Title: Stained Glass Windows: An Essay: With a Report to the Vestry on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church Lockport New York
Author: Faber, William Frederic
Language: English
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                             STAINED GLASS
                                WINDOWS

                               AN ESSAY

                         WITH A REPORT TO THE
                        VESTRY ON STAINED GLASS
                       WINDOWS FOR GRACE CHURCH
                  LOCKPORT NEW YORK [Illustration] BY
                 WILLIAM FREDERIC FABER [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

                           LOCKPORT NEW YORK

                                  MCM



                                 NOTE.


The first edition of the _Report on Stained Glass Windows for Grace
Church, Lockport_, which appeared in January, 1897, is now exhausted;
as there is a constant demand for it, a second is deemed necessary; and
the occasion seemed favorable for a little further talk about Windows
and Glass. Hence this pamphlet.

The project of four years ago is no longer an insubstantial dream.
Since that time eleven windows and three mosaics have been placed in
Grace Church; in them all the adopted scheme has been followed, with
results more and more obviously satisfactory.

Although intending this pamphlet, in the first instance, simply for
a guide to his own people, to lead them to a more discriminating
appreciation: the author is encouraged to hope, by many expressions
from the outside, that it will, even more than the earlier _Report_, be
of service beyond his parish; that it may perhaps stimulate elsewhere
also a study of Church Glass, and the erection of true Church Windows.

                                                             W. F. F.

Grace Church Rectory, Lockport, All Saints’, 1900.



                        STAINED GLASS WINDOWS.


The subject is certainly one of present interest. The advertisements of
firms who produce stained glass windows are numerous and conspicuous
in our Church weeklies; glowing accounts of memorials just erected in
this place and that make up a large part of our “Diocesan News.” To
say nothing of the fact that we are in danger of forgetting what the
real business of the Church is,――that it is not primarily to build and
beautify edifices, but to save men and to establish righteousness in
the earth; the uncomfortable question is forced upon us: For how much
of this “embellishment” of our churches will posterity thank us?

A revival of religious art we welcome with profound gratitude. But when
for the moment it threatens to take the form of an epidemic of stained
glass, our joy may be turned to apprehension. Stained glass is simply
becoming fashionable; everybody is beginning to want some of it because
‘all the other churches are getting some;’ commercial enterprise
stimulates a well-meaning zeal, taking advantage, too, of a vulgar
spirit of rivalry; and the end thereof must be painful to contemplate.
Individuals are often given a free hand in God’s House on the ground
that thus several hundred or several thousand dollars will be secured
for “enrichment;” and so the work goes merrily on.

And such things can be because there is a lack of knowledge. Persons
may have the best intention in the world; their experience in other,
different fields may have been very wide; in a general way they may
have good taste; moreover, they may possess a long purse and a liberal
disposition; perhaps they may think to save themselves from going wrong
by putting the whole matter into the hands of strongly advertised
window-makers. But none of these things will supply the lack of a
knowledge of stained glass. There is nothing for it but study and
education. The clergy first of all, and after them the vestries, must
inform themselves on the subject as thoroughly as possible. In the
meantime, let them be slow to lend themselves to anything which they
later, or those who come after them, might bitterly deplore and be
helpless to remedy.

Nor is it to-day so forbidding a task to get this knowledge as it
was but a few years ago. Then one had to go to the libraries in our
largest cities, and laboriously gather from rare works the history
and principles of this art. Now there is fortunately at least one
single volume, easily obtainable, which may serve as a text-book to
all who desire to study the subject. Mr. Lewis F. Day has given us in
his _Windows: A Book about Stained and Painted Glass_, published in
London, 1897, by B. T. Batsford, imported by the Scribners, just that
information which is needed. No vestry that has the matter of Stained
Glass Memorials before it should permit its rector to be without this
book; he should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it; but not he
only; they also, at least the members of any committee responsible
for such work; and intending donors likewise, who desire to have a
controlling voice in regard to memorials to be erected. This is too
important a thing to enter upon recklessly or at the dictation of mere
fancy.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile it may not be out of place to tell briefly and simply what
stained glass windows in a church ought to be; and what stained glass
itself is.

Stained glass windows are still, after all, windows: and windows are
essential component parts of a building. If in a church, the axiom
applies the more inevitably: a church is a building presumed to conform
rigidly to a certain type; and therefore, the idea which the whole is
to exhibit and impress must not for a moment be hidden or dissipated by
any component part.

Our dwelling houses may be often built in a haphazard way, with a
view simply to utility, regardless of style, laying no claim to
architectural art. But to build a church so is an offense, an offense
to art, and, we believe, an offense to religion also. A church building
is presumed and expected to have a certain character, technically
called “style,” dignifying and elevating God’s House above our common
houses, even though it be small and plain and not costly; small
and plain it may be, and not costly, but it must not be tawdry or
incongruous or mean.

Now a window is, as we have said, a component part of the building.
In a church well conceived, the window is inevitable just as it is:
to make it larger or smaller, to close one up where now there is one
or to make one where there is none, is just so far to do violence to
the building. If such a change does not violate the integrity of the
building as a whole, the fact simply goes to show that the building had
no plan worthy of honor.

The window-space is therefore always to be preserved for window
use――just such and just so much as the architect gave us. The use of a
window (barring for the moment the unscientific one of ventilation) is
to give light while still affording shelter. And this light-space is
also to serve artistically as a kind of balance to the dark space of
the solid wall; hence this light-space is to art sacred, and must be
permitted to the end to assert itself as just what it is and such as it
is, so much rightly apportioned and correctly proportioned translucent
wall-space.

