Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/112

 96 THE BUILDING NEWS. Fes. 2, 1872. Y Z again shows how the raggle is cut up side of chimney for chimney flashings, the dotted line A being line or surface of roof and B the ridge. 39 Erratra.—aAt page 32, second column, 26th line from the top, for 94” read ‘9 ;” and same column, 29th line, for 94411 + 203,”read “9 + 11 =20.” Same column, 72nd line, for ‘rhone-belt” read “trhone-bolt.” Page 65, first column, in 27th and 28th lines from top, for “head” read “ bead.” (To be continued.) et ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION. T the ordinary meeting of this Association, on Friday evening last, Mr. Rowland Plumbe, the President, occupying the chair, Messrs. A. King and W. Stowell were elected members, and it was announced by one of the hon. secs. that Mr. T. Roger Smith had consented to act as the representa- tive of the Association on the Committee of Selec- tion for Architectural Drawings in the Exhibition of 1872. After one or two announcements connected with the business of the Association, Mr. Lewis F, Day read the following paper on STAINED-GLASS: ITS APPLICATION TO DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. I propose first of all to speak more or less sketchily of stained-glass in general, and then to go on to the pith of my subject. Allusions to old glass are in- cidental to my subject, but antiquarianism is quite beyond my purpose, and, indeed, the learned labours of Mr. Winston would render it superfluous —at least, as far as England is concerned. The scope of my paper is practical, not historical. I do not mean to infer at all that there is no interest in the study of the history of stained-glass, or that any one who is practically engaged in its production would not be the better able to design modern work from some familiarity at least with the Medieval masters of it; only I place historical knowledge far below practical experience. A man who is simply skilled in his art can dogood work without historical knowledge, but no amount of historical erudition will enable a mere archeologist to produce a work of art. It is possible to know as much about old stained-glass as Winston did, and to fail as utterly as he did in producing, or even in patronising, really good work. “But how about style?” asks the antiquarian. ‘‘ Without a knowledge of past styles how can an artist design in accordance with the style of the period in imitation of which he has to work?” To that I have a counter question to ask: “Why affect a style at all?” Do you wish to follow in the footsteps of the old masters? Then conjure the spirit and not the dead body of the past. “The old glass painters”—I quote from Winston—“ paid no attention to past styles, the style of glass painting prevalent at that time being indis- criminately employed in all works, whether destined for the windows of buildings of contemporary or of earlier date.” And yet Winston writes a paper ‘On the Selection of a Style,” assuming that the styles are all there, ready made, like so many pairs of boots, and that though we may have some difficulty in making our choice, there’s nothing for it but to take the nearest fit we can find. He seems to have for- gotten that it is possible to have a last made to your foot. It is true he objects to the deliberate adoption of a ready-made Early English or Deco- rated style, but it is only on the ground that “it is impossible to get the effect of the old work "—not at all because of its unfitness or inconsistency. He has no objection to nineteenth-century Cinque Cento. However wholesome may be the study of good Medieval work, the affectation of Mediwyalism is contrary to art, and utterly false in taste. We are not content with praising indiscriminately all old work, but we must needs perpetrate wholesale the grossest caricatures of Mediwval monstrosities, and deface our churches with them, of all places in the world. And then we wonder that men of taste are sick of these impertinences, and that the public, who cannot discriminate between good old work and a modern medley of ‘old bits,” and who only know what dreadful things have been done in the name of Gothic, confound it with all that is crude and taste- less. There is too much superstition in our study of old work, too much bigotry in our worship of it. You find fault with the ugliness of something in a sketch, or building, or stained-glass window, and you're told (as if that were more than sufficient justification, and that you had much better be quiet and not expose your ignorance) that it is ‘o/d/” All I can say is so much the worse for the credit of old work. Let me remind you that I am not abusing old work, but the mimicry of it; not speaking against the study of old work, but the narrow spirit in which we study it. If we should read, as Bacon recommends us, ‘‘not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider,” so we, as students, should study old glass as we should old architecture, or any other old work—not to find fault with it, nor yet to admire it, but to see what there is to be learnt from it. And there is very much to be learnt from old glass—most, perhaps, in the matter of detail and in the manner of execu- tion. Idare say there is not a single old window extant of which one would wish to see a replica in the present day; but there is probably none from which there is not something, in the way of treat- ment, detail, colour, painting, glazing, or what not, to be learnt. My meaning will perhaps be clearer if I give an illustration of what I mean with regard to the spirit in which artists should, or should not, study old work. Glass painting is said to have been influenced, through Byzantium, by Greek art. Now to whatextent it was thus influenced, or whether it was influenced by it at all, I don’t much care; I leave it to antiquarians to inquire. But the resem- blance between the brushwork of the Early Gothic glass-painters and that of the Etruscan pot- painters is something very much to the point. The comparison of the two will suggest an infinity of possible refinement on the Medieval brushwork, since the Etruscans carried their work to a much higher pitch of perfection than ever the Goths attained. And why should we stop short of Greek perfection because the Goths were not Greeks? Perhaps, on the whole, it is fortunate that specimens of good old domestic work are compara- tively rare, and that thus, in default of precedent to go by, we are bound, to some extent, to exercise our own taste and invention. I am glad to believe, too, that most people are far more fastidious in their criticism of domestic than of ecclesiastical work. Most of us accept ecclesiastical decoration as we accept the creed in which we have been brought up. The orthodox no more question the propriety of saints attitudinising in all the colours of the rainbow, and holding up their very bright robes to show that their under-garments are equally gorgeous, than they would question the Pentateuch. A canopy in