Stained Glass Work: A text-book for students and workers in glass

In my own practice, when drawing from the life, I make a great point of keeping back all these ornaments and symbols of attribute, until I feel that my figure alone expresses itself fully, as far as my powers go, without them. No ornament upon the robe, or the crosier, or the sword; above all, no circle round the head, until—the figure standing out at last and seeming to represent, as near as may be, the true pastor or warrior it claims to represent—the moment arrives when I say, "Yes, I have done all I can,—now he may have his nimbus!"

CHAPTER XIX

Of General Conduct and Procedure—Amount of Legitimate Assistance—The Ordinary Practice—The Great Rule—The Second Great Rule—Four Things to Observe—Art v. Routine—The Truth of the Case—The Penalty of Virtue in the Matter—The Compensating Privilege—Practical Applications—An Economy of Time in the Studio—Industry—Work "To Order"—Clients and Patrons—And Requests Reasonable and Unreasonable—The Chief Difficulty the Chief Opportunity—But ascertain all Conditions before starting Work—Business Habits—Order—Accuracy—Setting out Cartoon Forms—An Artist must Dream—But Wake—Three Plain Rules.

Having now described, as well as I can, the whole of your equipment—of hand, and head, and heart—your mental and technical weapons for the practice of stained-glass, there now follow a few simple hints to guide you in the use of them; how best to dispose your forces, and on what to employ them. This must be a very broken and fragmentary chapter, full of little everyday matters, very different to the high themes we have just been trying to discuss—and relating chiefly to your conduct of the thing as a business, and your relationships with the interests that surround you; modes of procedure, business hints, practical matters. I am sorry, just as you were beginning (I hope) to be warmed to the subject, and fired with the high ambitions that it suggests, to take and toss you into the cold world of matter-of-fact things; but that is life, and we have to face it. Open the door into the cold air and let us bang at it straight away!

Now there is one great and plain question that contains all the rest; you do not see it now, but you will find it facing you before you have gone very far. The great question, "Must I do it all myself, or may I train pupils and assistants?"

Let us first amplify the question and get it fairly and fully stated. Then we shall have a better chance of being able to answer it wisely.

I have described or implied elsewhere the usual practice in the matter amongst those who produce stained-glass on a large scale. In great establishments the work is divided up into branches: designers, cartoonists, painters, cutters, lead workers, kiln-men: none of whom, as a rule, know any branch of the work except their own.

Obviously one of the principal contentions of this book is against the idea that such division, as practised, is an ideal method.

On the other hand, you will gather that the writer himself uses the service of assistants.

While in the plates at the end are examples of glass where everything has been done by the artists themselves (Plates I., II., III., IV., VII.).

I must freely confess that when I first saw in the work of these men the beauty resulting from the personal touch of the artist on the whole of the cutting and leading, a qualm of doubt arose whether the practice of admitting any other hand to my assistance was not a compromise to some extent with absolute ideal; whether it were not the only right plan, after all, to do the whole oneself; to sit down to the bench with one's drawing, and pick out the glass, piece by piece, on its merits, carefully considering each bit as it passed through hand; cutting it and trimming it affectionately to preserve its beauties, and, later, leading it into its place with thicker or thinner lead, in the same careful spirit. But I do not think so. I fancy the truth to be that the whole business should be opened up to all, and afterwards each should gravitate to his place by natural fitness. For the cartoonist once having the whole craft requires more constant practice in drawing to keep himself a good cartoonist than he would get if he also did all the other work of each window; quantity being in this matter even essential to quality. I think we must look for more monumental figures, achieved by the delegation of minor craft matters, in short, by co-operation. Nevertheless, I have never felt less certainty in pronouncing on any question of my craft than in this particular matter; whether, to get the best attainable results, one should do the whole of the work oneself. On the other hand, I never felt more certainty in pronouncing on any question of the craft, than now in laying down as an absolute rule and condition of doing good work at all: that one should be able to do the whole of the work oneself. That is the key to the whole situation, but it is not the whole key; for following close upon it comes the rule that springs naturally out of it; that, being a master oneself, one must make it one's object to train all assistants towards mastership also: to give them the whole ladder to climb. This at least has been the case with the work of my own which is shown in the other collotypes. There has been assistance, but every one of those assisting has had the opportunity to learn to make, and according to the degree of his talent is actually able to make, the whole of a stained-glass window himself. There is not a touch of painting on any of the panels shown which is not by a hand that can also cut and lead and design and draw, and perform all the other offices pertaining to stained-glass noted in the foregoing pages.

