract incorporating her name

- Jacquie’s favourite flower; sunflowers

- circular gem in the glass that looks like a sun

- prefer a circular glass over rectangular

-  a design that is more like the tree, perhaps also including a sun

- incorporate neutral tones to match Jacquie’s brown living room walls

While considering where this window would hang I learned that Jacquie’s living room window is in 4 panels and the idea occurred to me to make 4 seasonal pieces that would incorporate some of the thematic ideas above.

Developing the Patterns

Below are some of the pictures and patterns I came up via online searches to use to create each seasonal piece followed by patterns drawn to scale for 17” circles.

Designs were enlarged in a computer program and printed on 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheets taped together as one enlarged pattern. The patterns were then redrawn inside circles using a lightbox. They needed to be blended together in a way that works inside a circle with the proper seam lines.

Once these were completed in pencil I then drew over all the lines with black marker. So as you can imagine, they don’t just magically appear. So you can call these custom designs in a way. Certainly it was not like just purchasing a single pattern or a book and just using it.

My goal was to make these pieces as realistic as possible. Working with seamed pieces of glass does not allow the blending of colours that you can get in a painting. The feel of the piece comes through the design lines and the type, texture and colour of glass chosen.

When working in stained glass a seam must be placed at every point so depicting leaves and branches require lots of pieces. These designs vary from about 65 to 130 pieces each. Some of the pieces are very delicate and small requiring more skill in production.

I had great fun doing this project and choosing the glass for each. They were made during the first few months of isolation during the covid 19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Each one took me about two weeks to complete.

Spring

The thrush and sunshine pattern below was found online. Notice the intricate shapes of the flower pieces and the bird. I plan to borrow a friend's special glass cutting saw and learn how to cut these difficult pieces. This design incorporates the sun and brown colours requested in the project goal.

I changed the bird from the original design to a robin which is a harbinger of spring. Also, I was not able to get very interesting brown glass that would have been used for the thrush. After a day of searching and redrawing I used this robin photo for the pattern.

The bright orange rondel makes a perfect sun and is also reflected in the robin’s breast. The three different types of white glass used for the spring apple blossoms have yellow globs in their centres and just a hint of the emerging green leaves.

The background glass in various textures of beige, brown and gold shimmer and glisten when the light passes through. They will reflect the browns in Jacquie’s living room.

The  golden pieces make the rays from the sun really stream into the room as the daylight changes.

Summer

This pattern has a more abstract feel and as you can see all the points on the leaves require many seams that can take away from the natural feel of the piece. The maple key design was incorporated into the pattern.

This piece has a more abstract and artistic feel, partly because of the contrast between the different green glasses used and partly because of the many puzzle-like seams required at all the points of the maple leaves.

Mixing the various green colours adds a vibrant touch and also helps to make the leaves stand out rather than the background seams. The hammer textured background glass suggests warm and bright summer days.

The piece was very heavy in blues and greens so needed a 3^rd colour. I was inspired to choose a bright orange for the wings of the maple key. This ties in with the other seasonal pieces and also makes a nice focal point. After all, this is an artistic rendering and I have poetic license.

I opted for the clear faceted jewel which will bring rainbows into the room when the sun passes through.

 Fall

Various sections were traced from this pattern making sure to include the acorns. The curvy leaves have a very realistic feel and using red, gold and orange glass will ensure that fall is in the air.

Like autumn itself, this piece is a riot of red, orange, yellow and gold glass. Some pieces are quite variegated.

It was a challenge finding brown glass that worked for the branches. The ridged glass used here is darker than I would have liked but the texture does suggest tree bark.

The olive coloured acorns in this piece provide a nice focal point and a departure from all oranges.

Part of the challenge in this piece was deciding where to put the hooks to hang it as it has quite a different feel when viewed from various rotations, the caveat being that the acorns need to hang down.

A lovely light green hammer textured background glass suggests the encroaching of fall.

A gold faceted jewel was used for the final touch.

 Winter

The cardinal stained glass photo that I found online below is intricate, delicate, beautiful difficult and much too complex for what I was being paid for this order. I wasn't sure how I would find the proper glass to suggest birch bark or how I could imitate the streaming branches in that piece. Narrow branches and bird feathers are tricky to handle.

I used the realistic cardinal photo below to draw the bird. 

I was very excited when I got the idea to use the baroque black and white swirled glass for the birch bark tree. It worked perfectly. Some of the design seam lines suggest small swirling branches.

I had a small amount of clear glass with white pieces in it that reminded me of snow or frost, but not enough to do the whole background. This led to the idea of doing the background with various textured clear types of glass. This gives the piece a wintry but also very elegant and artistic feel.

The cardinal looks quite real with his elegant red coat and piercing black eye. It is very tricky to work with those small pieces. Try foiling that little eye and holding it up to the grinder without it shooting across the room. Notice the hint of orange in his beak, delicate feathers and textured breast. Nothing speaks winter like a red cardinal up against the snow.

The gold faceted jewel adds the prescribed 3rd colour to the piece.

Glass looks different with more sunlight. You can see some of the colours more clearly.

It is very hard to get good pictures of stained glass due to background interference and sun glare or shadows.

It always looks so much better in person. Below is a photo of the circles once they were installed in Jacquie's living room. They will look different as the light changes over the course of the day.

