Stained Glass, Glass Etchings and More

1) Knowing who was the first to make glass will take time. Some history heavyweights can make a claim!

Pliny the Elder, in his writings, puts his money on the Phoenicians.

Archaeological evidence supports the claim that it was in Mesopotamia. Recovered glass beads, seals, and architectural decorations date from around 2500 BC.

2) Stained Glass windows reached full development during the Romanesque and Early Gothic period, from about 950 CE to 1240 CE. The windows then were of large expanses of glass held by robust iron frames. Think Chartres Cathedral and at the eastern end of Canterbury Cathedral. The Gothic architecture and its more ornate form invited larger windows, more light allowed, and more section dividing using vertical shafts and tracery of stone.

For what were the stained glass? The windows were like the blackboard of the time. Most of the people going to church at that time did not read or write, so the beautiful glasses were made in the hope of teaching the people a few ideas about their religion. Glass at this point reached architectural prominence and its fame soared. From the 11th to13th century, two dominant styles of glassmaking emerged in Europe: Waldglas in the north and Venetian “Cristallo” (for crystal) in the south.

3) Waldglas, from northern and central Europe, went a different path from the golden-age one taken by the Italians. Their focus was on practicality and functionality. Some noteworthy pieces are large drinking vessels decorated with small pieces of glass. The Waldglas containers that you will see have a distinctive blue/green tint to it due to the iron content in the sand used to make them.

4) Very last of all is the Venetian glass. It all started in 1291 when the Italian island of Murano became the home of what used to be the Venice-based glass industry. The glass world at large will never be the same from that point onwards. The work that they produced were the signature trade beads and thin-walled vessels, goblets and all types of canework that decorated royal dining tables throughout Europe.

At least two things led to the imitation of Venetian glass: one is insatiable demand and insanely fragile. Consequently other groups of people started copying techniques and producing work in their own interpretation of the Venetian-style.

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1) The first glasshouse was built in Jamestown, Virginia in 1609. The people who worked there did not make decorative glass, but instead made things they could sell, e.g. bottles for water and wine, and panes for windows.

2) During the industrial revolution, glass-making had good news and bad news: these were made by the thousands—but made by hand!

3) Moldblowing was refined by the Romans, especially during the first century B.C.

4) What we owe moldblowing today is distilled by our ergonomic soda bottles.

The Studio Glass Movement

1) The studio glass movement that started in the 1960s borrowed knowhow from glassmaking factories and gave it to artists for exploration. Using centuries-old techniques together with American styles, thus was born glassmaking studies sans the pressure of selling useful output.

2) One result of this is that the American effort got some attention from the masters in Europe.

3) What happens when you discover two eye-popping ideas: that glass could be melted at cooler temperatures than originally thought, and just as unprecedented, that glass could be melted, worked, and blown by an artist in a residential studio? If your names are Dominick Labino and Harvey Littleton, the next practical thing to do is to put up a university glass studio where you can train future glass artists. Labino and Littleton considered as having founded the modern studio glass movement in the early 1960s with the just mentioned discovery.

3) Other glass art pioneers like Dale Chihuly, Ben Moore, and Richard Marquis received Fulbright scholarships that helped fund travel for glassmaking studies abroad. Where else to go in Italy but Murano? By then, when visiting Murano, one can look forward to seeing the secrets behind masterpieces like crystalline glass, enameled glass, glass with threads of gold, multicolored glass, milk glass, and imitation gemstones made of glass.

4) Maestros Checco Ongara and Lino Tagliapietra (who was ranked Maestro at 21) were invited to the Pilchuck Glass School of Stanwood, Washington in 1979. This was the start of an unforgettable sharing of knowledge that criss-crossed both sides of the Atlantic.

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