When this window-space has been first filled with a plain glass, which
is then to give way to stained glass, the new treatment must say, just
as obviously, only more beautifully, what the old said: it must still
be a window――letting in light, though now the light is colored――and in
its architectural value it must be just what it was before, asserting
the shape and the design of the structural window, plainly and
faithfully.

In other words, the true stained glass window――in a church building
worthy of that name――is not now to give the beholder the impression
that he is looking out through an opening and seeing, of something
beyond, so much as the size of the opening will permit: in a word, the
spectacular impression of looking into some beautiful out-door world
through a hole in the wall. The beholder must be conscious still of
looking at the wall itself, the translucent part of it, which confines
him within the edifice as much as the stone or the brick. Nor yet is
the true stained glass window merely a colored glass picture covering
so much wall area: the outline form is to be so obvious, and the
treatment so non-realistic, that the architectural idea may never for a
moment be in danger of submersion under some other idea.

For, as is true in general of decorative art as contrasted with
pictorial art, the true church window is to be designed without
perspective, without shadow, without attempt at realistic effect. It is
to be conventional, symbolical; with that intent it may utilize as it
will forms, colors, attitudes, postures, accessories, fearless of the
criticism that ‘this saint or that scene never in the world looked like
that.’ No intelligent person standing before decorative painting would
for a moment think of demanding a representation of the actual. That,
frankly, was not its object.

And the stained glass church window will further fulfill its particular
end if all round the figure or group, or whatever be the subject matter
of the composition, there runs a clear line or border of differently
colored glass, making a clear demarcation from the stone wall; drawing
again, as it were, the architect’s line of his window construction.

All of which is but to say that windows were made for the sake of the
building, and so must remain; not that a building was made for the
sake of windows,――for the sake of furnishing so much space for so
many square yards of somebody’s beautiful glass. Which ought to be
self-evident, though to many persons it is not.

                   *       *       *       *       *

So regarding it now, the further question naturally occurs as to the
treatment of the several windows of one particular church. For, each
individual window might be in itself correct according to the above
principles, and yet the total effect sadly lacking in unity and harmony.

There is first of all the consideration of style: a difficult matter
to define, yet not, after all, so difficult to determine. What ought
certainly not to determine it is the chance ability of some wealthy
donor or donors to pay for the costliest work that could be produced;
nor, on the other hand, the limited ability of others who could give
only something inexpensive. The style of the building and its general
character must determine the degree of splendor and ornateness which
will be right for each and all the windows. If there be wealth to do
still more, then exercise sober self-restraint. If there be available
means only to do part of what the building demands, better do just so
much as can be rightly and adequately done, though the scheme should
wait many years for its entire completion. In building a new church,
let this also be thought of in advance.

Then there is the question of a single scheme of subjects for all the
windows, so that all when completed shall tell, chapter by chapter,
one great story, or part by part, one great truth: say, the Christian
Faith, or the Redemption of Man, or the Sacramental Economy of Grace,
or the History of Religion, or the Mission of the Church in the
World. Thus again, as in old time, will the church windows instruct
the people, and the sum total of that instruction will be a unity,
with harmony and interrelation of parts, of the utmost value to sound
Christian thinking and feeling, and to symmetry of Christian character.
For it is just this which our modern religion so much lacks: the sad
result of sectarian thinking and teaching, where each hath a doctrine,
a truth, and few the whole doctrine and the wholeness of truth.

Individualism, let us realize, is not what the Church should foster:
though individuality, in its rightful place, be precious and sacred.
The application here is not fanciful. Sadly absurd examples there are,
where ecclesiastical art has been pressed into service by sectarian
minds (not among the sects alone) to teach some one portion or fragment
of truth through the eye every time the eye gazed upon the interior of
the house of worship and fell upon the favorite symbol or picture.

But not this alone. Individualism is rampant in our day in the
form of utterly arbitrary choice of subjects, as well as of their
mode of treatment in point of material, color, scale of drawing,
and――expensiveness. A Babel of confusion is the result, and that in
some of our foremost churches, which have become thereby rather picture
galleries or museums adapted to the study of all schools and all
tastes, than restful, devotional, solemnizing and uplifting temples for
the worship of Almighty God. A low motive ruled, and how can one help
feeling it as one looks upon the performance?――here the wealthy donor,
or the ambitious so-called artist, forgetting Whose this House was,
demanded worship for himself. “Verily, they have their reward.”

Therefore let those who have such things in charge study first of all
what a church should be, and then what their particular church, such
as they have received it in trust, is. It will often be found that a
building very little esteemed has something to say for itself, and
is worthy of respect as originally conceived, in its own structural
character as designed by its architect. And if not, and if it must
be borne with, then all the more reason, in planning to do anything
further in it or upon it, to “abhor that which is evil, and cleave to
that which is good.”

And after such careful study, determine (before the first enthusiast
has an opportunity to put into some one window chosen at random a “most
superb” production of the much advertised glass man) determine in
advance what should be your total result when every window shall have
been filled with stained glass: what story the whole shall tell, how
best its parts may be distributed, what each part shall be, in what
style, what design, what scale of drawing, scheme of color.

And when this has been determined, in the fear of God, in soberness
of judgment, in conscientious fidelity to a sacred trust, with a
willingness to be judged by a wiser posterity,――then let such a plan
be adhered to as a law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not.
To sacrifice one window to the seductions of some alien grandeur is
to sacrifice the whole principle at stake. The plain glass patiently
awaiting its time to give way to the right thing is more eloquent
of a truly reverent and truly artistic intention than a medley of
incongruous splendors.