Speaking generally, I care not whether a man calls himself Brown, or Brown and Co., or, co-operating with others, works under the style of Brown, Jones and Robinson, so long as he observe four things.

(1) Not to direct what he cannot practise;

(2) To make masters of apprentices, or aim at making them;

(3) To keep his hand of mastery over the whole work personally at all stages; and

(4) To be prepared sometimes to make sacrifices of profit for the sake of the Art, should the interests of the two clash.

Such an one we must call an artist, a master, and a worthy craftsman. It is almost impossible to describe the deadening influence which a routine embodying the reverse of these four things has upon the mind of those who should be artists. Under this influence not only is the subdivision of labour which places each successive operation in separate hands accepted as a matter of course, but into each operation itself this separation imports a spirit of lassitude and dulness and compliance with false conditions and limited aims which would seem almost incredible in those practising what should be an inspiring art. To men so trained, so employed, all counsels of perfection are foolishness; all idea of tentative work, experiment, modification while in progress, is looked upon as mere delusion. To them work consists of a series of never-varied formulas, all fitting into each other and combined to aim at producing a definite result, the like of which they have produced a thousand times before and will produce a thousand times again.

"With us," once said, to a friend of the writer, a man so trained, "it's a matter of judgment and experience. It's all nonsense this talk about seeing work at a distance and against the sky, and so forth, while as to the ever taking it down again for retouching after once erecting it, that could only be done by an amateur. We paint a good deal of the work on the bench, and never see it as a whole until it's leaded up; but then we know what we want and get it."

"We know what we want!" To what a pass have we come that such a thing could be spoken by any one engaged in the arts! Were it wholly and universally true, nothing more would be needed in condemnation of wide fields of modern practice in the architectural and applied arts, for, most assuredly it is a sentence that could never be spoken of any one worthy of the name of artist that ever lived. Whence would you like instances quoted? Literature? Painting? Sculpture? Music? Their name is legion in the history of all these arts, and in the lives of the great men who wrought in them.

For a taste—

Did Michael Angelo "know what he wanted" when, half-way through his figure, he found the block not large enough, and had to make the limb too short?

Did Beethoven know, when he evolved a movement in one of his concerted pieces out of a quarrel with his landlady? and another, "from singing or rather roaring up and down the scale," until at last he said, "I think I have found a motive"—as one of his biographers relates? Tennyson, when he corrected and re-corrected his poems from youth to his death? Dürer, the precise, the perfect, able to say, "It cannot be better done," yet re-engraving a portion of his best-known plate, and frankly leaving the rejected portion half erased?⁶ Titian, whose custom it was to lay aside his pictures for long periods and then criticise them, imagining that he was looking at them "with the eyes of his worst enemy"?

There is not, I suppose, in the English language a more "perfect" poem than "Lycidas." It purports to have been written in a single day, and its wholeness and unity and crystalline completeness give good colour to the thought that it probably was so.

 
"Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow, to fresh woods and pastures new."
 

Yet, regarding it, the delightful Charles Lamb writes:⁷—

"I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty,—as springing with all its parts absolute,—till, in evil hour, I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like something to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them, after the later cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore!—interlined, corrected, as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure; as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good; as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another Galatea."

But the real truth of the case is that whatever "inspiration" may be, and whether or not "made up of parts," it, or man's spirit and will in all works of art, has to deal with things so made up; and not only so, but also as described by the other words here chosen: fluctuating, successive, and indifferent. You have to deal with the whole sum of things all at once; the possible material crowds around the artist's will, shifting, changing, presenting at all stages and in all details of a work of art, infinite and continual choice. "Nothing," we are told, "is single," but all things have relations with each other. How much more, then, is it true that every bit of glass in a window is the centre of such relations with its brother and sister pieces, and that nothing is final until all is finished? A work of art is like a battle; conflict after conflict, man[œ]uvre after man[œ]uvre, combination after combination. The general does not pin himself down from the outset to one plan of tactics, but watches the field and moulds its issues to his will, according to the yielding or the resistance of the opposing forces, keeping all things solvent until the combinations of the strife have woven together into a soluble problem, upon which he can launch the final charge that shall bring him back with victory.

