Two Edwardian Fireside Windows That No Longer Fit, on Shaw

A client brought me two of these. They’re from an Edwardian house on Shaw, very early 1900s. They were on either side of a fireplace, on the side wall of a house. This kind on un-showy positioning is very Edwardian, and not very Victorian. Edwardians didn’t always show their wealth to the outside world.

They were not quite as simple as they seemed. Edwardian windows can be very generic, but these had an eccentric side. Are these corn-cobs? Usually these would be fleurs-de-lis. I did wonder, is this specific? Was this made for a farmer, or for a grocer, or for an American? Were they themselves American?

And then there was this stuff, which is not Edwardian glass. It’s actually the same glass I was soon to work with, on Massey. It was made in about 1894. When it goes in here, it’s going in as a precious scrap, twenty years (and one real estate crash) later.

Once they were laid out, more problems emerged. The yellow border was full of micro-cracks. It was hard to handle it without snapping it. This was a remnant of the original installation. They used tacks, and let those tacks press into the surface. A century later, the glass had settled, and begun to crack, along those lines.

Could it be saved? Honestly, better not. But that was OK, because there was a design decision to be made.

Renovated windows are usually larger than unrenovated windows. Victorian windows were overbuilt by modern standards. Modern windows have narrower margins, so the final panel is bigger.

In this case, we used the opportunity to add replace the yellow border, and add a new blue border. This made the window cozier and more neutral in the room.

The new proportions allowed room for an extra band. That family has three children, so I proposed using it to show their favourite colours.

Safe for a new century, these windows now speak of the house’s long life, and also of the new family. And maybe a century from now, a different household will daydream there and think, why those three colours?

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