                   *       *       *       *       *

And now, what is stained glass? This simple question it is of the
utmost importance to answer, because a little familiarity with the
materials and the methods of workmanship will itself serve as a guide
to the choice of good windows and to the avoidance of bad.

Stained glass, then, is simply glass which has been colored in the pot,
glass which has its color within itself: while painted glass――a term
sometimes used as synonymous with stained glass――is properly glass
which has had the color painted upon its surface, and has then been
fired so that the colored or enameled surface has been vitrified. Some
stained glass is of so deep a color,――red, for instance――that a thin
coating of it blown over the surface of a white (that is, colorless)
glass is sufficient to produce the desired color effect; if the entire
thickness of the pane were of the colored glass, the effect would be
much too dark: such glass is nevertheless true stained glass, and is
called “flashed.”

In the early period of the art, beginning in the eleventh century and
running parallel with the development of Pointed (commonly called
Gothic) Architecture, only true stained glass was used. The use of
enamel paints applied to the surface to produce a different color
marks also the beginning of the decadence of the art; for the glory of
true glass is in its jewel-like quality, its color being within itself
and all absolutely translucent, while a painted glass will always be
necessarily dull in comparison. The temptation to paint color upon the
surface of glass is readily understood: it was an easier method, it
promised wider scope, greater variety, in a word, the opportunity to
make pictures somewhat as the painter may upon canvas. But glass is
not canvas, and church windows are not to be pictures. Retribution has
overtaken this work, and the latest and most ambitious more speedily
than all; the enamel-painted glass has not stood the test of time,
becoming muddy and perishing while the true ancient stained glass is
still the joy and wonder of all who gaze upon it.

For, as we have said, the glory of true stained glass is in its rich,
jewel-like color. Its reds, which the makers called “ruby,” its blues
which they called “sapphire,” with its “emerald” greens, its “gold” and
its “pearl,” never entered the field to compete with the achievements
of the painter’s brush; to compare the delight they afford the beholder
with that derived from a painting would be in a sense as impossible as
a comparison between the fragrance of a flower and the cadence of a
song.

The early makers of stained glass windows contended with great, to
moderns they would be intolerable, limitations. They were almost
absolutely restricted to the primary colors. They had not at first the
art of blowing glass, but cast their pieces in small panes of at most
four or five inches in diameter. The use of the diamond in cutting
was not known till the sixteenth century. Hence their work was simply
mosaic. For variety they depended upon an arrangement of geometrical
patterns, or patterns of familiar architectural form and of common
ecclesiastical symbols. To construct these they leaded together their
pieces and bits of glass, elaborating their treatment as time went on,
but always in the main upon the same lines.

When they began to portray, in panels on their windows, the forms of
Our Lord, of His apostles, of saints and angels, sometimes in crude
settings of scenes or incidents from Holy Scripture or Church legend,
their color principle was still the same; and it was still the same
in the elaboration of the merely ornamental borders with forms of
leaf or flower or fruit, or of sacred emblems and inscriptions. The
brown pigment with which they produced faces and features, hands,
feet, outlines and ornamentations, was not a color, nor intended for
a color, but simply a means of definition or delineation when this
was too minute to be carried out with leads. And the stained glass
it was, still, which addressed the eye and compelled attention and
admiration. No more than in heraldry did the forms and emblems pretend
to be pictures of the actual, realistic representations of men, or of
scenes or incidents. The makers of early stained glass were, in one
word, simply makers of ornamental windows of rich color and religious
symbolism.

We have said that their pieces of glass were small. This is but to say
that their windows were a network of leads. For there is but one way to
hold together such pieces of glass in a window, and that is by leads.
These leads are not a misfortune. A square yard of simple red stained
glass is artistically more beautiful if composed of a hundred pieces
leaded together than if it were in a single sheet. The differences
in texture themselves produce a better result, and the black leads,
scarcely discernible individually, contribute an additional element
of pleasure. And in arranging pieces of different color side by side,
intelligent leading design was itself the artist’s drawing, and
effected results altogether admirable. So far was this art of leading
carried in France, for instance, that windows mainly of white glass
were produced, of rare beauty by simple virtue of their structural
design.

All this was changed by the men who in a later age ground up their
enamel pigments, glazed windows in large panes, and daubed upon them
their muddy colors, with a sublime contempt for the crude laborious
mosaic work of their predecessors. Would they have a representation
of the earth for their figure to stand upon? it must be carpeted
with grass, with green grass, and they can paint green grass upon a
colorless surface; red flowers also, upon the same, with red paint, if
such were desired. The Renaissance was coming; Gothic was barbarous
anyway; antiquated crudities must give place to refined work worthy
of the new enlightenment! Paint a picture on canvas, then paint that
picture on your glass. It can be done, certainly, if you will not allow
yourself to be bothered with the nuisance of leads, but just get an
ample pane of glass, unobstructed, and go at it with your brush and
paints!

This miserable travesty did not long hold sway, it was scarcely
permitted to go its own theoretical length. There came great political
changes, great religious changes, and for a long time few churches
more were built, nor even those standing kept in repair. The course
of Ecclesiastical Architecture suffered an interruption for several
centuries, of which Mr. Ralph Adams Cram has told us feelingly in his
recent writings on that subject.

                   *       *       *       *       *

But within the memory of men now living there has also come the
beginning of a true revival. The awakening of the Catholic spirit
in the Anglican Communion has been accompanied by an eager desire to
recover lost treasures and to restore sound traditions to their former
honor.

And naturally all this has shown itself in the cultivation of Stained
Glass also. As we have said, what is needed above all else is
knowledge, to guide us to what is really good and worthy.

