Windows: A Book About Stained & Painted Glass

by Lewis F. Day

BOOK II.

CHAPTER XI.
THE DESIGN OF EARLY GLASS.

Design in glass developed itself on lines almost parallel to the progress of technique. Each, of course, affected the other—how and why it is now proposed to show.

It is not intended at present to say more than is absolutely necessary about “Style,” in the historic sense—that is reserved for a chapter by itself—but, as it is convenient to refer to a period of design by its name, it will be as well at this stage briefly to enumerate the historic “Periods.”

Glass follows, inevitably, the style of architecture of the period. Accordingly it is divided broadly into Gothic and Renaissance. Gothic, in its turn, is divided by Rickman (who first attempted to discriminate between the styles of architecture in England) into three periods. Winston, who did for English glass what Rickman did for English architecture, adopts his classification as follows:—Early Gothic—to about 1280. Decorated Gothic—to about 1380. Perpendicular Gothic—to about 1530.

Renaissance art has been classified in Italy according to the century, and in France has been named after the reigning sovereign—François Premier, Henri Deux, and so on. In England also we make use of the terms Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and the like. No one, however, has attempted to draw subtle distinctions between the periods of Renaissance glass, for the obvious reason that the best of it was done within a comparatively short period, and the rest is not of much account. It is enough, therefore, to mark off two divisions of Renaissance glass. The first (which overlaps the latest Gothic) may be called Sixteenth Century, or by the Italian name Cinque-Cento, or simply Renaissance; whilst the second, which includes seventeenth century and later work, is sufficiently described as Late glass.

The development of style in other countries was not quite parallel with its march on this side of the water. The French were always in advance of us, whether in Gothic or Renaissance; the Germans lagged behind, at all events in Gothic; but the pace is equal enough for us to group windows generally into three Gothic and two Renaissance periods—Early, Middle, and Late Gothic; Early and Late Renaissance. If we do that it will concern us less, that Early German work is more Romanesque than Gothic, that Late French work is not Perpendicular but Flamboyant, and so on.

The accepted classification is determined mainly by the character of the architectural or ornamental detail of the design. Such architectural or other detail—that of costume, for example—is of the very greatest use as a clue to the date of glass. That is a question of archæology; but it is not so much the dates that artists or workmen have to do with as with the course of craftsmanship, the development of art. It is convenient for us to mark here and there a point where art or workmanship has clearly reached a new stage; it gives us breathing time, a starting-point on some fresh voyage of discovery; but such points need be few. The less we bother ourselves by arbitrary subdivisions of style the better; and Winston himself allows that his divisions are arbitrary.