So also is all art, and you must hold all things in suspense. Aye! the last touch more or less of light or shade or colour upon the smallest piece, keeping all open and solvent to the last, until the whole thing rushes together and fuses into a harmony. It is not to be done by "judgment and experience," for all things are new, and there are no two tasks the same; and it is impossible for you from the outset to "know what you want," or to know it at any stage until you can say that the whole work is finished.

"But if we work on these methods we shall only get such a small quantity of work done, and it will be so costly done on a system like that you speak of! Make my assistants masters, and so rivals! put a window in, and take it out again, forsooth!" What remedy or answer for this?

Well—setting aside the question of the more or less genius—there are only two solutions that I can see:—an increase in industry or a possible decrease in profit, though much may be accomplished in mitigation of these hard conditions, if they prove too hard, by a good and economical system of work, and by time-saving appliances and methods.

But, after all, you were not looking out for an easy task, were you, in this world of stress and strain to have the privileges of an artist's life without its penalties? Why, look you, you must remember that besides the business of "saving your soul," which you may share in common with every one else, you have the special privilege of enjoying for its own sake your personal work in the world.

And you must expect to pay for that privilege at some corresponding personal cost; all the more so in these days when your lot is so exceptional a fortune, and when to enjoy daily work falls to so few. Nevertheless, when I say "enjoy" I do not mean that art is easy or pleasant in the way that ease is pleasant; there is nothing harder; and the better the artist, probably the harder it is. But you enjoy it because of its privileges; because beauty is delightful; because you know that good art does high and unquestioned service to man, and is even one of the ways for the advancing of the kingdom of God.

That should be pleasure enough for any one, and compensation for any pains. You must learn the secret of human suffering—and you can only learn it by tasting it—because it is yours to point its meaning to others and to give the message of hope.

In this spirit, then, and within these limitations, must you guide your own work and claim the co-operation of others, and arrange your relationships with them, and the limits of their assistance and your whole personal conduct and course of procedure:—

To be yourself a master.

To train others up to mastery.

To keep your hand over the whole.

To work in a spirit of sacrifice.

These things once firmly established, questions of procedure become simple. But a few detached hints may be given. I shall string them together just as they come.

An Economy of Time in the Studio.—Have a portion of your studio or work-room wall lined with thin boarding—"picture-backing" of 1/8 inch thick is enough, and this is to pin things on to. The cartoon is what you are busy upon, but you must "think in glass" all the time you are drawing it. Have therefore, pinned up, a number of slips of paper—a foolscap half-sheet divided vertically into two long strips I find best.

On these write down every direction to the cutter, or the painter, or the designer of minor ornament, the moment it comes into your mind, as you work at the charcoal drawing. If you once let the moment pass you will never remember these things again, but you will have them constantly forced back upon your memory, by the mistranslations of your intention which will face you when you first see your work in the glass. This practice is a huge saving of time—and of disappointment. But you also want this convenient wall space for a dozen other needs; for tracings and shiftings of parts, and all sorts of essays and suggestions for alteration.

That we should work always.—I hope it is not necessary to urge the importance of work. It is not of much use to work only when we feel inclined; many people very seldom do feel naturally inclined. Perhaps there are few things so sweet as the triumph of working through disinclination till it is leavened through with the will and becomes enjoyment by becoming conquest. To work through the dead three o'clock period on a July afternoon with an ache in the small of one's back and one's limbs all a-jerk with nervousness, drooping eyelids, and a general inclination to scream. At such a time, I fear, one sometimes falls back on rather low and sordid motives to act as a spur to the lethargic will. I think of the shortness of the time, the greatness of the task, but also of all those hosts of others who, if I lag, must pass me in the race. Not of actual rivals—or good nature and sense of comradeship would always break the vision—but of possible and unknown ones whom it is my habit to club all together and typify under the style and title of "that fellow Jones." And at such a time it is my habit to say or think, "Aha! I bet Jones is on his back under a plane tree!"—or thoughts to that effect—and grasp the charcoal firmer.

It is habits and dodges and ways of thinking such as these that will gradually cultivate in you the ability to "stand and deliver," as they say in the decorative arts. For, speaking now to the amateur (if any such, picture-painter or student, are hesitating on the brink of an art new to them), you must know that these arts are not like picture-painting, where you can choose your own times and seasons: they are always done to definite order and expected in a definite time; and that brings me to speak of the very important subject of "Clients."