No sooner is any want of the public made evident than enterprising
trade springs up to supply that want. If you want colored church
windows, you can have them to-day at a trifle per square yard by
purchasing a beautifully printed paper, of genuine ecclesiastical
design, and pasting it upon your present windows. From this most
abysmal horror of vulgarity you may pass through various successive
gradations of so-called stained glass, all supplied by trade. If you
pass on to the costliest, you are not thereby sure to obtain what is
not horrible and vulgar, when regarded from the point of view of true
Stained Glass, of Architectural Art, and of Religion.

There are at this moment three rather diverse schools of Stained
Glass most in evidence before those who seek and are willing to pay
for honest art work; the English, the German, and the American. Their
comparative merits are nowhere, to our knowledge, presented in a fair
minded way; the makers of each claim superior excellence for their
own, of course; if, indeed, they ever intimate to the public that there
is any other kind at all. It should be said, however, that there is
great merit in the best examples of each school; and that none of these
schools can fairly be judged by the inferior stuff which is put out
under its name, for each of them is defamed by such stuff.

The English school naturally had, and still has, great prestige among
Churchmen. Taking it at its best, as for instance in the work of
Mr. Henry Holiday, it is simple and vigorous in drawing, varied and
harmonious in color, churchly in spirit, while free from mediævalism.
The English artist believes in stained glass, glass which has its color
within itself; and good glass, the best he can obtain. His glass is
flat, that is, of even surface and equal thickness. He believes in
painting upon this glass, and upon, one may say, every piece and bit
of it; but he does not paint a color upon it, he simply shades it,
draws folds of drapery, patterns of fabrics, details of ornamentations;
always, however, aiming to leave it, however much so painted, with
the color of the glass gleaming and glittering: that is, he does not
daub over the surface, but puts on mere lines, and picks out lights,
so that his painted piece of green glass, let us say, is still green
glass, only with design upon it, or texture, or light and shade. He
feels that only in this way has he done all which as an artist he is
conscientiously bound to do; and he accounts a piece of mere stained
glass which has not felt the brush at all, which has not had the touch
of the conscious art of the maker, a poor thing, in a sort, crude and
barbaric.

In the hands of a master――and there have been great masters in the
English school――the results of this method have been very fine. But
even so the fact remains that every line and every particle of even
neutral pigment upon the surface of glass obscures so much light; which
is to say, it detracts so much from its brilliancy and splendor. The
fact is undeniable that the total effect of some great window of this
school will be charming, but withal just a little dull; the richness
which gleams and glitters from it is yet half hidden as by some
fluttering veil before it. Such work at its best is exquisite; it is
devotional; it is soothing; but hardly gives one a thrill of gladness.
In the hands of a master, it is a fit medium for strong individuality
of a good kind, as witness Burne-Jones’ windows executed at the works
of William Morris. In the hands of the common multitude of English
makers, it degenerates into a wearisome, conventional repetition of
stiff figures, draped in the same damask stuffs, with the same wooden
little flowers growing up around their feet, the whole surrounded by
the same easily managed conventional border.

Of the German glass, commonly called Munich glass, it is sufficient for
our purpose to say that it is in principle the same as the English.
It relies much upon the brush. It is more in the mediæval spirit
than the English; its feeling is that of a simply traditional, not a
modern, devoutness. Its inspiration is Italian. Its colors are more
predominatingly the old primary colors. Its decorative features are
strictly conventional, and applied in a mechanical spirit. In warmth,
in splendor of color, German windows at their best are superior to the
English.

American glass is not simply glass made in America. The term denotes a
new method, which yet is, in the main, a restoration of the very oldest
method, reinforced on its own lines by modern resources. Mr. John La
Farge is its distinguished pioneer.

American glass is true stained glass; but it is not glass of even
surface and of equal thickness.[A] By its inequality of thickness
the American artist effects what the English artist accomplishes by
brushing dark lines upon his even glass; or he leads strips and pieces
of glass on the back of his window to intensify and deepen his color,
as in folds of drapery and the like. He paints nothing except faces,
hands and feet; all the rest he binds himself to obtain by the mosaic
method. He cannot obtain by the mosaic method everything that the
English artist obtains by the brush; but he feels that he obtains all
which in a window is necessary, and by patient, thoroughly artistic
work he obtains what upon study proves marvelous; and he has all his
glass free to exhibit the full glory of glass. His very necessities
compel him to compose in the true way, that is by lead lines; he is
back upon first principles in this respect. The lead lines mark the
structural lines of his drawing. But he has still to contend with the
necessity of painting his flesh parts; and of overcoming the break
between their flatness, between the dull hardness of painted faces,
hands and feet, and the splendid jewel-like strength of all the rest
of his window. The best he can do is to make this transition as little
abrupt as possible.

[A] The earliest glass was not glass of even surface and equal
thickness. Therein lies one of its charms.

Needless to say, the American school has its dangers. The ease with
which an ignorant eye may be imposed upon by great pieces of folded
glass instead of conscientiously selected and leaded strips and pieces,
is a snare, into which it is not necessary for an honest artist to
fall. When, however, a customer demands something cheap, he can obtain
it in so-called American glass, and it will be cheap enough. There has
been also a deplorable tendency among some prominent American glass
makers toward startling theatrical effects. Of unchurchly windows,
windows hopelessly and utterly unchurchly, the great majority doubtless
are of the American school; nor are they the windows which have cost
the least money. Novel and indescribable colors, as far removed as
possible from all sober, reverent, devotional feeling, have been
employed; effects have been sought which actually destroy all the value
of the window as what it was designed by its architect, a window in
a sacred edifice. And by the wide heralding of such performances, as
if American glass meant simply this sort of thing, American glass has
forfeited that just appreciation which in its essential principles it
so richly merits. Let the American school remember that a window in
a church is and forever must remain just a window, subservient that
is, to the architecture of the church; let it design in the spirit of
worshipful, reverent, dignified, sober devotion; let it compose with
technical conscientiousness and love its leads and spare no labor;
let it choose thoroughly good glass, and glass of predominantly the
glorious colors so long honorable, eschewing startling and meretricious
effects: and there will, to our mind, be no doubt of its being the
Stained Glass of the future.

