Vitreosity

The Garbage Warrior

I'm stunned. A mention of bottle walls on, of all things, a comedy news show - The Colbert Report. It's an interview with Michael Reynolds, promoting the movie The Garbage Warrior, which is about Reynolds' efforts in creating the Earthship Houses in the southwest USA. Notice how in the interview Reynolds even refers specifically to the bottle wall as 'stained glass'.

Rohlf's Stained Glass Studio Video Tour

This video was only posted on YouTube about 2 weeks ago, hosted by Jon Bonci and created for VVH-TV, a local TV station in the Hamptons. It's a contemporary view of a larger, multi-generational stained glass studio, Rohlf's Stained and Leaded Glass Studio, out of Mt Vernon, NY. This makes an interesting contrast to the Powell's/Whitefriar's video if only to see some newer and some different techniques.

Just a few things to look for - here they cut the glass from paper patterns, not on a traced drawing as in the Powell's video. In terms of newer technologies, they have an XYZ computerized glass cutting machine for larger production jobs, though there is no mention of computers for design work, or really much discussion of design work at all. Note also that they have a large flatbed kiln rather than the older pizza oven style kiln shown in the Powell's video.

It meanders a bit at 30 minutes long, but it's worth seeing the whole thing.

Whitefriar's/Powell Videos

These videos have been making the rounds on the SG forums for weeks but busy times mean I'm only getting round to posting them now. They are well worth a watch - The first is specifically related to the techniques of stained glass, as demonstrated within the studio of Powell's/Whitefriar's in England. No date given, but maybe 1950's. It's about 10 minutes long.

here's a link to the page if that doesn't work.

Note that these are English style techniques, like tracing the drawing and cutting the glass on the tracing. It's more common in the US to make multiple copies of the working drawing and cut up one copy to make paper patterns.

Also, it's interesting to see one of the older 'pizza oven' style kilns in operation, where the painted glass is fired by moving it from a warming chamber to a firing chamber to an annealing chamber, making it possible to continuously fire pieces, essential at a time where almost all the windows produced were painted.

There is another video related to Powell/Whitefriar's, though this time a recent video looking back to the studio through a visit to Grace and Holy Trinity Church in Kansas City, Missouri..

If this isn't working here's a link to the page.

These are on Blip.tv, which I think is better at this point for videos related to stained glass than YouTube. YouTube is already cluttered with way, way too many bad how-to videos, and the search capabilities don't help much.

Still, I've been scouring though SG-related videos over the past few weeks and will be posting more videos as the fancy strikes me.

CraftBoston and Providence Windows Project

The Boston School of Stained Glass gets busy -

This coming weekend - Friday-Sunday, March 28-30, 2008
Nancy Nicholson, Dan Maherand Kate Gakenheimer are all showing (and selling) their work at CraftBoston. It's unusual to see three stained glass artists in an upper echelon craft show. Nice to see.

A bottle bottom panel, part of Dan's amazing Houseware Graveyards Series

and this is one of Kate's dazzling pattern panels, inspired by Japanese Textiles.

and one of Nancy's Cityscapes

Best of luck to them all. Sell Well!

Meanwhile, Alice Johnson and Kate Gakenheimer (busy woman) are displaying work at the Providence Windows Project.

New Panel by Alice Johnson