CHAPTER XI

Soldering--Handling the Leaded Panel--Cementing--Recipe for

Cement--The Brush--Division of Long Lights into Sections--How

Joined when Fixed--Banding--Fixing--Chipping out the Old

Glazing--Inserting the New and Cementing.

If the leads have got _tarnished_ you may brush them over with the wire

brush (fig. 57), which glaziers call a "scratch-card"; but this is a

wretched business and need never be resorted to if you work with good

lead and work "fresh and fresh," and finish as you go, not letting the

work lie about and get stale. Take an old-fashioned tallow "dip" candle,

and put a little patch of the grease over each joint, either by rubbing

the candle itself on it, or by melting some of it in a saucepan and

applying it with a brush. Then take your soldering-iron (fig. 58) and

get it to the proper heat, which you must learn by practice, and proceed

to "tin" it by rubbing it on a sheet of tin with a little solder on it,

and also some resin and a little glass-dust, until the "bit" (which is

of copper) has a bright tin face. Then, holding the stick of solder in

the left hand, put the end of it down close to the joint you wish to

solder, and put the end of the iron against it, "biting off" as it were,

but really _melting_ off, a little bit, which will form a liquid drop

upon the joint. Spread this drop so as to seal up the joint nice and

smooth and even, and the thing is done. Repeat with all the joints; then

turn the panel over and do the opposite side.

[Illustration: FIG. 57.]

[Illustration: FIG. 58.]

_How to Handle Leaded Lights._--I said "turn the panel over." But that

brings to mind a caution that you need about the handling of leaded

lights. You must not--as I once saw a man do--start to hold them as a

waiter does a tray. You must note that thin glass in the sheet and also

leaded lights, especially before cementing, are not rigid, and cannot be

handled as if they were panels of wood; you must take care, when

carrying them, or when they lean against the wall, to keep them as

nearly upright as they will safely stand, and the inside one leaning

against a board, and not bearing its own weight. And in laying them on

the bench or in lifting them off it, you must first place them so that

the middle line of them corresponds with the edge of the bench, or

table, and then turn them on that as an axis, quickly, so that they do

not bear their own weight longer than necessary (figs. 59 and 60).

_How to Cement a Leaded Light._--The next process is the cementing of

the light so as to fill up the grooves of the lead and make all

weather-proof. This is done with a mixture composed as follows:--

Whitening, 2/3 to plaster of Paris 1/3; add a mixture of equal

quantities of boiled linseed-oil and spirit of turpentine to make a

paste about as thick as treacle. Add a little red lead to help to harden

it, some patent dryer to cause it to dry, and lamp-black to colour.

This must be put in plenty on to the surface of the panel and well

scrubbed into the joints with a hard fibre brush; an ordinary coarse

"grass brush" or "bass brush," with wooden back, as sold for scrubbing

brushes at the oil shops, used in all directions so as to rub the stuff

into every joint.

But you must note that if you have "plated" (_i.e._ doubled) any of the

glass you must, before cementing, _putty_ those places. Otherwise the

cement may probably run in between the two, producing blotches which you

have no means of reaching in order to remove them.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.]

You can, if you like, clean away all the cement along the edges of the

leads; but it is quite easy to be too precise and neat in the matter and

make the work look hard. If you do it, a blunted awl will serve your

turn.

[Illustration: FIG. 60.]

One had better mention everything, and therefore I will here say that,

of course, a large light must be made in sections; and these should not

exceed four feet in height, and less is better. In fixing these in their

place when the window is put up (an extra wide flat lead being used at

the top and bottom of each section), they are made to overlap; and if

you wish the whole drainage of the window to pass into the building, of

course you will put your section thus--(fig. 61 A); while if you wish

the work to be weather-tight you will place it thus--(fig. 61 B). It is

just as well to make every question clear if one can, and therefore I

mention this. Most people like their windows weather-tight, and, of

course, will make the overlapping lead the top one; but it's a free

country, and I don't pretend to dictate, content if I make the situation

clear to you, leaving you to deal with it according to your own fancy.

All is now done except the banding.

[Illustration: FIG. 61 A.]

[Illustration: FIG. 61 B.]

_How to Band a Leaded Light._--Banding means the putting on of the

little ties of copper wire by which the window has to be held to the

iron crossbars that keep it in its place. These ties are simply short

lengths of copper wire, generally about four inches long, but varying,

of course, with the size of the bar that you mean to use; and these are

to be soldered vertically (fig. 62) on to the face of the light at any

convenient places along the line where the bar will cross. In fixing the

window, these wires are to be pulled tight round the bar and twisted up

with pliers, and the twisted end knocked down flat and neat against the

bar.

And this is the very last operation in the making of a stained-glass

window. It now only remains to instruct you as to what relates to the

fixing of it in its place.

_How to Fix a Window in its Place._--There is, almost always, a groove

in the stonework to receive the glass; and, except in the case of an

unfinished building, this is, of course, occupied by some form of plain

glazing. You must remove this by chipping out with a small mason's

chisel the cement with which it is fixed in the groove, and common sense

will tell you to begin at the bottom and work upwards. This done,

untwist the copper bands from the bars and put your own glass in its

place, re-fixing the bars (or new ones) in the places you have

determined on to suit your design and to support the glass, and fixing

your glass to them in the way described, and pointing the whole with

good cement. The method of inserting the new glass is described at p.

135.

[Illustration: FIG. 62.]

But that it is good for a man to feel the satisfaction of knowing his

craft thoroughly there would be no need to go into this, which, after

all, is partly masons' work. But I, for my part, cannot understand the

spirit of an artist who applies his art to a craft purpose and has not,

at least, a strong _wish_ to know all that pertains to it.

PART II

CHAPTER XII

Introductory--The Great Questions--Colour--Light--Architectural

Fitness--Limitations--Thought--Imagination--Allegory.

The foregoing has been written as a handbook to use at the bench, and

therefore I have tried to keep myself strictly to describing the actual

processes and the ordinary practice and routine of stained-glass work.

But can we leave the subject here?

If we were speaking of even the smallest of the minor arts and crafts,

we should wish to say something of why they are practised and how they

should be practised, of the principles that guide them, of the spirit in

which they should be undertaken, of the place they occupy in human

affairs and in our life on earth. How much more then in an Art like

this, which soars to the highest themes, which dares to treat, which is

required to treat, of things Heavenly and Earthly, of the laws of God,

and of the nature, duty, and destinies of man; and not only so, but must

treat of these things in connection with, and in subservience to, the

great and dominant Art of Architecture?

