12. Châlons.
It is not always that the glazier was so conscientious as this. M. Viollet le Duc pointed out, in the most helpful article in his famous Dictionary of Architecture, under the head of Vitrail, how in the little window from Bonlieu, here illustrated, the mediæval craftsman resorted to a dodge, more ingenious than ingenuous, by which he managed to economise labour. Each separate lead line there does not enclose a separate piece of glass. The lines are all of lead; but some of them are mere dummies, strips of metal, holding nothing, carried across the face of the glass only, and soldered on to the more businesslike leads at each end. The extent of bonâ fide glazing is indicated in the right-hand corner of the drawing. I confess I was inclined at first to think that Viollet le Duc might, in ascribing this glass to the twelfth century, very possibly have dated it too far back; for this is the kind of trick one would more naturally expect from the later and more sophisticated workman; but I have since come upon the same device myself, both at Reims and Châlons, in work certainly as old as the thirteenth century. You see, cutting the glass was the difficulty in those days, and sometimes it was shirked.
13. Châlons.
It should be noted that the subterfuge employed at Bonlieu and in the specimens from Châlons, [opposite], was not in order to evade any difficulty in glazing—the designs present none—but merely to save trouble. There would have been more occasion for evasion in executing the design from Aix-la-Chapelle ([14]), where the sharp points of the fleur-de-lys give background shapes difficult for the glazier to cut. It will be noticed that to the left of the panel one of the points joins the necking-piece, which holds the fleur-de-lys together. That is a much more practical piece of glazing than the free point, which presents a difficulty in cutting the background, indicative of the late period to which the glass belongs. The earlier mediæval glazier worked with primitive tools, which kept him perforce within the bounds of simplicity and dignified restraint.
In white windows, so called, he did not by any means confine himself wholly to the use of what it is convenient to call “white glass.” From a very early date, perhaps from the very first, he would enrich it with some slight amount of colour. Having devised, as it were, a lattice of white lines, as in the left-hand pattern from Salisbury ([overleaf]), it was a very simple thing to fill here and there a division of his design with a piece of coloured instead of white glass, as in the pattern next to it in order. The third pattern, to the right, shows how he would even introduce a separate jewel of colour, perhaps painted, which had to be connected with the design by leads forming no part of the pattern.
Colour spots are more ingeniously introduced in the example from Brabourne Church, Kent, (said to be Norman) where the darker tints are ingeniously thrown into the background. But here again, although this is perhaps as early a specimen of glazing as we have in this country, the glazier resorts in his central rosettes to the aid of paint.