But, to our thinking, one thing cannot safely be done; and that is the
placing of English and American, or Munich and American glass side by
side in the same building. Let it be the one or the other; when you
have chosen which it shall be, adhere to that. To mingle the schools
in the same edifice will be sure to prove fatal to the best effects of
each.

And before placing any permanent stained glass, again let us say, study
the subject; see all the windows you can; and make haste slowly.

[Illustration]



                         STAINED GLASS WINDOWS

                      For Grace Church, Lockport.

                A Report to the Vestry of the Parish by
                     its Rector, January 5, 1897.


After many months of inquiry, reflection, special study, and such
visits to churches as opportunity afforded, we are at last in a
position to bring together the facts bearing upon this important
project, and to submit the results for your consideration.

Grace Church,[B] Lockport, is an edifice which though not striking or
ornate, is in point of architectural merit, of conspicuous importance
in the community, in probable permanence and enduring interest second
to none in our city. Erected more than forty years ago, of stone, its
interior chastely beautified and enriched at successive periods; its
nave alone over one hundred feet long, forty-six feet wide, fifty
feet high; its lofty chancel with a window twenty-two feet in height,
nearly ten feet in width: it impresses the educated eye on entering
it as beautiful and churchly, characterized by simple grace and
reverent dignity, and the exclusion of the tawdry and incongruous. We
may honestly admit some faults. What building, religious or other,
is without them? But it is a church which grows upon us the longer
we worship in it; it becomes homelike to us, and yet excites our
admiration the more as we become better acquainted with it.

[B] The design was one of Richard Upjohn’s.

This is the building which is committed to our care. Not only that
we keep it clean and in repair, warmed and lighted, not only that
we preserve the fabric as a valuable piece of property; but that
continuing to labor in the spirit of those who have preceded us, we
secure such further additions to it as will tend to make it complete in
its kind.

We say, complete in its kind. And it is our sacred duty, therefore,
to understand what it is that we already have, as well as to ask what
further gifts and further embellishments might add thereto. For to
add, with the best intention and with lavish generosity, but without
an understanding of the conditions and limitations imposed by the
existing edifice, might easily result in such disastrous incongruity
as a future generation, if not ours, would deplore. The land is full
of warning examples, and one is at times appalled to think of the vast
sums embodied in worse than waste, from which our better educated
descendants after us will suffer in the years to come. Knowledge is
bound to grow; travel and study cannot fail to make an understanding of
these things the common property of intelligent Church people as time
goes on. And it is a grave responsibility to be at the head of a parish
in which permanent work is undertaken and executed, work on which the
future is to pronounce judgment. This responsibility, let me add, your
rector for one feels very seriously and deeply.

A very common form of architectural enrichment in this day of growing
wealth and of increasing commemoration of the departed is that of
stained glass windows. No memorial can be more beautiful than this when
wisely planned and well executed. None can be much more painful or
incessantly offensive when inartistic, incongruous, or lacking in the
true devotional spirit.

And as touching our own case, it is reasonably certain that offers will
be made to place such windows in Grace Church. It would be ungenerous
to decline them. Moreover, we cannot escape the moral obligation of
directing what such memorials shall be, so far as the building itself,
its style of architecture, its uses, and its history, shall impose the
conditions. It is not a question of dictating to intending donors: for
the vestry to decline to exercise such control would be for us to fail
of a sacred trust.

Our church, we may be most thankful to bear in mind, is built in a
style pure and self-consistent, plain as it is. It is Early English, of
the first and simplest of the periods of Gothic. To treat it as if it
were of some other style, in any changes or additions we might see fit
to make hereafter, would be to do violence to the edifice, to wrong its
intelligent and loving builders in the days of good Bishop De Lancey,
and those who shall inherit it after we are gone. There is meaning and
purpose in it, as it is: in every line of it, in every arch, every
dimension, every grouping and distribution of parts.

We are not at liberty, therefore, to change the window openings, in
size or form, unless indeed we wish to rebuild the church. We may at
our taste reconstruct the windows in the houses in which we live, but
we cannot alter the style of these windows without destroying the style
of the architecture. The series of long narrow lancets, no matter how
long or how narrow, are right; and with all their severe simplicity,
their beauty of outline and their grace and dignity grow upon one the
more they are studied. Mediæval builders had a meaning even in putting
such windows in pairs; it may seem to us a little fantastic, but as
they made everything symbolical, so in this grouping they symbolized
our Lord’s sending out His Apostles two and two. Apart from such a
consideration, there is a quiet grace in this long succession of
lancet pairs which may safely be left to speak for itself.

The development of window forms is itself very interesting, and should
be understood before an attempt is made to treat any church windows
in particular. Mrs. Van Rensselaer, who has done so much to make the
English cathedrals known in this country, thus traces the successive
steps from style to style: “Fancy first a plain tall window with a
round-arched head; then the round exchanged for a pointed head; then
two, or three, or five perhaps, of these pointed windows set close
together; and then a projecting moulding in the shape of an arch drawn
around them, including them all and thus including, of necessity, a
plain piece of wall above their heads. Then fancy this piece of wall
pierced with a few small openings, and we have a group of connected
lights in which, as a plant in its embryo, lies the promise of all
after-development....