We must not shrink, then, from saying all that is in our mind: we must

ask ourselves the great questions of all art. We must investigate the

How of them, and even face the Why.

Therefore here (however hard it be to do it) something must be said of

such great general principles as those of colour, of light, of

architectural fitness, of limitations, of thought and imagination and

allegory; for all these things belong to stained-glass work, and it is

the right or wrong use of these high things that makes windows to be

good or to be bad.

Let us, dear student, take the simplest things first, not because they

are the easiest (though they perhaps are so), but because they will

gradually, I hope, warm up our wits to the point of considering these

matters, and so prepare the way for what is hardest of all.

And I think a good subject to begin with is that of Economy generally,

taking into consideration both time and materials.

CHAPTER XIII

Of Economy--The Englishman's Wastefulness--Its Good Side--Its

Excess--Difficulties--A Calculation--Remedies.

Those who know work in various countries must surely have arrived at the

conclusion that the Englishman is the most wasteful being on the face of

the globe! He only thinks of getting through the work, or whatever it

may be, that he has purposed to himself, attaining the end immediately

in view in the speediest manner possible without regard to anything

else, lavish of himself and of the stuff he works with. The picture

drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson in "Treasure Island" of John Silver and

his pirates, when about to start on their expedition, throwing the

remainder of their breakfast on the bivouac fire, careless whence fresh

supplies might come, is "English all over." This is the character of the

race. It has its good side, this grand disdain--it wins Battles,

Victoria Crosses, Humane Society's medals, and other things well worth

the winning; brings into port many a ship that would else be lost or

abandoned, and, year in, year out, sends to sea the lifeboats on our

restless line of coast. It would be something precious indeed that would

be worth the loss of it; but there is a medium in all things, and when a

master sees--as one now at rest once told me he often had seen--a cutter

draw his diamond down a bit of the margin out of which he had just cut

his piece, in order to make it small enough to throw away, without being

ashamed, under the bench, he must sometimes, I should think, wish the

man were employed on some warlike or adventurous trade, and that he had

a Hollander or Italian in his place, who would make a whole window out

of what the other casts away.

At the same time, it must be confessed that this is a very difficult

matter to arrange; and it is only fair to the workman to admit that

under existing conditions of work and demand, and even in many cases of

the buildings in which the work is done, the way does not seem clear to

have the whole of what might be wished in this matter. I will point out

the difficulties against it.

First, unless some system could be invented by which the amount of glass

issued to any workman could be compared easily and simply with the area

of glazed work cut from it, the workman has no inducement to economise;

for, no record being kept of the glass saved, he knows that he will get

no credit by saving, while the extra time that he spends on economy will

make him seem a slower workman, and so he would be blamed.

Then, again, it is impossible to see the colour of glass as it lies on

the bench; he has little choice but to cut each piece out of the large

sheet; for if he got a clutter of small bits round him till he happened

to want a small bit, he would never be able to get on.

There is no use, observe, in niggling and cheese-paring. There should be

a just balance made between the respective values of the man's time and

the material on which it is spent; and to this end I now give some

calculations to show these--calculations rather startling, considered in

the light of what one knows of the ordinary practices and methods.

The antique glasses used in stained-glass work vary in price from 1s. a

foot to 5s., the weight per foot being about 32 oz.

The wage of the workmen who have to deal with this costly material

varies from 8d. to 1s. per hour.

The price of the same glass thrown under the bench, and known as

"cullet," is L1 per TON.

Let us now do a little simple arithmetic, which, besides its lesson to

the workers, may, I think, come as a revelation even to some employers

who, content with getting work done quickly, may have hardly realised

the price paid for that privilege.

1 ton = 20 cwt.

x 4

--

80 qrs.

x 28

---

640

32 oz. = 2 lb., 160

-----

therefore / 2) 2240 lbs.

-----

1120 = number of square feet in a ton.

The worth of this at 1s. a foot (whites) is:--

/ 20) 1120 ( L56 PER TON.

100

----

120

120

At 2s. 6d. per foot (the best of pot-metal blues, and rubies

generally):--

56

56

28

---

2-1/2 times 56 = 140 L140 PER TON.

At 5s. a foot (gold-pink, and pale pink, venetian, and choice glasses

generally):--

56

x 5

---

L280 PER TON.

Therefore these glasses are worth respectively--56 times, 140 times, and

280 times as much upon the bench as they are when thrown below it! And

yet I ask you--employer or employed--is it not the case that,

often--shall we not say "generally"?--in any given job as much goes

below as remains above if the work is in fairly small pieces? Is not the

accompanying diagram a fair illustration (fig. 63) of about the average

relation of the shape cut to its margin of waste?

[Illustration: FIG. 63.]

Employers estimate this waste variously. I have heard it placed as high

as two-thirds; that is to say, that the glass, when leaded up, only

measured one-third of the material used, or, in other words, that the

workman had wasted twice as much as he used. This, I admit, was told me

in my character as _customer_, and by way of explaining what I

considered a high charge for work; but I suppose that no one with

experience of stained-glass work would be disposed to place the amount

of waste lower than one-half.

Now a good cutter will take between two and three hours to cut a square

foot of average stained-glass work, fairly simple and large in scale;

that is to say, supposing his pay one shilling an hour--which is about

the top price--the material he deals with is about the same value as his

time if he is using the cheapest glasses only. If this then is the case

when the highest-priced labour is dealing only with the lowest-priced

material, we may assume it as the general rule for stained-glass

cutting, _on the average_, that "_labour is less costly than the

material on which it is spent_," and I would even say much less costly.

But it is not to be supposed that the little more care in avoiding waste

which I am advocating would reduce his speed of work more than would be

represented by two pence or three pence an hour.

But I fear that all suggestions as to mitigating this state of things

are of little use. The remedy is to play into each other's hands by

becoming, all of us, complete, all-round craftsmen; breaking down all

the unnatural and harmful barriers that exist between "artists" and

"workmen," and so fitting ourselves to take an intelligent interest in

both the artistic and economic side of our work.

The possibility of this all depends on the personal relations and

personal influence in any particular shop--and employers and employed

must worry the question out between them. I am content with pointing out

the facts.

