This book is not intended to do so; it is written to give as much information and to arouse as much interest as a book can; with the hope that if any are in a position to wish to learn this craft, and have not been brought up to it, they may learn, in general, what its conditions are, and then be able to decide whether to carry it further by seeking good teaching, and by laying themselves out for a patient course of study and practice and many failures and experiments. While, with regard to those already engaged in glass-painting, it is of course intended to arouse their interest in, and to give them information upon, those other branches of their craft which are not generally taught to those brought up as glass-painters.
[CHAPTER V]
Cutting (advanced)—The Ideal Cartoon—The Cut-line—Setting the Cartoon—Transferring the Cut-line to the Glass—Another Way—Some Principles of Taste—Countercharging.
We have only as yet spoken of the processes of cutting and painting in themselves, and as they can be practised on a single bit of glass; but now we must consider them as applied to a subject in glass where many pieces must be used. This is a different matter indeed, and brings in all the questions of taste and judgment which make the difference between a good window and an inferior one. Now, first, you must know that every differently coloured piece must be cut out by itself, and therefore must have a strip of lead round it to join it to the others.
Draw a cartoon of a figure, bearing this well in mind: you must draw it in such a simple and severe way that you do not set impossible or needlessly difficult tasks to the cutter. Look now, for example, at the picture in Plate [V.] by Mr. Selwyn Image—how simple the cutting!
You think it, perhaps, too "severe"? You do not like to see the leads so plainly. You would like better something more after the "Munich" school, where the lead line is disguised or circumvented. If so, my lesson has gone wrong; but we must try and get it right.
You would like it better because it is "more of a picture"; exactly, but you ought to like the other better because it is "more of a window." Yes, even if all else were equal, you ought to like it better, because the lead lines cut it up. Keep your pictures for the walls and your windows for the holes in them.
But all else is not equal: and, supposing you now standing before a window of the kind I speak of, I will tell you what has been sacrificed to get this "picture-window" "like a picture." Stained-glass has been sacrificed; for this is not stained-glass, it is painted glass—that is to say, it is coloured glass ground up into powders and painted on to white sheets of glass: a poor, miserable substitute for the glorious colour of the deep amethyst and ruby-coloured glasses which it pretends to ape. You will not be in much danger of using it when you have handled your stained-glass