Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Exactly - breaks your heart. I made bird window hangers - parrots,
> cockatoos and kooabkurras - a friend had a little assembly line going
> at one point (but mine were better!) Neither of us could compete in
> the markets or gift shops around here - you can't exactly hang a
> label on it saying - 'this took two hours to make and it's worth it'.
> People were buying really horrid acrylic pseudo-glass imports instead.
> As my granny said, 'you'll never go broke underestimating people's
> taste' as she sold another plastic bowl of plastic fruit with a sad
> and bewildered look on her face.
> There's an interesting semantic difference here - round these parts
> we talk about leadlight and tiffany but 'stained glass' is strictly
> reserved for the skill of assembling panels where the sections have
> been hand painted, as in most church work. Those guys are still doing
> just fine.
And, strictly speaking, you are correct. "Stained Glass" has actually
been stained or painted, and then fired. It has, however, come to
almost a generic term for any sort of art glass.
I get bugged when people refer to any sort of art glass lamp as a
Tiffany Lamp, when the only lamps that rightfully belong to that
category are those made by LCT himself (or his craftspeople.) I'll
accept "Tiffany-Style" lamp for a lamp done in copper foil with
opalescent glass, preferably in some sort of natural or floral pattern.
But calling any old colored glass lamp a Tiffany lamp really irks me.
I've been studying Tiffany's works, both lamps and panels, for years
now. Have actually seen quite an assortment in person - in fact, on our
trip to Scotland back in '91, we actually took a side trip up to
Dunfermline to find the window that Andrew Carnegie had commissioned for
the Abbey there. Found it.
We've done a few reproduction lamps, and have the molds and patterns to
finish off a couple more from the glass we kept when we shut down. And
all of the panels I did for myself follow Tiffany's design tenets - that
is, using the glass as the paint, instead of painting on plain glass.
I've got a huge light table that I'll use to lay out sheets of glass,
looking for that "just right" part of the sheet for the piece I need to
cut. Tedious, somewhat wasteful, but enormously satisfying when the
panel or lamp is done.
--
Paul Braun
Valparaiso, IN
"There's a fine line between stupid, and clever." - David St. Hubbins
"Enjoy every sandwich." - Warren Zevon
"The Fountain of Youth is a state of mind." - The Ides of March
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