CHAPTER XIV

Of Perfection--In Little Things--Cleanliness--Alertness--But not

Hurry--Realising your Conditions--False Lead-Lines--Shutting out

Light--Bars--Their Number--Their Importance--Precedence--Observing

your Limitations--A Result of Complete Training--The Special

Limitations of Stained-Glass--Disguising the Lead-Line--No full

Realism--No violent Action--Self-Effacement--No

Craft-Jugglery--Architectural Fitness founded on Architectural

Knowledge--Seeing Work _in Situ_--Sketching in Glass--The Artistic

Use of the Lead--Stepping Back--Accepting Bars and Leads--Loving

Care--White Spaces to be Interesting--Bringing out the "Quality" of

the Glass--Spotting and Dappling--"Builders-Glazing" _versus_

Modern Restoring.

The second question of principle that I would dwell upon is that of

_perfection_.

Every operation in the arts should be perfect. It has to be so in most

arts, from violin-playing to circus-riding, before the artist dare make

his bow to the public.

Placing on one side the question of the higher grades of art which

depend upon special talent or genius--the great qualities of

imagination, composition, form and colour, which belong to mastership--I

would now, in this book, intended for students, dwell upon those minor

things, the doing of which well or ill depends only upon good-will,

patience, and industry.

Anyone can wash a brush clean; any one can keep the colour on his

palette neat; can grind it all up each time it is used; can cover it

over with a basin or saucer when his work is over; and yet these things

are often neglected, though so easy to do. The painter will _neglect_ to

wash out his brush; and it will be clogged with pigment and gum, get

dry, and stick to the palette, and the points of the hair will tear and

break when it is removed again by the same careless hand that left it

there.

Another will leave portions of his colour, caked and dry, at the edges

of his palette for weeks, till all is stale; and then, when the spirit

moves him, will some day work this in, full of dirt and dust, with the

fresher colour. Everything, everything should be done well! From the

highest forms of painting to tying up a parcel or washing out a

brush;--all tools should be clean at all times, the handles as well as

the hair--there is _no excuse_ for the reverse; and if your tools are

dirty, it is by the same defect of your character that will make you

slovenly in your work. Painting does not demand the same actual

_swiftness_ as some other arts; nevertheless each touch that you place

upon the glass, though it may be deliberate, should be deft, athletic,

perfect in itself; the nerves braced, the attention keen, and the powers

of soul and body as much on the alert as they would need to be in

violin-playing, fencing, or dissecting.

This is not to advocate _hurry_. That is another matter altogether, for

which also there is no excuse. Never hurry, or ask an assistant to

hurry. Windows are delayed, even promises broken (though that can scarce

be defended), there may be "ire in celestial minds"; but that is all

forgotten when we are dead; and we soon shall be, but not the window.

Another thing to note, which applies generally throughout all practice,

is the wisdom, of getting as near as you can to your conditions. For

instance, the bits of glass in a window are separated by lead lines;

pitch-black, therefore, against the light of day outside. Now, when

waxed up on the plate in the shop for painting, these will be separated

by thin cracks of light, and in this condition they are usually painted.

Can't you do better than that? Don't you think it's worth while spending

half-an-hour to paint false lead lines on the back of the plate? A

ha'p'orth of lamp-black from the oil-shop, with a little water and

treacle and a long-haired brush, like a coach-painter's, will do it for

you (see Plate XIII.).

Another thing: when the window is in its place, each _light_ will be

surrounded with stone or brick, which, although not so black as the

lead lines, will tell as a strong dark against the glass. See therefore

that while you are painting, your glass is surrounded by dark, or at any

rate not by clear, glittering light. Strips of brown paper, pinned down

the sides of the light you are painting, will get the thing quite near

to its future conditions.

As you have been told, the work is fixed in its place by bars of iron,

and these ought by no means to be despised or ignored or disguised, as

if they were a troublesome necessity: you must accept fully and

willingly the conditions of your craft; you must pride yourself upon so

accepting them, knowing that they are the wholesome checks upon your

liberty and the proper boundaries of the field in which you have your

appointed work. There should, in any light more than a foot wide, be

bars at every foot throughout the length of the light; and these bars

should be 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch, or 1 inch in section, according to the

weight of the work. The question then arises: Should the bars be set out

in their places on the paper, before you begin to draw the cartoon, or

should you be perfectly free and unfettered in the drawing and then

_make_ the bars fit in afterwards, by moving them up and down as may be

needed to avoid cutting across the faces, hands, &c.

I find more difficulty in answering this than any other _technical_

question in this book. I do not think it can be answered with a hard and

fast "Yes" or "No." It depends on the circumstances of the case. But I

incline towards the side of making it the rule to put the bars in first,

and adapt the composition to them. You may think this a surprising view

for an artist to take. "Surely," you will say, "that is putting the cart

before the horse, and making the more important thing give way to the

less!" But my feeling is that reasonable limitations of any kind ought

never to be considered as hindrances in a work of art. They are part of

the problem, and it is only a spirit of dangerous license which will

consider them as bonds, or will find them irksome, or wish to break them

through. Stained-glass is not an independent art. It is an accessory to

architecture, and any limitations imposed by structure and architectural

propriety or necessity are most gravely to be considered and not lightly

laid on one side. And in this connection it must be remembered that the

bars cannot be made to go _anywhere_ to fit a freely designed

composition: they must be approximately at certain distances on account

of use; and they must be arranged with regard to each other in the whole

of the window on account of appearance.

You might indeed find that, in any single light, it is quite easy to

arrange them at proper and serviceable distances, without cutting across

the heads or hands of the figures; but it is ten chances to one that you

can get them to do so, and still be level with each other, throughout a

number of lights side by side.

The best plan, I think, is to set them out on the side of the

cartoon-paper before you begin, but not so as to notice them; then first

roughly strike out the position your most important groups or figures

are to occupy, and, before you go on with the serious work of drawing,

see if the bars cut awkwardly, and, if they do, whether a slight

shifting of them will clear all the important parts; it often will, and

then all is well; but I do not shrink from slightly altering even the

position of a head or hand, rather than give a laboured look to what

ought to be simple and straightforward by "coaxing" the bars up and down

all over the window to fit in with the numerous heads and hands.

If, by the way, I see fit in any case to adopt the other plan, and make

my composition first, placing the bars afterwards to suit it, I never

allow myself to shift them from the level that is convenient and

reasonable for anything _except_ a head; I prefer even that they should

cut across a hand, for instance, rather than that they should be placed

at inconvenient intervals to avoid it.