the style of the thirteenth century may be neither pleasing in effect nor possible of construction, but in a church they swallow it as they do the sermon, and suppose it is all right. Fortunately, when we come to domestic work, people do begin to think about it. It is perhaps not to be wondered at that they endure all sorts of absurdities in a church (to which they only resort occasionally, and then, it is to be pre- sumed, not to look at the windows); but when they are going to put up something in their own sitting- rooms, or in some place where it will be constantly before their eyes, it is another thing altogether. Mediocrity, even though Medieval, will not go down quite so easily. There are cases, even, in which the appetite refuses to be tickled by anything less than art. The difference between stained glass applied to domestic work and that adapted to ecclesiastical architecture it is not so easy to express in words, though one feels at once, in designing for either, what is appropriate to the one and what is more cha- racteristic of the other. There is, of course, a strong family likeness between them. There are laws that are common to all glass, just as there are rules that no painter, whether he paint in water- colour or in fresco, can well infringe with impunity. But the higher they go the further do these twi: branches of the art (of glass-painting) diverge, though their offshoots often intermingle with one another till it is difficult to trace a given branch to its parent stem. One distinguishing feature about domestic glass is, as I have indicated, that the shackles of tradition, which always fetter us more or less in church work, are here for the most part loosened. There are other general distinctions that are sufficiently obvious. It stands to reason that what is adapted to a grand cathedral church is not likely to be quite in keeping with a comfortably- furnished drawing-room, and vice versd. Broadly speaking, the character of the one is heavy, sombre, or at least soothing; while that of the other is cheering, lively, and light. The one is more for ¥ geueral effect, and should be bold and monumental in design, and, as it is placed, for the most part, at some distance from the eye, breadth of effect takes the place of delicate detail. The other is not monu- mental: it aims much less at breadth and boldness, and as it often comes close to the eye, its effect at a distance is scarcely an object of consideration ; detail is most important, and it admits of the highest finish and refinement. The bold leading and broad paint- ing which give force to the one would be coarse and vulgar in the other. Not the least charac- teristic of the differences between them is that the chief object of stained glass for ecclesiastical architecture is to muffle the light (if I may so speak), while in domestic work its use is more often to shut out the view with as little loss of light as may be. Not that this is invariably the case at all. The poet Gray is much more witty than profound in his satirical allusion to Stained-glass windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nowhere. Leaving it to the architects to apologise for the ‘“‘nassages that lead to nowhere,” I submit that the object of all stained-glass is, more or less, to ‘“‘ex- clude the light "—to subdue its garishness, soften its tone, animate it with form, and tinge its prosaic harshness with the poetry ot colour. A poet one would imagine to be peculiarly sensitive to the charm of this effect; but Gray was more scholar than poet, and the scholastic mind seldom errs in too much of sympathy with the beautiful, But to descend to the practical. Let us now proceed to the construc- tion of a domestic window. And first in importance comes the question of glazing, for the leads form, so to say, the bones of the design, and if your ana- tomy is wrong, you can’t make much of your drawing, finish it as you may. Quarries.—The simplest form of glazing is in quarries—that is, in small rectangular or diamond- shaped panes of glass. But simple square quarries, or simple diamond quarries, alone, are a little mo- notonous where they cover a surface of any size. This may easily be obviated by an occasional hori- zontal band of the square amongst the diamond, or of the diamond amongst the square, as the case may be, and the remedy costs nothing but the pains of setting out your window, and a little consideration. Or, again, you may have alternating blocks of square and diamond quarries. In either case your quarry window gains so much finish by a bordering line of white glass (to prevent the quarry lines from running into the stonework) that it should never be omitted. Of course your quarries are not all uniform in tint; the more varied the tints the better. These tinted quarries are often so arranged as to form (by their colour) some sort of pattern in the window, and I have found that most people, especially amateurs, prefer this symmetrical and very evident arrangement. I cannot, however, agree with them. It gives, no doubt, a pleasurable sensa- tion to perceive the evidence of arrangement at first ; but after the first time it is all over, and when next we see it, it is absolutely tame and uninteresting. On the other hand, in an unsymmetrical arrange- ment, the irregularity of tint is a constant source of delight. You can always discover a fresh harmony, and as you can never master the plan of arrange- ment it never loses its interest. To a perfectly even and evident arrangement I should prefer an abso- lutely haphazard treatment. Plain Glazing.—Next to quarries comes what is technically called ‘plain glazing,” in which the various tints of whitish glass are so glazed that the lead lines (assisted more or less by the tints of the glass) form some ornamental pattern. The common fault in designs of this class is that they are apt to look too much like a mere diaper filling up the space— not like a design made for the window. One simple remedy for this defect is todo much as I haye suggested we should do in quarry lights—that is, to divide the space within our border into panels by means of horizontal bands, and then to fill in these panel forms with the diaper-work. Such a treatment shows at once that the window was designed for its place. The other suggests (what is probably the case) that you have seen a manufacturer's pattern- book, and chosen your pattern at so much “per foot super.” Another good and simple style of plain glazing is in designs in which the principle of growth is evident. This treatment is especially fit for the very narrow lights, or for panels in the midst of purely Geometrical work where the win- dows are large. The worst, perhaps, that can be said against it is that it looks like an outline to be filled in—unfinished, in fact, and, indeed, this kind of work is often better for the addition of a little painting. Very simple painted work of this kind, a sort of cross between plain glazing and painted grisaille, is often very effective, Round glass, or