Of Clients and Patrons.—It must, of course, be left to each one to establish his own relations with those who ask work of him; but a few hints may be given.

You will get many requests that will seem to you unreasonable and impossible of carrying out—some no doubt will really be so; but at least consider them. Remember what we said a little way back—not to be set on your own allegory, but to accept your subject from outside and add your poetic thought to it. And also what in another place we said about keeping all "solvent"—so do with actual suggestion of subject and with the wishes of your client: treat the whole thing as "raw material," and all surrounding questions as factors in one general problem. Here also Ruskin has a pregnant word of advice—as indeed where has he not?—"A great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them." ⁸ You cannot always do what people ask, but you can do it more often than a headstrong man would at first think.

I was once doing a series of small square panels, set at intervals in the height of some large, tall windows, and containing Scripture subjects, the intermediate spaces being filled with "grisaille" work. The subjects, of course, had to be approximately on one scale, and several of them became very tough problems on account of this restriction. However, all managed to slip through somehow till we came to "Jacob's Ladder," and there I stood firm, or perhaps I ought rather to say stuck fast. "How is it possible," I said to my client, "that you can have a picture of the 'Fall' in one panel with Eve's figure taking up almost the whole height of it, and have a similar panel with 'Angels Ascending and Descending' up and down a ladder? There are only two ways of doing it—to put the ladder far off in a landscape, which would reduce it to insignificance, and besides be unsuitable in glass; or to make the angels the size of dolls. Don't you see that it's impossible?" No, he didn't see that it was impossible. What he wanted was "Jacob's Ladder"; the possibility or otherwise was nothing to him. He said (what you'll often hear said, reader, if you do stained-glass), "I don't, of course, know anything about art, and I can't say how this could be done; that is the artist's province."

It was in my younger days, and I'm afraid I must have replied to the effect that it was not a question of art but of common reason, and that the artist's province did not extend to making bricks without straw or making two and two into five; and the work fell through. But had I the same thing to deal with now I should waste no words on it, but run the "ladder" right up out of the panel into the grisaille above; an opportunity for one of those delightful naïve exceptions of which old art is so full—like, for instance, the west door of St. Maclou at Rouen, where the crowd of falling angels burst out of the tympanum, bang through the lintel, defying architecture as they defied the first great Architect, and continue their fall amongst the columns below. "Angels Descending," by-the-bye, with a vengeance! And if the bad ones, why not the good? I might just as well have done it, and probably it would have been the very thing out of the whole commission which would have prevented the series from being the tame things that such sometimes are. Anyway, remember this—for I have invariably found it true—that the chief difficulty of a work of art is always its chief opportunity. A thing can be looked at in a thousand and one ways, and something dauntingly impossible will often be the very thing that will shake your jogtrot cart out of its rut, make you whip up your horses, and get you right home.

BUT

Observe this—that all these wishes of the client should be most strictly ascertained beforehand; all possibility of midway criticism and alteration prevented. Thresh the thing well out in the preliminary stages and start clear; as long as it is raw material, all in solution, all hanging in the balance—you can do anything. It is like "clay in the hands of the potter," and you can make the vessel as you please: "Out of the same lump making one vessel to honour and another to dishonour." But when the work is half-done, when colour is calling out to colour, and shape to shape, and thought to thought, throughout the length and breadth of the work; when the ideas and the clothing of them are all fusing together into one harmony; when, in short, the thing is becoming that indestructible, unalterable unity which we call a Work of Art:—then, indeed, to be required to change or to reconsider is a real agony of impossibility; tearing the glowing web of thought, and form, and fancy into a destruction never to be reconstructed, and which no piecing or patching will mend.

There are many minor points, but they are really so entirely matters of experience, that it hardly seems worth while to dwell upon them. Start with recognising the fact that you must try to add business habits and sensible and economical ways to your genius as an artist; in short, another whole side to your character; and keep that ever in view, and the details will fall into their places.