The principle of observing your limitations is, I do not hesitate to

say, the most important, and far the most important, of all principles

guiding the worker in the right practising of any craft.

The next in importance to it is the right exercise of all legitimate

freedom _within_ those limitations. I place them in this order, because

it is better to stop short, by nine-tenths, of right liberty, than to

take one-tenth of wrong license. But by rights the two things should go

together, and, with the requisite skill and training to use them,

constitute indeed the whole of the practice of a craft.

Modern division of labour is much against both of these things, the

observance of which charms us so in the ancient Gothic Art of the Middle

Ages.

For, since those days, the craft has never been taught as a whole.

Reader! this book cannot teach it you--no book, can; but it can make

you--and it was written with the sole object of making you--_wish_ to be

taught it, and determine to be taught it, if you intend to practise

stained-glass work at all.

Modern stained-glass work is done by numerous hands, each trained in a

special skill--to design, or to paint, or to cut, or to glaze, or to

fire, or to cement--but none are taught to do all; very few are taught

to do more than one or two. How, then, can any either use rightful

liberty or observe rightful limitations? They do not know their craft,

upon which these things depend. And observe how completely also these

two things depend upon each other. You may be rightly free, _because_

you have rightly learnt obedience; you know your limitations, and,

_therefore_, you may be trusted to think, and feel, and act for

yourself.

This is what makes old glass, and indeed all old art, so full of life,

so full of interest, so full of enjoyment--in places, and right places,

so full even of "fun." Do you think the charming grotesques that fill up

every nook and corner sometimes in the minor detail of mediaeval glass or

carving could ever be done by the method of a "superior person" making a

drawing of them, and an inferior person laboriously translating them in

_facsimile_ into the material? They are what they are because they were

the spontaneous and allowed license and play of a craftsman who knew his

craft, and could be trusted to use it wisely, at any rate in all minor

matters.

THE LIMITATIONS OF STAINED-GLASS.

The limitations of stained-glass can only be learnt at the bench, and by

years of patient practice and docile service; but it may be well to

mention some of them.

_You must not disguise your lead line._ You must accept it willingly, as

a limitation of your craft, and make it contribute to the beauty of the

whole.

"But I have a light to do of the 'Good Shepherd,' and I want a landscape

and sky, and how ugly lead lines look in a pale-blue sky! I get them

like shapes of cloud, and still it cuts the sky up till it looks like

'random-rubble' masonry." Therefore large spaces of pale sky are

"taboo," they will not do for glass, and you must modify your whole

outlook, your whole composition, to suit what _will_ do. If you must

have sky, it must be like a Titian sky--deep blue, with well-defined

masses of cloud--and you must throw to the winds resolutely all idea of

attempting to imitate the softness of an English sky; and even then it

must not be in a large mass: you can always break it up with

branched-work of trees, or with buildings.

_There should be no full realism of any kind._

_No violent action must assert itself in a window._

I do not say that there must not, in any circumstances, be any violent

action--the subject may demand it; but, if so, it must be so disguised

by the craftsmanship of the work, or treated so decoratively, or so

mixed up with the background or surroundings, that you do not see a

figure in violent action starting prominently out from the window as you

stand in the church. But, after all, this is a thing of artistic sense

and discretion, and no rules can be formulated. The Parthenon frieze is

of figures in rapid movement. Yet what repose! And in stained-glass you

must aim at repose. Remember,--it is an accessory to architecture; and

who is there that does not want repose in architecture? Name me a great

building which does not possess it? How the architects must turn in

their graves, or, if living, shake in their shoes, when they see the

stained-glass man turned into their buildings, to display himself and

spread himself abroad and blow his trumpet!

Efface yourself, my friend; sink yourself; illustrate the building;

consider its lines and lights and shades; enrich it, complete it, make

people happier to be in it.

_There must be no craft-jugglery in stained-glass._

The art must set the craft simple problems; it must not set tasks that

can only be accomplished by trickery or by great effort, disproportioned

to the importance of the result. But, indeed, you will naturally get the

habit of working according to this rule, and other reasonable rules, if

you yourself work at the bench--all lies in that.

_There must be nothing out of harmony with the architecture._

And, therefore, you must know something of architecture, not in order to

imitate the work of the past and try to get your own mistaken for it,

but to learn the love and reverence and joy of heart of the old

builders, so that your spirit may harmonise with theirs.

_Do not shrink from the trouble and expense of seeing the work_ in situ,

_and then, if necessary, removing it for correction and amendment._

If you have a large window, or a series of windows, to do, it is often

not a very great matter to take a portion of one light at least down and

try it in its place. I have done it very often, and I can assure you it

is well worth while.

OF MAKING A SKETCH IN GLASS.

But there is another thing that may help you in this matter, and that is

to sketch out the colour of your window in small pieces of glass--in

fact, to make a scale-sketch of it in glass. A scale of one inch to a

foot will do generally, but all difficult or doubtful combinations of

colour should be sketched larger--full size even--before you venture to

cut.

_Work should be kept flat by leading._

One of the main _artistic_ uses of the leadwork in a window is that, if

properly used, it keeps the work flat and in one plane, and allows far

more freedom in the conduct of your picture, permitting you to use a

degree of realism and fulness of treatment greater than you could do

without it. Work may be done, where this limitation is properly accepted

and used, which would look vulgar without it; and on the other hand, the

most Byzantine rigidity may be made to look vulgar if the lead line is

misused. I have seen glass of this kind where the work was all on one

plane, and where the artist had so far grasped proper principles as to

use thick leads, but had _curved these leads in and out across the folds

of the drapery as if they followed its ridges and hollows_--the thing

becoming, with all its good-will to accept limitations, almost more

vulgar than the discredited "Munich-glass" of a few years ago, which

hated and disguised the lead lines.

_You must step back to look at your work as often and as far as you

can._

_Respect your bars and lead lines, and let them be strong and many._

_Every bit of glass in a window should look "cared for."_

If there is a lot of blank space that you "don't know how to fill," be

sure your design has been too narrowly and frugally conceived. I do not

mean to say that there may not be spaces, and even large spaces, of

plain quarry-glazing, upon which your subject with its surrounding

ornament may be planted down, as a rich thing upon a plain thing. I am

thinking rather of a case where you meet with some sudden lapse or gap

in the subject itself or in its ornamental surroundings. This is apt

specially to occur where it is one which leads rather to pictorial

treatment, and where, unless you have "canopy" or "tabernacle" work, as

it is called, surrounding and framing everything, you find yourself at a

loss how to fill the space above or below.

