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Problems with the Restoration #1This window is the one my father-in-law was going to throw out. It was Art Nouveau, not my favorite style, had a row of bevels, a fantail design in center, and what looked like stylized ducks on each side of the fantail. I will include a picture when I find the ones I took. Gooden was instructed not to replace the fantail design as we wanted the original antique red and orange very heavily textured cathedral glass left. He was instructed to fix the breaks with additional lead lines. Gooden wanted to maintain the pattern, but replace the complete fantail design with new glass of comparable type, opacity, and colour. The final effect of our decision was a fairly dark clunky looking center pattern due to too much lead. Our problem, not Gooden. He was also instructed to match the border glass and use as much of the original glass as possible. Another mistake which now shows clearly using hindsight. The glass used originally, was moderately textured cathedral in a yellowish green. Once again, Gooden wanted to replace the complete border with new glass. The replacement glass chosen by him was lightly textured mint green cathedral. Approx. 1/2 of the border pieces were missing or unusable, and when he built the window, he alternated the glasses. The final effect, it clashes, and looks like h*%%. However, it was done basically on our instructions. Knowing what I know today, Gooden could have tried to get a better match on at least the colour, but it was a mistake doing it as we wanted. Other areas of the window were redesigned and recut from newer glass. This was the background and was filled with Sunburst and Gluechip. These were done nicely and unless you knew how the window used to look, you would not see any problems, design flaws, or color/texture clashes. The original window also had a row of fourteen 2.5 inch square clear bevels just down from the green border row. This part of the design was not modified, but after the artist had reassembled it, he had a 1'' gap in the center of the window which he just filled with a piece of normal window glass. This does not look that good and the flaw is quite apparent to me. And this flaw is in his workmanship. I determined after the fact and from 2 beveled pieces, which did not go back in to the revamped design, that the bevels were not square. One dimension was 1/16 longer than the other was. It turns out that the bevels were all installed with the height being the long measure. If the bevels had been rotated 90 degrees either way so that the long measure was the width, there would not have been a gap in the center of the window. Problems with the Restoration #2This restoration was done on my grandmothers prized antique window which had been a wedding present from her father. I did this restoration.At the time I made this decision, my sole experience with stained glass was watching one restoration take place and building two leaded windows for myself. Both windows that I built were approx. 30'' x 36''. Both were built were designed by my wife and me. They looked good on paper, and they looked good after they had been cut, leaded, and they still looked after they had been soldered on one side. As soon as I attempted to turn the windows over to solder the reverse side, the design flaws started to show up causing cracks and breaks in various pieces of glass. All of a sudden, the windows didn't look that good any more. However I persisted and managed to complete the windows and immediately framed them to prevent more damage. So that is the preamble that lead me to believe I had amassed more than enough experience to complete a simple restoration of a priceless antique, Right? I mean, how hard could it be? And conceited as it sounds, I almost did. Please note that I said almost. I had learned from experience with my window that the glass match has to be perfect or the window will appear to be badly flawed or crafted. The very outside border was a deep red antique and had one break. The red glass around the beveled center was the same type and also had one break. The glass was not matchable as to color. This glass was a deep cranberry tending to blue, and it was no longer available. I decided to repair with an extra lead line as the intrusion would be of little or minor consequence. The outer deep gold border glass was heavily textured deep amber 'Sunburst' and in very bad shape. It had lots of breaks and some of the shards were missing. I knew enough not to even try. I purchased a moderately textured cathedral, but in exactly the same shade as the original, and recut every piece to the original size. The pale gold inner oval was heavily textured, and had minor damage. This was repaired using additional lead lines. This created a few very tiny pieces, but did not impact too badly. The green leaves presented a whole new problem. There were more than a few breaks and missing glass, and the glass was very uncommon. It was a semi translucent 'Streaky' composed of clear, mint green, wisps of white, and a deep gold or amber under tone that was only apparent under certain light conditions. I gave a piece of one of the leaves to Sunrise Glass and asked them to try and match it. They in turn took the glass to Toronto to their supplier, and by a stroke of luck, found a glass that was so close in tone, pattern, and texture to the original, that it was impossible to discern which was old and which was new. After the glass had been cleaned and/or recut, I laid the window out on the reworked pattern. At the time this window was done, I did not have a glass grinder, so all pieces were hand cut, and grozed as the original would have been done. I looked at my nearly finished restoration with a certain feeling of smugness and thinking to myself, ''I knew I could do it, and it was so easy''. I started to lead the window and that is when the wheels fell off. I got to a certain position in the window and the glass piece would not fit in. I tore the window down, and restarted it. Same thing. Four times I tore the window apart, and four times tried reassembling from different areas. I tried from the bottom up, from the bottom left, bottom right, and from the center working out. Every time I hit the proverbial ''Brick Wall''. Now in case you are wondering, the problem area was at the top of the window. And the problem simply stated is that the last glass piece to be inserted has to be pushed into the lead channels, and the piece was wider than the opening slot. If I could just lay it in like a jigsaw puzzle, no problem, but it has to be pushed in, big problem. It was far too late to determine how the window had been leaded originally as I had torn it apart weeks ago, scrapped all the old lead, and my rubbing and tracing did not supply the absolutely crucial details I now needed. I began concocting stories as to what I would tell my Grandmother. How do you tell someone their priceless antique is in pieces and you don't know how to reassemble it? I came to the conclusion that somebody somewhere had built this, I had not changed the overall design, and this somebody didn't use magic to create the final product. There was obviously a trick, and all I had to do was find it. No Problem, Right? I began to lead the window in my mind. This was cheaper and faster than doing it for real. On one of these exercises, all of a sudden, a light went on, and eureka, I had discovered the secret. The trick on this window was to assemble from the top down to the red shield. Then do the left side down working from the center out and down to the lowest green leaf. Do the right side down to the piece of gold opposite the leaf and also working from the center out. Complete the window by adding the cap, the large pale gold piece at the bottom, and then the borders. Needless to say, My grandmother was thrilled to get her window back, I was feeling a bit better at my success which was very difinitely earned the hard way, and I learned some invaluable lessons that cannot be found in books or training materials. I should also point out that assembly problems such as this do not happen with foiled pieces because they are assembled by dropping the pieces in just like a jigsaw. The channels are not completed until you solder unlike lead where the channel is already there in the lead. You may also be interested in the following sublinks See Tips and Hints for Leaded Restorations and/or See How I got interested.. |
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