“The small lights in the upper field enlarge and multiply until they
form a connected pattern which fills its whole area, and the jambs of
the main lights diminish into narrow strips or very slender columns.
The great arch, which in the first place did but encircle the windows,
thus becomes itself the window――the ‘plate-traceried’ window which was
richly developed in early French Gothic, but less richly in English,
owing to the persistent local love for mere groups of lancets. Then
all the stone-work shrinks still farther――the columnar character of
the uprights is lost, and the flat surfaces between the upper openings
change into mouldings of complex section. Thus the original tall
lights and upper piercings surrender their last claim to independence;
the uprights are no longer jambs or bits of wall but mullions, the
arch-head is filled with genuine traceries, and all the elements of the
design are vitally fused together within the sweep of the great window
to form its multiple yet organic beauty.”

The art of making stained glass windows went hand in hand with this
development of architectural forms through the eleventh, twelfth,
thirteenth and succeeding centuries. It has indeed been called
the “principal branch of Mediæval Art;” but was always treated as
absolutely subservient to the particular architecture itself. A most
eminent authority denies that the art of glass-staining has ever been
lost. Glass itself was used by Christians in their churches from the
earliest church-building times; the distinct art of painting on glass
emerges, one might say, with the springing up of pointed architecture,
though the beginnings show themselves in Norman architecture in the
eleventh century. Four centuries the two arts flourished side by
side; with the decadence of the greater came also the decline of the
subsidiary; a poorer taste in building was naturally accompanied
by a poorer taste in glass. With the revival of interest in those
long-neglected periods of noble achievement, the Oxford movement of
Church Restoration giving men the religious guiding principles for an
intelligent appreciation of the forms of Mediæval art, church building
and glass staining were brought back again, the one with the other. And
whether such restoration can leave us satisfied with the mere recovery
of the riches of by-gone ages, or must mean also, as I believe, the
development of what the present can contribute in a reverent but not
slavish spirit――certain it is that the first step is to understand the
past, to find out what was done in the great formative and classic
periods, why it was done as it was and not otherwise, in a word, to
master the models before we proceed on our own course; and, as I said
before, to remember to which period and style our own edifice belongs.

It was my good fortune when recently in the city of Philadelphia, to
obtain access to a rare work over which I spent some very delightful
hours. Its author was a William Warrington, himself a designer and
producer of windows, and a reverent student of ancient examples, who
published his great folio in London, in 1848. From him I learned many
things about the beginnings and progress of the art. Great were the
difficulties of the eleventh century pioneers. They had to contend
with defective methods of manufacture; not understanding glass-blowing
they fused their glass in pots and crucibles, and cast it to about
the required shape, in pieces not more than four or five inches in
diameter. Cutting with the diamond was not known till the sixteenth
century. They designed and made and erected their own work. When
great orders were to be executed, artists were brought together from
the different countries, and by a sort of “free-masonry” they worked
together in perfect agreement as to styles, rules, and principles.

In the course of time, different countries produced slightly differing
schools.

As in heraldry, the colors of the glass were intended for colors of
precious stones; the representations of figures and objects were not
meant to be pictures, but being also strictly symbolical, the drawing
was conventional, with no intention to reproduce nature in color, or
form, or position and perspective. The figures which excite ridicule
on the part of one who is without the clue, justify themselves by this
principle; nor is it quite true to say the men of that time did not
know how to draw――their ability in this respect was not that of artists
to-day, but if their object had been to produce a figure or a scene for
the sole purpose of a picture, they might certainly and would certainly
have given us something very different from what they did. While the
small separate pieces are often very minutely pencilled, all such work
being afterward burned in――there is no “shadowing,” as in a picture,
supposing the light to fall from a certain direction; but a kind of
“relief” shading, making the view suitable to any aspect. In a word,
the drawing is the same as in MSS., tapestries and heraldic designs.
Ruby and sapphire were the ground colors. And in all the work the
primitive colors were adhered to.

In York Minister there is to be found the largest and finest specimen
of thirteenth century glass in England in a group of lancets known
as the “Five Sisters.” The lancets are each six feet wide and fifty
feet high, and each divided into thirteen compartments or squares
of different patterns. Their designs being largely of an ornamental
character, they escaped destruction by the Puritans.

It is a curious fact that English stained glass at no time had large
figures. In the thirteenth century Continental art in this respect
diverged from ancient and English, under Italian influence.

In the Cathedral of Bourges there are one hundred and eighty-three
stained glass windows, executed from the thirteenth century downwards.
The early lancets have figures occupying the larger part of the window,
sometimes fifteen or twenty feet high; over each figure a sort of
canopy or tabernacle disproportionately small, and under it a kind of
pedestal or base about a foot high. Around the margin is the finest
work in the windows, in a broad band of mosaic.

Cologne Cathedral has four lancets each eleven times its width in
height, filled with early glass of this period; the figures in the
windows are in height one-third the height of the lancet, with a canopy
above them.

The developments of the centuries following are of less interest to our
present purpose. Suffice it to say that even in the rich Decorated
Style of Architecture the treatment of individual windows was not what
we might term ambitious: the effect was secured by not attempting
too much in a single window, but by producing a rich harmony with
subordination of each to the whole. In the Perpendicular Style which
followed, in the fifteenth century, while there was a very abundant
production of glass, its quality was inferior, and much white glass was
used. Figures with canopies were used when the single openings were
one foot wide and upward; panels, when they were considerably larger;
and to fill the extreme length, story upon story. And there begins to
appear a tendency to conform the glass less to the architecture itself.