Very little can be said by way of general rule about this; each case

must be decided on its merits, and we cannot speak without knowing them.

But two things may be said: First, that it is well to be perfectly bold

(as long as you are perfectly sincere), and not be afraid, merely

because they are unusual, of things that you really would like to do if

the window were for yourself. There are no hard and fast rules as to

what may or may not be done, and if you are a craftsman and designer

also--as the whole purpose of this book is to tell you you must be--many

methods will suggest themselves of making your glass look interesting.

The golden rule is to handle every bit of it yourself, and then you will

_be_ interested in the ingenuity of its arrangement; the cutting of it

into little and big bits; the lacework of the leads; thickening and

thinning these also to get bold contrasts of strong and slender, of

plain and intricate; catching your pearly glass like fish, in a net of

larger or smaller mesh; for, bear in mind always that this question

relates almost entirely to the _whiter_ glasses. Colour has its own

reason for being there, and carries its own interest; but the most

valuable piece of advice that I can think of in regard to stained-glass

_treatment_ (apart from the question of subject and meaning) is to _make

your white spaces interesting_.

The old painters felt this when they diapered their quarry-glazing and

did such grisaille work as the "Five Sisters" window at York. Every bit

of this last must have been put together and painted by a real craftsman

delighting in his work. The drawing is free and beautiful; the whole work

is like jewellery, the colour scheme delightfully varied and irregular.

The work was loved: each bit of glass was treated on its merits as it

passed through hand. Working in this way all things are lawful; you may

even put a thin film of "matt" over any piece to lower it in tone and give

it richness, or to bring out with emphasis some quality of its texture.

Some bits will have lovely streaks and swirling lines and bands in

them--"reamy," as glass-cutters call it--or groups of bubbles and spots,

making the glass like agate or pebble; and a gentle hand will rub a little

matt or film over these, and then finger it partly away to bring out its

quality, just as a jeweller foils a stone. This is quite a different thing

from smearing a window all over with dirt to make it a sham-antique; and

where it is desirable to lower the tone of any white for the sake of the

window, and where no special beauties of texture exist, it is better, I

think, to matt it and then take out simple _patterns_ from the matt: not

_outlined_ at all, but spotted and streaked in the matt itself,

chequered and petalled and thumb-marked, just as nature spots and

stripes and dapples, scatters daisies on the grass and snowflakes in the

air, and powders over with chessboard chequers and lacings and "oes and

eyes of light," the wings of butterflies and birds.

So man has always loved to work when he has been let to choose, and when

nature has had her way. Such is the delightful art of the basket and

grass-cloth weaver of the Southern seas; of the ancient Cyprian potter,

the Scandinavian and the Celt. It never dies; and in some quiet,

merciful time of academical neglect it crops up again. Such is the,

often delightful, "builders-glazing" of the "carpenters-Gothic" period,

or earlier, when the south transept window at Canterbury, and the east

and west windows at Cirencester, and many such like, were rearranged

with old materials and new by rule of thumb and just as the glazier

"thought he would." Heaven send us nothing worse done through too much

learning! I daresay he shouldn't have done it; but as it came to him to

do, as, probably, he was ordered to do it, we may be glad he did it just

so. In the Canterbury window, for instance, no doubt much of the old

glass never belonged to that particular window; it may have been,

sinfully, brought there from windows where it did belong. At Cirencester

there are numbers of bits of canopy and so forth, delightful

fifteenth-century work, exquisitely beautiful, put in as best they could

be; no doubt from some mutilated window where the figures had been

destroyed--for, if my memory serves me, most of them have no figures

beneath--and surrounded by little chequered work, and stripes and

banding of the glaziers' own fancy. A modern restorer would have

delighted to supply sham-antique saints for them, imitating

fifteenth-century work (and deceiving nobody), and to complete the

mutilated canopies by careful matching, making the window entirely

correct and uninteresting and lifeless and accomplished and forbidding.

The very blue-bottles would be afraid to buzz against it; whereas here,

in the old church, with the flavour of sincerity and simplicity around

them, at one with the old carving and the spirit of the old time, they

glitter with fresh feeling, and hang there, new and old together,

breaking sunlight; irresponsible, absurd, and delightful.

CHAPTER XV

A Few Little Dodges--A Clumsy Tool--A Substitute--A Glass Rack--An

Inconvenient Easel--A Convenient Easel--A Waxing-up Tool--An Easel

with Movable Plates--Making the most of a Room--Handling

Cartoons--Cleanliness--Dust--The Selvage Edge--Drying a "Badger"--A

Comment.

Here, now, follow some little practical hints upon work in general; mere

receipts; description of time-saving methods and apparatus which I have

separated from the former part of the book; partly because they are

mostly exceptions to the ordinary practice, and partly because they are

of general application, the common-sense of procedure, and will, I hope,

after you have learnt from the former parts of the book the individual

processes and operations, help you to marshal these, in order and

proportion, so as to use them to the greatest advantage and with the

best results. And truly our stained-glass methods are most wasteful and

bungling. The ancient Egyptians, they say, made glass, and I am sure

some of our present tools and apparatus date from the time of the

Pyramids.

A CLUMSY KILN-FEEDER.

What shall we say, for instance, of this instrument (fig. 64), used for

loading some forms of kiln?

[Illustration: FIG. 64.]

The workman takes the ring-handle in his right hand, rests the shaft in

the crook of his left elbow, puts the fork under an iron plate loaded

with glass and weighing about forty pounds, and then, with tug and

strain, lifts it, ready to slip off and smash at any moment, and,

grunting, transfers it to the kiln. A little mechanical appliance would

save nine-tenths of the labour, a stage on wheels raised or lowered at

will (a thing which surely should not be hard to invent) would bring it

from the bench to the kiln, and _then_, if needs be, and no better

method could be found, the fork might be used to put it in.

Meanwhile, as a temporary step in the right direction, I illustrate a

little apparatus invented by Mr. Heaton, which, with the tray made of

some lighter substance than iron, of which he has the secret, decreases

the labour by certainly one-third, and I think a half (fig. 65).

