Our latest commission is to re-create a window for a listed house in Aberdeen, in which one of a set of windows has somehow been lost. The upstairs windows of our client's house are shown below left and the window's of the neighbouring semi below right.
|
|
As the pictures show, both houses had (at least some!) of the upper panes of all four window segments occupied by leaded glass panels with a unified design, scaled to each panel. For some reason one panel appears to have been lost from our client's house. Hence the commission to restore symmetry and thus recover a lost element of this listed building.
With any such project there are always challenges in trying to be faithful to the originals. Firstly and perhaps most obviously, trying to precisely match the Victorian glass of the original set is nigh on impossible. In this case the second challenge was that arising from not having the original window, being how to scale the design for the particular opening. Looking at the full set of windows (this includes that in the lower storey of our client's house) there was no consistent rule followed in how to scale the elements for any particular opening and the windows were not uniform in size in given situations. The decision was to follow the panel most closely located and parallel, so that on a casual glance the symmetry would not appear to be off. Below left is a picture of the panel from the centre of the bay window and below right the drawing for the new panel.
With any such project there are always challenges in trying to be faithful to the originals. Firstly and perhaps most obviously, trying to precisely match the Victorian glass of the original set is nigh on impossible. In this case the second challenge was that arising from not having the original window, being how to scale the design for the particular opening. Looking at the full set of windows (this includes that in the lower storey of our client's house) there was no consistent rule followed in how to scale the elements for any particular opening and the windows were not uniform in size in given situations. The decision was to follow the panel most closely located and parallel, so that on a casual glance the symmetry would not appear to be off. Below left is a picture of the panel from the centre of the bay window and below right the drawing for the new panel.
|
|
One aspect of the design where the choice was made not to precisely follow the original set was in the style of reinforcement. The traditional method was the use of external steel bars which can detract from the design unless the design takes account of such an installation plan. Nowadays internal reinforcement of the lead is more common and adopted. This, however, does require slightly larger lead than might otherwise be used.
The Glass
In this case the glass was a significant challenge and despite extensive research and comparisons, precise matching to texture and colour was not achieved for any component. However, it is believed that once in place, the differences will not detract from the desired outcome. The re-created window will not be directly beside one of the originals and so the contrasts are unlikely to be noticeable.
The best match to texture was felt to be Wissmach "English Muffle" for many of the components and this was used for one of the clear glasses, the darker green and amber as well as the pale green and pale pink of the main background colours. We were unable to find colourless roundels for the four "flowers" in the right size and have had to use pale pink instead. Other elements were matched as best we could using Oceanside Clear Granite for the inner border glass and Wissmach 96 Sapphire Blue Transparent for the blue element. The red was from stock and its make and colour are unknown. The final colourless glass, which forms part of the central motif, is Oceanside 96 Clear Krinkle.
Cutting threw up a few challenges! Several of the pieces surrounding the flower motifs had to be re-cut because of failures on crack propagation. Also the Krinkle glass proved difficult, because the inherently anisotropic nature of the heavily textured glass also caused failures. Lastly, the approach taken to cutting the blue glass proved a poor choice with both first attempts failing. Taking a new approach both replacements were cur successfully.
The best match to texture was felt to be Wissmach "English Muffle" for many of the components and this was used for one of the clear glasses, the darker green and amber as well as the pale green and pale pink of the main background colours. We were unable to find colourless roundels for the four "flowers" in the right size and have had to use pale pink instead. Other elements were matched as best we could using Oceanside Clear Granite for the inner border glass and Wissmach 96 Sapphire Blue Transparent for the blue element. The red was from stock and its make and colour are unknown. The final colourless glass, which forms part of the central motif, is Oceanside 96 Clear Krinkle.
Cutting threw up a few challenges! Several of the pieces surrounding the flower motifs had to be re-cut because of failures on crack propagation. Also the Krinkle glass proved difficult, because the inherently anisotropic nature of the heavily textured glass also caused failures. Lastly, the approach taken to cutting the blue glass proved a poor choice with both first attempts failing. Taking a new approach both replacements were cur successfully.
The real work begins .....
The drawing has arrived from the printer and so cutting glass has begun.
Summary of progress to date
Clean-up is now complete. Just need to work out how to instal...