Saving a Historic Window on Brunswick That Nobody Likes
This 1920ish window on Brunswick, swept up in renovations, has a problem. Nobody likes it. Pallid sage and poop are not the colours of the day. Add the faintly urinous border, and it’s amazing anyone made this in the first place. And yet once there were four of them!
The good news being, that the border is intact, and the bevels and jewels are great. The design itself is Neo-Florentine, ultimately based on stone inlay patterns. It’s kind of fabulous in its way. But, it’s hideous.
Also, the new window is going to be bigger.
My brief was to rebuild it, make it fit, and make it likeable.
The other issue with this one was its chemical condition. As in, run for the hills! Toronto windows often manifest this powder on their inner surfaces, possible because or corrosion from cleaning products. But this one was the mother lode. I dismantled this one outside, with a mask.
The glory of this piece is these old glass bevels. These are products of the glass-grinders and the mirror-makers, who encroached on the stained-glass trade starting around 1890. This piece is full of later examples. The early ones were lead glass, like crystal wineglasses. These are just glass, and they do show a colour change over the century. These ones have residual iron that has oxidized slightly, making them just a bit pink.
From the beginning, it was agreeed that the sage green and the poop brown were toast. I was determined to save the border, and the design in general. So, we would recolour the nasty bits.
This made it urgent not to break anything in the border, which was tricky, because it was ferociously attached with so many tacks as to make me worry slightly for the person who did it.
In the end, I did my Swiss army method and just plucked it apart from within
Once it was free of its metal and its dirt, the question remained—what to do with it? Nobody liked it, and it was too small.
Working with my client, we started playing with colours. My idea was, Keep the Good, Re-Cut the Bad. Otherwise, the window would not survive. This was not a restoration-purist job. This was a salvage job. Because, it was a poop window.
We did not carry out every option. I liked this one, with the agate yellow and the fierce orange, because it is so true to the Florentine sources. In the end, we went with green and red for the central cluster, and added a border of blue with purple corners.
The new version is strong, chemically stable, and it fits, and they like it. It will look out on Markham for years now. Sometimes restoration is not possible without a makeover.
(In this picture, it’s still in bubble wrap. Sometimes, when I deliver, the houses aren’t quite ready yet.)
Please see more Restorations.
The new version is strong, chemically stable, and it fits, and they like it. It will look out on Markham for years now. Sometimes restoration is not possible without a makeover.