[Illustration: FIG. 65.]

It is indeed only a sort of half-way house to the right thing, but,

tested one against the other with equal batches of plates, its use is

certainly less laborious than that of the fork. And that is a great

gain; for the consequence of these rough ways is that the kiln-man, whom

we want to be a quiet, observant man, with plenty of leisure and with

all his strength and attention free to watch the progress of a process

or experiment, like a chemist in his laboratory, has often two-thirds of

it distracted by the stress of needless work which is only fit for a

navvy, and the only tendency of which can be towards turning him into

one.

[Illustration: FIG. 66.]

A GLASS-RACK FOR WASTE PIECES.

Then the cutter, who throws away half the stuff under his bench! How

easy it would be, if things were thought of from the beginning and the

place built for the work, to have such width of bench and space of

window that, along the latter, easily and comfortably within reach,

should run stages, tier above tier, of strong sheet or thin plate glass,

sloping at such an angle that the cuttings might lie along them against

the light, with a fillet to stop them from falling off. Then it would be

a pleasure, as all handy things are, for the workman to put his bits of

glass there, and when he wanted a piece of similar colour, to raise his

head and choose one, instead of wastefully cutting a fresh piece out of

the unbroken sheet, or wasting his time rummaging amongst the bits on

the bench. A stage on the same principle for _choosing_ glass is

illustrated in fig. 67.

But it is in easels that improvement seems most wanted and would be most

easy, and here I really must tell you a story.

AN INCONVENIENT EASEL.

Having once some very large lights to paint, against time, the friends

in whose shop I was to work (wishing to give me every advantage and to

_save time_), had had special easels made to take in the main part of

each light at once. But an "Easel," in stained-glass work, meaning

always the single slab of plate-glass in a wooden frame, these were of

that type. I forget their exact size and could hazard no guess at their

weight, but it took four men to get one from the ground on to the bench.

Why, I wanted it done a dozen times an hour! and should have wished to

be able to do it at any moment. Instead of that it was, "Now then, Bill;

ease her over!" "Steady!" "Now lift!" "All together, boys!" and so

forth. I wonder there wasn't a strike! But did no one, then, ever see in

a club or hotel a plate-glass window about as big as a billiard-table,

and a slim waiter come up to it, and, with a polite "Would you like the

window open, sir?" quietly lift it with one hand?

[Illustration: FIG. 67.]

A CONVENIENT EASEL.

Fig. 68 is a diagram of the kind of easel I would suggest. It can either

stand on the bench or on the floor, and with the touch of a hand can be

lifted, weighing often well over a hundredweight, to any height the

painter pleases, till it touches the roof, enabling him to see at any

moment the whole of his work at a distance and against the sky, which

one would rather call an absolute necessity than a mere convenience or

advantage.

Some of these things were thought out roughly by myself, and have been

added to and improved from time to time by my painters and apprentices,

a matter which I shall say a word on by-and-by, when we consider the

relations which should exist between these and the master.

AN IMPROVED TOOL FOR WAXING-UP.

Meanwhile here is another little tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of

my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention,

though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool

for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of

wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of

course, that it _should retain the heat_. This youth argued: "If they

use copper for soldering-bits because it retains heat so well, why not

use copper for the waxing-up tool? besides, it can be made into a pen

which will hold more wax."

[Illustration: FIG. 68.]

[Illustration: FIG. 69.]

So said, so done; nothing indeed to make a fuss about, but part of a

very wholesome spirit of wishing to work with handy tools economically,

instead of blundering and wasting.

AN EASEL WITH MOVABLE PLATES.

But to return for a moment to the easel. I find it very convenient not

to have it made all of one plate of glass, but to divide it so that

about four plates make the whole easel of five feet high. These plates

slip in grooves, and can be let in either at the top or bottom, the

latter being then stopped by a batten and thumbscrews. By this means a

light of any length can be painted in sections without a break. For

supposing you work from below upwards, and have done the first five feet

of the window, take out all the glass except the top plate, _shift this

down to the bottom_, and place three empty plates above it, and you can

join the upper work to the lower by the sample of the latter left in its

place to start you.

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF A ROOM.

The great point is to be able to get away as far as you can from your

work. And I advise you, if your room is small, to have a fair-sized

mirror (a cheval-glass) and place it at the far end of your room

opposite the easel where you are painting, and then, standing close by

the side of your easel, look at your work in the mirror. This will

double the distance at which you see it, and at the same time present it

to you reversed; which is no disadvantage, for you then see everything

under a fresh aspect and so with a fresh eye. Of course, by the use of

two mirrors, if they be large enough, you can put your work away to any

distance. You must have seen this in a restaurant where there were

mirrors, and where you have had presented to you an endless procession

of your own head, first front then back, going away into the far

distance.

HOW TO HANDLE CARTOONS.

Well, it's really like insulting your intelligence! And if I hadn't seen

fellows down on their hands and knees rolling and unrolling cartoons

along the dirty floor, and sprawling all over the studio so that

everybody had to get out of the way into corners, I wouldn't spend paper

and ink to tell you that by standing the roll _upright_ and spinning it

gently round with your hands, freeing first one edge and then another,

you can easily and quietly unroll and sort out a bundle of a dozen

cartoons, each twenty feet long, on the space of a small hearth-rug; but

so it is (fig. 70), and in just the same way you can roll them up again.

NEATNESS AND CLEANLINESS.

You should have drawers in the tables, and put the palettes away in

these with the colour neatly covered over with a basin when you leave

work. Dust is a great enemy in a stained-glass shop, and it must be kept

at arm's length.

YOU MUST TEAR OFF THE SELVAGE EDGE OF YOUR TRACING CLOTH,

otherwise the tracing cloth being all cockled at the edge, which,

however, is not very noticeable, will not lie flat, and you will be

puzzled to know why it is that you cannot get your cut-line straight;

tear off the edge, and it lies perfectly flat, without a wrinkle.

HOW TO DRY A BIG BRUSH OR BADGER AFTER IT IS WASHED.

I expect you'd try to dry it in front of the fire, and there'd be a

pretty eight-shilling frizzle! But the way is this: First sweep the wet

brush downwards with all your force, just as you shake the worst of the

wet off a dripping umbrella, then take the handle of the brush _between

the palms of your hands_, with the hair pointing downwards, and rub your

hands smartly together, with the handle between them, just as an Italian

waiter whisks up the chocolate. This sends the hair all out like a

Catherine-wheel, and dries the brush with quite astonishing rapidity.

