10. Glazing in Plaster. South Kensington Museum.
Of richly jewelled Gothic glass all innocent of paint, no single window remains to us; but there are fairly numerous examples extant of pattern windows glazed in white glass, whether in obedience to the Cistercian rule which forbade colour, or with a view to letting light into the churches—and it is to churches, prevalent as domestic glass may once have been, we must now go for our Gothic windows.
Some of this white pattern work is ascribed to a period almost as early as that of any glass we know; but it is almost impossible to speak positively as to the date of anything so extremely simple in its execution; in which there is no technique of painting to tell tales; and which, when once “storied” windows came into fashion, was probably left to the tender mercies of lesser craftsmen, who may not have disdained to save themselves the trouble of design, and to repeat the old, old patterns.
The earlier glazier, it was said, painted, figuratively speaking, in glass. It is scarcely a figure of speech to say that he drew in leadwork.
This mode of draughtsmanship was employed in all strictly mosaic glass; but it is in the white windows (or the pale green windows, which were the nearest he could get to white, and which it is convenient to call white) that this drawing with the leads is most apparent—in patterns, that is to say, in which the design is formed entirely by the leadwork.
11. Plain Glazing, Bonlieu.
You have only to look at such patterns as Nos. 11 to 17, to see how this was so; they are all designed in outline, and the outline is given in lead. It is perfectly plain there how every separate line the glazier laid down in charcoal upon his bench stood for a strip of lead. And, looking at the glass, we see that it is the lead which makes the pattern. It is no straining of terms to call this designing in the lead. The ingenuity in designing such patterns as those [below] and [opposite], which is very considerable, consists in so scheming them that every lead line shall fulfil alike a constructive and an artistic function; that is to say, that every line in the design shall be necessary to its artistic effect, that there shall be no lead line which is not an outline, no outline which is not a lead.