The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

The best way is to cut the shape in thin sheet glass, which is then placed on the dark sheet of antique glass held up to the light, and moved about until the most suitable part of the sheet is found. They are then laid on the bench together, and the piece of sheet glass is pounced with a small bag of fine whitening, which, when removed, leaves its shape on the dark sheet to be followed by the cutter's diamond.

We now come to the all-important task of selecting the glass.

The ordinary trade way of doing this is to number the outline, which indicates to the cutter certain racks correspondingly numbered containing the different colours. But if it is to be really careful artistic work the designer ought himself to select each piece for his work.

The principle and idea of colour in glass design, dealing as the artist does with pure translucent colour, is necessarily distinct from those obtaining in other kinds of painting, such as mural, when opaque colours and a variety of half-tones are used. The glass designer does not attempt to shade his figures and draperies by the light and dark parts of a sheet of coloured glass. He desires to express the jewel-like quality—the quintessence of colour in every piece of glass—by the force of contrast, not in the juxtaposition of dark and light pieces of one colour merely, but by the bold arrangement of various colours, having the effect of one, but with a richness and sonorousness that the single tint does not possess.

For example, in a yellow drapery we should take a rich decided yellow as keynote. Obviously if the adjoining pieces were of the same colour, the effect would be flat and tame; but if we take a low toned yellow or neutral colour, the keynote will be screwed up to concert pitch, as it were, and if the neutral colour is followed by a reddish tone of yellow and that by another variation of yellow, that again by a decided green, and so on, we shall achieve that desideratum in stained glass—variety in unity.

The general effect will be warmer or colder as reddish or greenish tones predominate in the scheme. Care, of course, must be taken to bring these contrasted—even discordant—component parts into a harmonious whole: indeed every piece should be selected, not only to agree with and help its neighbour, but with reference to the harmony of the whole. Any undue abruptness of contrast may be brought into sufficient relation by the after painting.

The white must be treated in the same way, a mixture of warm and cold tints as a rule, the general effect of each mass being made warmer or colder as found necessary. Great care must be taken with the masses of white to prevent them looking like holes in the window: for instance, a white coming next to a dark colour would have to be a tint (or very low in tone, as we should say in painting) to hold its proper place. Only by actual experience, however, can the artist learn how one colour affects another, and how certain combinations will look in their place.

We have now reached the painting stage. All the glass has been cut and laid out on the outline. It is now looked over to see if there are any pieces that will not stand the fire—that is, that would change colour or lose brilliance. The gold pinks, brown rubies, and some sorts of pure ruby are liable to do this. Pieces of plain sheet glass may therefore be cut to the same shape to paint on, to be afterwards glazed behind the coloured pieces, so that the full brilliance is preserved.

The wings of the angel in the panel by Mr. J. S. Sparrow (to whom I am indebted for this detailed account) have been treated in this way.

The outline was made in colours ground in turpentine, fattened and made workable with japanner's gold-size, in order to stand the matte of water-colour to be added afterwards.