Come now! you'd never have thought of that?

[Illustration: FIG. 70.]

* * * * *

And why have I reserved these hints till now? surely these are things of

the work-bench, practical matters, and would have come more conveniently

in their own place? Why have I--do you ask--after arousing your

attention to the "great principles of art," gone back again all at once

to these little matters?

Dear reader, I have done so deliberately to emphasise the _First_ of

principles, that the right learning of any craft is the learning it

under a master, and that all else is makeshift; to drive home the lesson

insisted on in the former volumes of this series of handbooks, and

gathered into the sentence quoted as a motto on the fly-leaf of one of

them, that "An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are

winning their bread by it."

These little things we have just been speaking of occurred to me after

the practical part was all written; and I determined, since it happened

so, to put them by themselves, to point this very lesson. They are just

typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the

bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and

even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by

master to pupil. Years--centuries of practice have made them the

commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an

instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking

of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.

Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his

very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them;

how many centuries of sailing, think you, passed by before men knew that

the tides went with the moon?

Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?

Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none

of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary

shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in

that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to

interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of

the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the

daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling,

and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the

conditions of the craft, and from the interchange of ideas amongst those

who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to

what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that

are ever changing.

However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it

now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to

deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-glass work

surely is that of COLOUR.

CHAPTER XVI

OF COLOUR

But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual

colour cannot be shown!

Nevertheless, let us try.

* * * * *

... One thinks of morning and evening; ... of clouds passing over the

sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the

windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a

shell; of purple bloom and azure haze, and grass-green and golden spots,

like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the

charm.

And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the

picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue,

which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or

evening hymn.

Of what use is it to speak of these things? The words fall upon the ear,

but the eye is not filled.

All stained-glass gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of

the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the

showing forth of it cannot be in words.

Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the

railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the

copse?

One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in

fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of

stained-glass is a very good way to _learn_ colour, or as much of it as

can come by learning.

For, consider:--

A painter has his colour-box and palette;

And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his

colour into harmonies;

Doing a little first, cautiously;

Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations

of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:

Exhausting, as much as he can, the possibilities of one or two pigments,

and then adding another and another;

But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw

upon;

All the infinity of the whole world of colour being in his own hands,

and the difficulty of dealing with it laid as a burden upon his own

shoulders, as he combines, modifies, mixes, and dilutes them.

He perhaps has eight or ten spots of pure colour, ranged round his

palette; and all the rest depends upon himself.

This gives him, indeed, one side of the practice of his art; and if he

walks warily, yet daringly, step by step, learning day by day something

more of the powers that lie in each single kind of paint, and as he

learns it applying his knowledge, bravely and industriously, to add

strength to strength, brightness to brightness, richness to richness,

depth to depth, in ever clearer, fuller, and more gorgeous harmony, he

may indeed become a great painter.

But a more timid or indolent man gets tired or afraid of putting the

clear, sharp tints side by side to make new combinations of pure and

vivid colour.

And even a man industrious, alert, and determined may lose his way and

get confused amongst the infinity of choice, through being badly taught,

and especially through being allowed at first too great a range, too

wide a choice, too lavish riches.

A man so trained, so situated, so tempted, stands in danger of being

contented to repeat old receipts and formulas over and over, as soon as

he has acquired the knowledge of a few.

Or, bewildered with the lavishness of his means and confused in his

choice, tends to fall into indecision, and to smear and dilute and

weaken.

I cannot help thinking that it is to this want of a system of gradual

teaching of the elementary stages of colour in painting that we owe, on

the one side, the fashion of calling irresolute and undecided tints

"art" colours; and, on the other hand, the garishness of our modern

exhibitions compared with galleries of old paintings. For Titian's

burning scarlet and crimson and palpitating blue; and Veronese's gold

and green and white and rose are certainly not "art colours"; and I

think we must feel the justice and truth of Ruskin's words spoken

regarding a picture of Linnell's:--

"And what a relief it is for any wholesome human sight, after sickening

itself among the blank horror of dirt, ditchwater, and malaria, which

the imitators of the French schools have begrimed our various Exhibition

walls with, to find once more a bit of blue in the sky and a glow of

brown in the coppice, and to see that Hoppers in Kent can enjoy their

scarlet and purple--like Empresses and Emperors." (Ruskin, "Royal

Academy Notes," 1875.)

From this irresolution and indecision and the dull-colour school

begotten of it on the one hand, and from garishness on the other,

stained-glass is a great means of salvation; for in practising this art

the absolute judgment must, day by day, be exercised between this and

that colour, there present before it; and the will is braced by the

necessity of constant choice and decision. In short, by many of the

modern, academical methods of teaching painting, and especially by the

unfortunate arrangement, where it exists, of a pupil passing under a

succession of different masters, I fear the colour-sense is perplexed

and blunted; while by stained-glass, taught, as all art should be, from

master to apprentice, while both make their bread by it, the

colour-sense would be gradually and steadily cultivated and would have

time to grow.

This at least seems certain: that all painters who have also done

stained-glass, or indeed any other decorative work in colour, get

stronger and braver in painting from its practice. So worked Titian,

Giorgione, Veronese; and so in our days worked Burne-Jones, Rossetti,

Madox-Brown, Morris; and if I were to advise and prate about what is,

perhaps, not my proper business, I would say, even to the student of

oil-painting, "Begin with burnt-umber, trying it in every degree with

white; transparent over opaque and opaque over transparent; trying how

near you can get to purple and orange by contrast (and you will get

nearer than you think); then add sienna at one end and black at the

other to enlarge the range;--and then get a set of glass samples."

I have said that stained-glass is "a great means of salvation," from

irresolution and indecision on the one hand and from garishness on the

other; but it is only a means--the fact of salvation lies always in

one's own hands--for we must, I fear, admit that "garishness" and

"irresolution" are not unknown in stained-glass itself, in spite of the

resources and safeguardings we have attributed to the material.

Speaking, therefore, now to stained-glass painters themselves, we might

say that these faults in their own art, as too often practised in our

days, arise, strange as it may seem, from ignorance of their own

material, that very material the _knowledge_ of which we have just been

recommending as a safeguard against these very faults to the students of

another art.

And this brings us back to our subject.

For the foregoing discussion of painters' methods has all been written

to draw a comparison and emphasise a contrast.

