This is the late evening sun catching my glass screen on a north-facing window. I am the world's most inept photographer, but had to try to catch the warm glow on the landing.
Many years ago all the stained glass was removed from a house in a village near here. It was due to be thrown into a skip, but I had done some work for the owner, who asked if I would like the glass.
Would I ?
It was stored, much to Sue's understandable annoyance, in the garden under a tarpaulin and still in its wooden frames for maybe 5 years before I suddenly realised that I could make this screen with it. It's a two-panel folding screen and hinges back aganst the wall when not in use.
I love glass, and am not sure why. I love the clean sparkle of glass, and the coloured pattenrs it creates on floors and walls. And there is something special about the way it reflects and refracts in different kinds of light.
But that doesn't explain the obsession.
A friend who has majored in self-improvement and has attended courses for this and that all her life showed me some stained glass she had made. This would be about 1990. She had created two beguiling panels, one brooding and mysterious, the other an optimistic boat prowing through the waves to a distant glow. I was hooked.
It took a lot of learning, and some seriously clumsy mistakes, but once the veils were gone, the naked art revealed itself as just a concatenation of very simple skills which look impossibly complicated when they combine.
Right now I am working on a panel for a 1912 apartment building. It is the second of a series of 6 panels, designed by the owner of the apartment. The aim is to make something that is simple, and that looks as if it might just be original equipment.
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| The first panel in place above its door |
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| Second panel just begun |
Standing here, looking out over sunny fields and making glass ... well, it feels like heaven.
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