Two Small Quilt-Style Windows on Brunswick
This pretty thing is part of bay window on Brunswick. This impact was almost certainly a ball.
North of College, on the west side of Brunswick, is (I think) the longest run of double houses in the city with a common design scheme. The Great Scheme was not built in one go, and maybe there were several builders, but the overall idea ran through 26 houses. They each have bay windows, upper and lower, with stained-glass tops.
It should be noted that this is happening really late, in 1890, when colour is going out of style. In this case, they poured on the colour, but kept the coloured part small. The stained glass is an accent on what are otherwise very large clear windows.
It was a huge order, carried out over some time. Just the bays windows required 156 panels. They’re much the same in design, very eccentric in colouring. They are one thing, in some way. That’s why I call it the Great Scheme.
The ones I touched had rapturous glass, sloppy cutting, and expert metalwork.
The upstairs central window showed a general failure of the bottom margin, based on aging of the materials. The margin is designed for exactly this. In this case, parts of it have crumbled, which is unusual but not unheard of. That’s either a sign of heavy stress, or of bad glass. In this case (having handled it later), I suspect bad glass. That stuff snaps if you look at it.
The lead on the yellow margin is bent in, which is a fossil from the impact. This was a tennis ball for sure, from outside. But look at that day-glo green!
A lot of the most beautiful 19th Century glass was made in small batches by small companies. There is not much consistency across batches. Even if they used consistent recipes, could they get consistent materials? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Stained glass colours are far from standards. Some have never been repeated. This whole set is full of amazing small-batch colours, years ahead of their time.
This poor thing has suffered a few more things. This is stucco was flung on it twenty or so years ago, when they walled it off. I kid you not, they walled it off. They walled off the whole front alcove.
Upstairs, the compression fracture is impressive for a window of this size.
And then the next issue arose, which was that the contractor had not yet worked out full access. The windows were in their Victorian wooden frames, but hidden in a 1980s aluminum scheme. I plucked out all the pieces one by one, packed them into bags, and left them figure it out. This was the first time I ever came home with my windows in a bag.
I loved this job the whole way through, but the very best part was cleaning it. What amazing glass!
For that date, these windows are wildly old-fashioned—except in their colours. The whole Quilt thing was over by then, except for this odd (huge) job. For this one, they went quite slack on technique, but spent big on the materials.
These are small-batch hand-made colours. They are unbelievably vivid and modern. In their time, they were like psychodelia.
The cleaning process depends on the condition, and the materials. Eventually, if you are not dealing with paint or enamels, the baking soda comes into play. And then, sometimes on a sunny day, it evaporates, and dragons of baking soda dance on the glass.
The glass match for the bottom panel was a lucky find. The new glass (right) does not look as similar here as it really is. The eye corrects, once in context. The key here was that they are similar in brightness, and very similar in their brown undertone. The textural difference is less important. In practice, the new piece turned out almost invisible.
The other match, for the upstair panel, was pure luck. This scrap of 1990s art glass (right) may well be the last one of its kind, and had a killer flaw in it (which is probably how it survived). I was able to trim around that flaw until I had enough to fill the missing parts of the border.
As with the other window, the key here was matching the colour. This smoky dark aqua stuff doesn’t really exist anymore. Here, the replacement is a bit dark, but in practice it reads well.
The patching of the border worked out really well.
It was such a pleasure, just to handle this glass. Sometimes when you work with glass, it’s like playing with colour itself. I am so glad I restored these things outside in the summertime.
On a design note, those green arcs are very bad ideas. One day, they will break. It’s a circle of four, but it should be eight. I wondered, should I just cut them, and lead them as eight? As a restorer, I left them alone. As a pragmatist, I still think I should have split that circle into eight.
The colour fit for the lower window turned out even better than I had hoped.
Re-assembly was more complicated than expected, because the green circle is a lousy cut. These windows are the work of someone very experienced who sometimes cut corners and made it work later. This is true to the overall working-class nature of this art in the 1880s. It was like a form of bespoke plumbing. It wasn’t really high-end.
The lower window was deviously hard to re-assemble. Every bit had nibbles on it, because the initial cut was so hasty. But the glass! I didn’t mind spending a few extra hours with this glass.
Now back home and re-installed, these wonderful things guarantee that this piece of the Big Scheme on Brunswick remains complete.
Please see more Restorations.