The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

SIXTEENTH CENTURY GLASS. FROM WINCHESTER COLLEGE CHAPEL (SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).

Apart from good design, well-planned leading and colour scheme, nearly everything depends upon the careful choice of tint in the glass itself, and immense pains and trouble are well spent in this way, since beauty of total effect, as well as particular harmonies, depend upon choice of the degree, depth, and quality of the coloured glass.

Now glass for colour work, called antique, is made in small sheets about 22 in. × 17 in. The sheets of one maker do not exceed 8 in. × 5 in. They may be classified as tints and whites. These form the palette of the stained glass artist, and furnish him with an immense range of tint and tone from which to select. But these, again, are divisible into two sorts: (1) what is called pot-metal self-colours, or sheets that are of the same metal throughout; and (2) that known as flashed, that is, when a thin skin of ruby, gold, pink, or blue is flashed upon a sheet of blue, white, pink, or amber. This flash may be lightened or removed at pleasure by fluoric acid.

The object of the maker of these small sheets of glass is to get as much variety as possible, not only in light and dark, which in the pot-metals is due to the varying thickness of the sheet, and in the flashed colours to the varying thickness of the flash, but in some cases a mixture of two or more colours in the same sheet, by which it will be seen that no two sheets even out of the same pot of metal are alike. It is the use of this variety and unexpectedness that are amongst the charms of stained glass.

We speak of stained glass, but in reality there is only one stain, properly speaking; other colours used on glass are enamels, the real colour being incorporated in the glass when made (pot-metal or flashed), and not painted on. This stain is a preparation of silver, and is mixed with a vegetable colour, yellow lake, to weaken it. It is principally used upon the whites to stain diapers, hair, etc., and when fixed in the kiln the yellow lake is burnt away, leaving a slight residue which is easily removed, and the silver is vitrified into the glass, the depth of yellow being varied according to the strength of the stain and the susceptibility of the glass.

In setting to work to design a stained glass window, it is usual first to make a coloured design to scale—1½ inch to the foot is the best.

A window may be composed of one light or of many, each separate panel inclosed by the masonry or mullions being termed a light. The question of treatment of subject as a single design extending across several lights, or as separate panels, must depend first upon the particular subject, or subjects, to be treated, then the scale of the window, and the general character of the architectural setting.

Supposing it is a subject like the Nativity, with the Adoration of the Magi, it would lend itself to treatment as a single subject extending across several lights, and to great richness and splendour of colour. The colour design in such a case would be the most important, but, as I have before said, it must be perfectly combined with, and built upon, a well-designed network of lead lines, those lines forming themselves essential elements in the design, defining the forms in bold outline, and uniting and giving value to the masses of colour. For while we may separate the problem into two parts, the design of lead lines and colour design, the window must be conceived as a whole, not merely as composition in line to be tinted.

Having made our scale sketch, the next step is to work out the full-sized cartoons, which, of course, demand more attention to drawing and detail. Many artists make as many elaborate studies for figures, drapery, and details as they would for a highly-wrought picture in oil, or mural painting. As a matter of fact, however, though any amount of good drawing and invention may be put into glass design, it should not be forgotten that beauty of pattern and effect and symbolic suggestion are the objects and not pictorial naturalism.

For main definition in the design the essential lead line is all important. It would not do to sketch in a figure in a casual way, and then surmount it with lead lines; it should be carefully considered as a piece of bold and massive outline design.