Vitreosity

Roz McKenzie Glass Designer Blog

Found this recently in the links on J. Kenneth Leap's blog Painted Window -

Roz McKenzie Glass Designer, a blog active from June 2009 to November 2010.

Her statement -

I am a young Scottish artist who has recently graduated from Edinburgh College of Art where I studied glass design. I won a scholship (sic) called the Award for Excellence with the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and so this year I will be involved in their training program. It's a massive opportunity to learn more about my art form and I'm very greatful for it.

There is much of interest here, especially in her travels and workings in several studios in Europe. She used her scholarship to work in studios like Derix, Glasmalerei Peters, Chapel Studio, Lincon Cathedral, and more. A pretty amazing snapshot of contemporary stained glass studios in Europe, and it makes for fascinating reading. Start from the beginning and take your time. It's worth it.

Conrad Schmitt Videos

This is a pretty slick promo for the Conrad Schmitt Studio, a big multi-generation studio out of Wisconsin. No credit as to who made the film or when, though my guess is that it was made in the early 80's.

Be forewarned, the style of narration is a bit dated and the music is a bit over the top, especially in the otherwise interesting section showing glassblowing at Blenko glass, where they overlay the scene with movie western cowboy music.

Part ll, Stained Glass 1

Part ll, Stained Glass 2

Very clean.

Who Made Me?

To my surprise, I found even more on the topic of signatures in Stained Glass on Flickr. This time it's a pool called Who Made Me?, which specializes in church art signatures. Currently, 244 out of the 856 images are of stained glass window signatures. Again, an incredibly useful resource. You can do a search for stained glass within Who Made Me?.

Since I featured a Geoffrey Webb window in the last blog post on signatures in stained glass, I seems only fair to this time feature his brother, Christopher Webb.

The Lord's My Shepherd Photo by Lawrence OP

In this case the photo of the full window is so large that you can go and look at the detail of the signature, which in this case is a little St. Christopher.

I should note that this Flickr pool, like the other Flickr set, is only covering British windows.

America lagging behind? Say it ain't so.

The Last Window - excerpts

The documentary filmmaker John Bishop just posted excerpts of his documentary on the last days of the Connick Studio, filmed in Boston in 1986. The film is called The Last Window, and it documents the making of the Henry Pepper Memorial Window, at All Saint's Parish, Brookline, Mass. All Saints Parish contained the first representational window by Charles Connick, from 1910, as well as this last window made by the Connick Studio, in 1986. The excerpts are only 3-4 miinutes each, while the whole movie is about an hour.

One thing I remember about the film is that it doesn't quite give a sense of the space. It was like a big rabbit warren, with 4 floors, each being some 2,000 square feet. One floor alone was just row upon row of glass racks. There were some big rooms, like the big showroom, but I remember lots of little rooms. Still, this is a nice document of the people and the time, and it is hard to believe it's been 24 years.

Last Window 1 - Louis Cammacho, the Connick Studio colorist, talks about choosing and cutting glass in the first part of this excerpt. The young woman you see in the background is Becky Breymann, who designed the last window. The second half has a real treat showing one of the Connick painters, Harold Nicholson I think, tracing and matting. I'd like to see an hour just of that.

Last Window 2 - Features some historical background on Charles Connick, especially about his relationship with Ralph Adams Cram.

Last Window 3 - Johnny Campbell leading up the last window. Johnny was quite a character. I remember, when I was looking through the racks in the last days when they were getting rid of all their glass, Johnny trying to convince me that green is just no good in stained glass. "Can't do anything with green", says Johnny.

I'm still working off of those scraps I got from when Connick's closed. I kind of hope they never run out. That would be a sad milestone for me.

Salem Stained Glass on UNC-TV

Just appearing on YouTube today is this video about Salem Stained Glass, produced by Our State Magazine and shown on UNC-TV.

Serious flashbacks for me since this is the studio I worked for from 2001-2004, most of that time as production manager. Basically, I helped them move from their older smaller location in Winston-Salem to the new larger facility you see in the video. I also set up the computer generated design part of the business. You can see in the video that the designs are in Adobe Illustrator, my preferred computer software for stained glass design. They are probably still doing variations on designs I initially set up 5 years ago. The plotter was not there in my time, though I wish it had been.

Good people doing good works. Nice to see them getting some good professional quality PR.