From the sixteenth century on there is marked decay. The attempts to
treat glass like canvas prove an entire failure. A voluptuous and
sensual school of painting came in, debasing a religious art, which
thus became secularized, and almost disappeared. The destruction of
fine ancient examples in the Puritan revolution left England very poor,
and the little that remained came to be less and less appreciated.

Curiously enough, large importations of glass consequent on the French
Revolution with its destruction of churches, put into the hands of
English churchmen what the religious revival of the Church soon
taught them to appreciate once more, and so it is that to-day England
is enriching her cathedrals and churches with restorations and new
windows; and from her the impulse has naturally come to our own land
also. But the production of stained glass is in America of very recent
date.

From facts like the foregoing we may conclude that the subject is one
of importance and involving so much that it is well that we should
proceed cautiously in the placing of stained glass in Grace Church.

But shall we encourage such a movement at all?

It seems to me that this is the moment supremely opportune for us to
inaugurate a scheme of window treatment such as shall glorify our house
of God more and more till it reaches completion. How long it may take
to reach completion is in a sense immaterial. That we should begin now,
and make every step a right one, is the great matter.

The practical question is, Shall we choose to admit one or a few
striking windows into this edifice, windows which may have no relation
to each other, produced possibly by methods or on principles entirely
at variance, in color-schemes discordant, in scale of drawing entirely
dissimilar and unequal: or shall we guide intending donors to such
gifts as shall be a satisfaction and a delight forever, beautiful
each in itself, but more beautiful still when assembled? This I take
it is the question. For I believe windows will be placed, whether we
encourage it or not, within a decade, possibly much sooner. And when
I put the question thus, it appears to me there is but one answer
possible.

Let us then get down to the practical details in the matter. Leaving
the great chancel window entirely out of consideration, we have five
pairs of lancets of equal size on either side of the nave, and a sixth,
smaller pair over the doors in continuation of the series up to the
chancel. We have further, the magnificent group of three lancets at the
foot of the nave, with a fourth lancet a little smaller, and still much
larger than those in the pairs already referred to.

Here is a considerable number of windows――twenty-nine when we count
in the chancel window; what an opportunity for discord and artistic
anarchy! Let us say, rather, what a remarkable and rare opportunity for
the production of a rich and hallowed splendor, fitted not only to
express the consecration of man’s gifts to God, but to instruct the
minds and quicken the devotions of generations to come.

The objection which most readily offers itself when stained glass is
proposed for Grace Church is that the twenty lancets at the sides are
so extremely narrow and so very high that nothing can be done with
them. If by ‘doing something’ is meant putting in scenes with several
or many figures, it is most true. The breadth of wall between the two
windows constituting the pair is so large that the scene could not be
carried from the one to the other. But surely that does not exhaust the
possibilities. The openings are wide enough to permit the treatment of
single figures in full life-size if desired; figures with canopies,
borders, and panels at the base, as in the best periods of ancient
glass. The breadth of these openings is twenty-one inches; six inches
more than that of the small pair erected All Saints, 1895, at the side
of the pulpit, in which the figures are certainly of dignified stature,
and by no means poor in back ground and accessories. If such results
are possible in a space fifteen inches wide and six feet high; how much
more in a space twenty-one inches wide and thirteen feet high.

Single figures, therefore, are demanded by the conditions which govern
us, for the side lancets; unless we rest content with geometrical,
or flower windows, or windows bearing emblems, more or less ornately
bordered. I venture to say that at this stage of our history, when
we are not pressed to fill our window-openings with whatever may be
obtainable, we desire the best that can be had. This best, for the side
lancets is,――single figures, with canopy, border and base panel.

Mr. F. S. Lamb of New York, who designed the beautiful work erected
a year ago, has prepared and sent me two pairs of colored sketches,
suggesting a noble and beautiful form which in the execution would, of
course, far surpass what appears in the drawings. They are submitted
for your careful study, and may be seen at any time in my library.

What then shall the figures be? Shall they be chosen at random?
Artistically speaking, this might not be so disastrous, provided the
same artist drew all the designs and controlled the execution, so that
the scale of drawing and the scheme of color were kept in accord. And
that is a great deal more than can be said of some of the principal
churches in our greatest cities, where immense sums have been spent on
these works. No; there is something better still, open to us. It is a
serial treatment, with unity, and progress: so that the whole, when
complete, shall tell one great story, each part a chapter therein;
the whole impress one truth, each part contributing somewhat to the
cumulative force of the great lesson.

And, not to detain you with all the processes of thought and long
reflection by which at last we reach our conclusion――the figures we
suggest are those which are conspicuous and representative in the
Old and New Testaments. Our Divine Lord Himself should be, as He is,
exalted in the great window over the altar. Beginning from the angle
of the chancel arch to pass around the church, we come first to the
pair of small windows next to the organ, from which now the light is
excluded by the parish building. They may be taken as in a sense going
with the organ, and scarcely a part of the general scheme. Let them
be treated, at some time, in mosaic, with SINGING ANGELS,[C] thus
corresponding to the Angels directly opposite in the corresponding
small windows. Then we pass to the first pair of lancets of uniform
size, MELCHIZEDEK and ABRAHAM: the latter the great father of the
faithful, the head of the covenant people; the former even superior
to him, a priest forever, without beginning or end of days, type of
our Lord’s own Highpriesthood. Melchizedek appears before Abraham,
bearing bread and wine, foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist. What more
suitable, as we look up to the altar and see above it the figure of Our
Blessed Lord, than to turn to the head of the nave, and find here, at
the dawn of religious history, standing out as type of the Christ in
whom the course of the ages shall culminate, this King of Salem at the
very beginning?