Jacquie was thrilled with her birthday present. It is nice to have some significant examples of my work back in the locale where I first learned how to do stained glass. I used the photos below as a design for cards.

Flower Corner Window Brackets

This is my first attempt to make stained glass corner window brackets. The order came from my old Tweed friend, Karen Finlayson, who requested these as a gift for her daughter-in-law, Brooke who lives in Florida. I looked up a few patterns online to get an idea of size and then came across the following flower pattern which I adapted into two different designs so all four brackets would not be the same. I also had to make sure to reverse each pattern so they would hang properly from top, bottom and both sides of the window.

The first bracket I made looked lovely when the sunlight came through it but was much darker when viewed from the bottom of the window. This led me to choose more pastel glass for the flowers when I realized that they would not even be in a window, but rather viewed from an opening inside a doorway of a room. Because of that, I made two new sets and used very pastel glass and also an iridescent clear background glass. The bevelled border and faceted jewels make these brackets sparkle.

I used pieces of zinc for the brackets and had to be very careful that the angle for them and also the stained glass was at a precise 90 degrees. I kept my fingers crossed that the actual window frames were also at a precise 90 degrees. I also had to consider how these would attach to the windows so had to make the zinc a bit longer on each arm and drill holes through them for the screws.

The following photos show the sets of brackets as seen from the window in my stained glass studio and later after they were safely shipped to Karen in a wooden box and then flown with her to Florida and installed in her daughter-in-law's home. Fingers crossed - it all worked out.

Frank Lloyd Wright Geometric Abstract

My long time high school friend,  Elizabeth McIntyre Kromkamp (and my sister Gaye's best friend) placed an order with me to make a very large window for her daughter, Sarah Kromkamp and husband, Andrew Turkey. This window was to be an anniversary and housewarming gift for their new home in Toronto and happily arrived just before the birth of their first baby and Liz's first grandchild. 

We explored several possibilities for the window and I finally developed a pattern form the Frank Lloyd Wright window below. I adapted it to suit the size of their window and the appropriate level of difficulty. I made up a big piece of squared graph paper so I could draw in the geometric shapes. It took a while to figure out the size of squares needed to work with the pattern and actually fit inside their window. 

It was especially freeing to work on this commission as I knew that price was no object. The glass size was 33 x 33 so ended up taking 55 hours to complete the 7 square foot commission. It was so nice to have free reign.

Because Wright's work is so geometric an has all straight lines, I knew this would be structurally challenging. To solve this problem I decided to use pieces of zinc that are usually used only on the outside of the glass, in a few areas inside. The hard zinc strips have a U shaped channel for the glass to fit into on one side only. I would have to solder the other side to the straight foiled edge of the glass and I wasn't sure if this would work. There would be no overlap that lends stability and strength to foiled glasswork. Most of Wright's pieces were done with leaded glass, using putty to cement the glass into H shaped channels on both sides, but these types of windows are very heavy and I much prefer working in foil. I am happy to say that this invention did work for me, though I had to be very careful turning the glass over to solder the second side.

The colours in this piece were determined by the fact that Sarah and Andrew wanted some red glass. Red is such a strong colour and does not come in shades so it works best with other strong colours. Red, blue and yellow were obvious choices and met my standard of only 3 colours in a piece but something was missing until I added the lime green glass. I was able to stick with my usual transparent and various textured glasses and created more interest using different shades in the blue glass. The central V pieces are done in a rippled semi-transparent blue and green glass while the lower V's are a smooth lighter blue. The dark blue rondel circles blend in nicely and are a strengthening factor as they overlap the straight lines. For the background, I chose various textured clear glass rather than my usual iridescent textured clear glass. This type of background lets a lot of light in but distorts the viewing in our out for privacy.

The photos above show the finished piece before it was framed, then the window after it was installed in Toronto. The bottom two photos show the completed commission, framed from different angles. It is always hard to get a photo of glass when the scenery outside is seen through the glass. When we went down to Toronto to install this window it fit perfectly and just lit up their whole kitchen dining area. The window location had a dismal view of their neighbour's brick wall so this stained glass addition window solved the problem and let the beauty in.

Flower Sunburst Abstract

In 2014 I received an order for 6 windows, based on the Canadian theme, from Tom Hiller, my good friend Steph Hunsberger's brother. Tom is such a fan of stained glass that he found another window to fill in his kitchen. He said that he 'wanted the light to shine in.'

After many backs and forth emails and sharing of photos and ideas, we came up with the following abstract photo. I was not able to locate the feather bevels used in that piece but was able to adapt the design to the more square dimensions needed for his opening.

I chose colours similar to the ones in the online piece as they were perfect for the sunburst feeling we wanted to achieve with this commission. I had a unique fracture and streamers piece of bullseye glass that appeared to have little bits of yellow and orange tissue paper scattered throughout and there was just enough of this left to use in the borders along with some clear bevels. It was quite effective and perfect to tie in with the yellow, orange and clear textured glass used for the pinwheel-like centre. A large red faceted jewel provides a central focal point and the baroque swirled glass makes for the perfect background. The swirls in the clear glass echo the swirls in the design.

Above you will see the finished piece before and after framing and in different lighting conditions. It was a real hallelujah and Tom was over the moon.