Have Everything in Order.—Every letter relating to a current job should be findable at a moment's notice in an office "letter basket," rather wider than a sheet of foolscap paper, and with sides high enough to allow of the papers standing upright in unfolded sheets, each group of them behind a card taller than the tallest kind of ordinary document, and bearing along the top edge in large red letters—Roman capitals for choice—the name of the work: and it need hardly be said that these should be arranged in alphabetical order. For minor matters too small for such classification it is well to have, in the front place in the basket, cards dividing the alphabet itself into about four parts, so that unarranged small matters can be still kept roughly alphabetical. When the work is done, transfer all documents to separate labelled portfolios—a folded sheet of the thickest brown paper, such as they put under carpets, is very good—and store them away for reference. Larger portfolios for all templates, tracings, or architects' details or drawings relating to the work. If you have not a good system with regard to the ordering of these things, believe me the mere administration of a very moderate amount of work will take you all your day.

So also with measurement.

ON ACCURACY IN MEASUREMENT

In one of Turgenieff's novels a Russian country proverb is quoted—"Measure thrice, cut once." It is a golden rule, and should be inscribed in the heart of every worker, and I will add one that springs out of it—"Never trust a measurement unless it has been made by yourself, or for yourself—to your order."

The measurements on architects' designs, or even working drawings, can never be trusted for the dimensions of the built work. Even the builders' templates, by which the work was built, cannot be, for the masons knock these quite enough out, in actual building, to make your work done by these guides a misfit. Have your own measurements taken again. Above all, beware of trusting to the supposed verticals or horizontals in built work, especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line.

With regard to accuracy of work in the shop, where it depends on yourself and the system you observe, I cannot do better than write out for you here the written notice by which the matter is regulated in my own practice with regard to cartoons.

"Rules to be Observed in Setting out Forms for Cartoons

"In every case of setting out any form, or batch of forms, for new windows the truth of the first long line ruled must be tested by stretching a thread.

If the lath is proved to be out, it must at once be sent to a joiner to be accurately 'shot,' and the accuracy of both its edges must then be tested with a thread.

The first right angle made (for the corner of the form) must also be tested by raising a perpendicular, with a radius of the compasses not less than 6 inches and with a needle-pointed pencil, and by the subjoined formula and no other.

From a given point in a given straight line to raise a perpendicular. Let A B be the given straight line (this must be the long side of the form, and the point B must be one corner of the base-line): it is required to raise from the point B a line perpendicular to the line A B.

Fig. 71.

(1) Prolong the line A B at least 6 inches beyond B (if there is not room on the paper, it must be pinned on to a smooth board, and a piece of paper pinned on, so as to meet the edge of it, and continue it to the required distance).

(2) With the centre B (the compass leg being in all cases placed with absolute accuracy, using a lens if necessary to place it) describe the circle C D E.

(3) With the centres C and E, and with a radius of not less than 9 inches, describe arcs intersecting at F and G.

(4) Join F G.

Then, if the work has been correctly done, the line F G will pass through the point B, and be perpendicular to the line A B. If it does not do so, the work is incorrect, and must be repeated.

When the base and the springing-line are drawn on the form, the form must be accurately measured from the bottom upwards, and every foot marked on both sides. Such markings to be in fine pencil-line, and to be drawn from the sides of the form to the extreme margin of the paper, and you are not to trust your eye by laying the lath flat down and ticking off opposite the inch-marks, but you are to stand the lath on its edge, so that the inch-marks actually meet the paper, and then tick opposite to them.

Also if there are any bars in the window to be observed, the places of these must be marked, and it must be made quite clear whether the mark is the middle of the bar or its edge; and all this marking must be done lightly, but very carefully, with a needle-pointed pencil.

In every case where the forms are set out from templates, the accuracy of the templates must be verified, and in the event of the base not being at right angles with the side, a true horizontal must be made from the corner which is higher than the other (the one therefore which has the obtuse angle) and marked within the untrue line; and all measurements, whether of feet, bars, or squaring-out lines, or levels for canopies, bases, or any other divisions of the light, must be made upwards from this true level line."

These rules, I suppose, have saved me on an average an hour a day since they were drawn up; and, mark you, an hour of waste and an hour of worry a day—which is as good as saving a day's work at the least.

An artist must dream; you will not charge me with undervaluing that; but a decorator must also wake, and have his wits about him! Start, therefore, in all the outward ordering of your career with the three plain rules:—

(1) To have everything orderly;

(2) To have everything accurate;

(3) To bring everything and every question to a point, at the time, and clinch it.