WINDOWS
a book about
STAINED
& PAINTED GLASS
by
LEWIS F. DAY
author of Nature
in Ornament &
other Text-books
of Design.
1897 LONDON
B‧T‧BATSFORD 94 High Holborn, W. C.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS,
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
TO THOSE WHO KNOW NOTHING OFSTAINED GLASS; TO THOSE WHO KNOWSOMETHING, AND WANT TO KNOW MORE;TO THOSE WHO KNOW ALL ABOUTIT, AND YET CARE TO KNOW WHATANOTHER MAY HAVE TO SAY UPONTHE SUBJECT;—I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
PREFACE.
A stained glass window is itself the best possible illustrationof the difference it makes whether we look at a thing from thisside or from that. Gœthe used this particular image in one ofhis little parables, comparing poems to painted windows, darkand dull from the market-place, bright with colour and alivewith meaning only when we have crossed the threshold ofthe church.
I may claim to have entered the sanctuary, and not irreverently.My earliest training in design was in the workshops ofartists in stained glass. For many years I worked exclusivelyat glass design, and for over a quarter of a century I have spentgreat part of my leisure in hunting glass all Europe over.
This book has grown out of my experience. It makes noclaim to learnedness. It tells only what the windows have toldme, or what I understood them to say. I have gone to glass toget pleasure out of it, to learn something from it, to find outthe way it was done, and why it was done so, and what mightyet perhaps be done. Anything apart from that did not so muchinterest me. Those, therefore, who desire minuter and moreprecise historic information must consult the works of Winston,Mr. Westlake, and the many continental authorities, with whoselearned writings this more practical, and, in a sense, popular,volume does not enter into any sort of competition.
My point of view is that of art and workmanship, or, moreprecisely speaking, workmanship and art, workmanship beingnaturally the beginning and root of art. We are workmenfirst and artists afterwards—perhaps.
What I have tried to do is this: In the first place (Book I.),I set out to trace the course of workmanship, to follow thetechnique of the workman from the twelfth century to theseventeenth, from mosaic to painting, from archaism to pictorialaccomplishment; and to indicate at what cost of perhaps moredecorative qualities the later masterpieces of glass painting werebought.
In the second place (Book II.), I have endeavoured to showthe course of design in glass, from the earliest Mediæval windowto the latest glass picture of the Renaissance.
Finally (Book III.), I have set apart for separate discussionquestions not in the direct line either of design or workmanship,or which, if taken by the way, would have hindered thenarrative and confused the issue.
The rather lengthy chapter on “Style” is addressed to thatlarge number of persons who, knowing as yet nothing about thesubject, may want data by which to form some idea as to theperiod of a window when they see it: the post