[C] Recently placed.

We pass on. The next pair will be MOSES and SAMUEL: both conspicuous
as appointed of God to lead, to rule, to judge the people whom God had
chosen; Founders of Israel as a nation. Surely these, if any, we must
commemorate as among the greatest in the covenant history.

This brings us to the third or middle pair. Woman, too, bears her
conspicuous part in the spiritual history of mankind. DEBORAH[D] judged
Israel for forty years in a period of disorder and confusion, and led
the way to victory: RUTH,[D] a very different type, beautiful and
gentle, became one of that line of whom David, and David’s Greater Son,
were born. Other women might have been chosen, as well as other men;
but on the whole, none more typical, none better fitted to instruct and
to impress.

[D] Now in place.

The fourth pair continues the narrative. DAVID and ELIJAH, each so
striking in his way, bring back the kingdom in its glory and the
kingdom in its disaster; religion sweetly ministrant with music, and
religion sternly denouncing national sin; the royal harp, and the
prophetic mantle.

And finally, the fifth pair on this side, ISAIAH and MALACHI: the
greatest of all the prophets, called the Evangelist of the Old
Testament; and the last of seers, who most clearly foretold both
Messiah and Forerunner.

Thus we arrive at one of the entrances, and turning the corner, we
stand before the first of the windows at the lower end. It is large
enough to admit more than one figure. It continues the story from
Malachi, to him who went before the face of the Lord: it presents to us
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST,[E] baptizing at Jordan; and close by it stands
the Font with its summons, as of old, to the washing away of sins.

[E] To be erected in the near future.

A splendid opportunity is presented by the great group next in order,
the three associated windows piercing the end wall of the nave.
Majestic in their simple dignity of outline, what will they not be
when filled with stained glass as they should be? Here is space,
indeed――ample room for that scene treatment of which the side-wall
windows are incapable.

Let the middle one, which is much the largest, be the NATIVITY;[F]
that on the right side (next to St. John Baptist) the PRESENTATION IN
THE TEMPLE,[F] with Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis; that on the left side, the
EPIPHANY,[F] with the Gifts of the Magi. Thus will this entire end-wall
set forth the Incarnation, up to which the Old Testament has led us,
and out of which proceeds the New, and all the history of the Christian
Church.

[F] Now in place.

Turning again, and passing on, back once more toward the chancel,
the first and second pairs of lancets on the Cottage Street side are
devoted to the four Evangelists, STS. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE and JOHN. No
explanation is needed of the propriety of putting these figures here.
Not only as the biographers of the Lord Jesus Christ, but as chief
Founders of that Church which is builded upon Historic Facts――men of
deeds as well as writers――we commemorate them.

The middle pair is again given to two great women of the New Testament,
mothers both and as mothers supremely great: ST. ELIZABETH[G] and ST.
MARY.[G] Of the son of the first one it was said, Among those born of
women there hath not appeared a greater than John. To the other the
Angel’s word was, Hail, thou that are highly favored: the Lord is with
thee; and blessed art thou among women. No two characters can lay more
claim to our gratitude and reverence than these two women to whom an
Allwise God entrusted the tender formative years of the Forerunner and
of the Messiah.

There is indeed a glorious company of Apostles, and a noble army of
martyrs, whom one would gladly set forth, two and two, in goodly
succession. Two pairs must suffice us: first ST. ANDREW[G] and ST.
STEPHEN;[G] next ST. PETER[G] and ST. PAUL.[G] We begin with ST.
ANDREW, for he readily obeyed the calling of Christ and followed Him
without delay, bringing his brother also: type of self-devotion and
personal service, forever. ST. STEPHEN, set apart for the Church’s
charitable work, filled with the Holy Ghost and a mighty preacher,――he
was the first Deacon, and became the first Martyr. ST. PETER and ST.
PAUL bring us to a climax in the Church’s realization of the great
commission; prince apostles, the former first led to the Gentiles but
afterward distinctly charged with the Gospel to the Circumcision; the
latter sent out to the Uncircumcision, truest champion of a Catholic
Faith and uncompromising leader of a Catholic Church. He brings us, as
we pass the two Angel figures over the door, up to the pulpit,――who
fitter than he to be set always before the preacher?――and thence again
we see before us the altar and the figure of Our Blessed Lord from
which we started on our circuit;

[G] Now in place.

    “Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning:
     Christ the beginning, and the end is Christ.”

This is the scheme which is hereby recommended to your attentive
consideration, your criticism, and if worthy, your adoption. When
adopted, each opening will be available only for the subject assigned
to it, treated in the best style, under the direction and approval
of the vestry. Windows may be erected in any order, provided these
conditions are complied with; though it is highly desirable that not
less than a pair――where there are pairs――should be placed at a time.
It is immaterial how many persons join in donating a window. The use
of the windows for memorials is very beautiful and very desirable; but
there is no restriction to such use, by anything in the scheme.

And in closing let it be added, that if――as undoubtedly they will――the
vestry and parish shall feel sincerely thankful to those who
participate in this pious work, it is not there that the gratitude
should chiefly lie. It is an unspeakable privilege to be permitted
to place a memorial like this in the house of God, bringing ever new
comfort and joy to hearts bereaved, and satisfaction to the donors;
yes, if there is need to say it, it is an honor to be permitted to do
it. Moreover, in the nature of the case, it is a privilege very limited
as to the number of those who can be so favored; and with every window
that is taken, the number remaining available becomes rapidly less.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The above Report with its Recommendations was adopted, entire, by
unanimous vote of the Vestry at the regular monthly meeting, January 5,
1897.



 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

 ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.



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