A contrast from which you, student of stained-glass, I hope may learn

much.

For as we have tried to describe the methods of the painter in oil or

water colours, and so point out his advantages and disadvantages, so we

would now draw a picture of the glass-painter at work; if he works as he

should do.

For the painter of pictures (we said) has his colour-box of a few

pigments, from which all his harmonies must come by mixing them and

diluting them in various proportions, dealing with infinity out of a

very limited range of materials, and required to supply all the rest by

his own skill and memory.

Coming each day to his work with his palette clean and his colours in

their tubes;

Beginning, as it were, all over again each time; and perhaps with his

heart cold and his memory dull.

But the glass-painter has his specimens of glass round him; some

hundreds, perhaps, of all possible tints.

He has, with these, to compose a subject in colour;

There is no getting out of it or shirking it;

He places the bits side by side, with no possibility (which the palette

gives) of slurring or diluting or dulling them; he must choose from the

clear hard tints;

And he has the whole problem before him;

He removes one and substitutes another;

"This looks better;" "That is a pleasant harmony;" "Ah! but this makes

it sing!"

He gets them into groups, and combines them into harmonies, tint with

tint, group with group:

If he is wise he has them always by him;

Always ready to arrange in a movable frame against the window;

He cuts little bits of each; he waxes them, or gums them, into groups on

sheets of glass;

He tries all his effects in the glass itself; he sketches in glass.

If he is wise he does this side by side with his water-colour sketch,

making each help the other, and thinking in glass; even perhaps making

his water-colour sketch afterwards from the glass.

Is it not reasonable?

Is it not far more easy, less dangerous?

He has not to rake in his cold and meagre memory to fish out some poor

handful of all the possible harmonies;

To repeat himself over and over again.

He has all the colours burning round him; singing to him to use them;

sounding all their chords.

Is it not the way? Is it not common sense?

Tints! pure tints! What great things they are.

I remember an old joke of the pleasant Du Maurier, a drawing

representing two fashionable ladies discussing the afternoon's

occupation. One says: "It's quite too dull to see colours at Madame St.

Aldegonde's; suppose we go to the Old Masters' Exhibition!"

Rather too bad! but the ladies were not so altogether frivolous as might

at first appear. I am afraid _Punch_ meant that they were triflers who

looked upon colour in dress as important, and colour in pictures as a

thing which would do for a dull day. But they were not quite so far

astray as this! There are other things in pictures besides colour which

can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against

clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from

the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for

it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and

it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our

academies and schools of art. A curious matter this is, that a painter's

training leaves this great resource of knowledge neglected, leaves the

whole thing to memory. Out of all the infinite possible harmonies only

getting what rise in the mind at the moment from the unseen. While

ladies who want to dress beautifully look at the things themselves, and

compare one with another. And how nicely they dress. If only painters

painted half as well. If the pictures in our galleries only looked half

as harmonious as the crowd of spectators below them! I would have it

part of every painter's training to practise some craft, or at least

that branch of some craft, which compels the choosing and arranging, in

due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some

definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. It

is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that

kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel

harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with

infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack I

am urging this training. For it is a case of

"the little more and how much it is,

And the little less and what worlds away."

Millais hung a daring crimson sash over the creamy-white bed-quilt, in

the glow of the subdued night-lamp, in his picture of "Asleep," and we

all thought what a fine thing it was. But we have not thought it so fine

for the whole art world to burst into the subsequent imitative paroxysm

of crashing discords in chalk, lip-salve, and skim-milk, which has

lasted almost to this day.

At any rate, I throw out this hint for pupils and students, that if they

will get a set of glass samples and try combinations of colour in them,

they will have a bracing and guiding influence, the strength of which

they little dream of, regarding one of the hardest problems of their

art.

This for the student of painting in general: but for the glass-painter

it is absolutely essential--the central point, the breath-of-life of his

art.

To live in it daily and all day.

To be ever dealing with it thus.

To handle with the hands constantly.

To try this piece, and that piece, the little more and the little less.

This is the be-all and end-all, the beginning and the end of the whole

matter, and here therefore follow a few hints with regard to it.

And there is one rule of such dominating importance that all other hints

group themselves round it; and yet, strangely enough, I cannot remember

seeing it anywhere written down.

Take three tints of glass--a purple, let us say, a crimson, and a green.

Let it be supposed that, for some reason, you desire that this should

form a scheme of colour for a window, or part of a window, with, of

course, in addition, pure white, and probably some tints more neutral,

greenish-whites and olives or greys, for background.

You choose your purple (and, by-the-bye, almost the only way to get a

satisfactory one, except by a happy accident now and then, is to double

gold-pink with blue; this is the only way to get a purple that will

vibrate, palpitating against the eye like the petal of a pansy in the

sun). Well, you get your purple, and you get your green--not a

sage-green, or an "art-green," but a cold, sharp green, like a leaf of

parsley, an aquamarine, the tree in the "Eve" window at Fairford, grass

in an orchard about sunset, or a railway-signal lamp at night.

Your crimson like a peony, your white like white silk; and now you are

started.

You put slabs of these--equal-sized samples, we will suppose--side by

side, and see "if they will do."

And they don't "do" at all.

Take away the red.

The green and the purple do well enough, and the white.

But you _want_ the red, you say.

Well, _put back a tenth part of it_.

And how now?

Add a still smaller bit of pale pink.

And how now?

Do you see what it all means? It means the rule we spoke of, and which

we may as well, therefore, now announce:

"HARMONY IN COLOUR DEPENDS NOT ONLY UPON THE ARRANGING OF RIGHT COLOURS

TOGETHER, BUT THE ARRANGING OF THE RIGHT QUANTITIES AND THE RIGHT

DEGREES OF THEM TOGETHER."

To which may be added another, _a propos_ of our bit of "pale pink."

THE HARSHEST CONTRASTS, EVEN DISCORDS, MAY OFTEN BE BROUGHT INTO HARMONY

BY ADDED NOTES.

I believe that these are the two, and I would even almost say the only

two, great leading principles of the science of colour, as used in the

service of Art; and we might learn them, in all their fulness, in a

country walk, if we were simple enough to like things because we like

them, and let the kind nurse, Nature, take us by the hand. This very

problem, to wit: Did you never see a purple anemone? against its green

leaves? with a white centre? and with a thin ring of crimson shaded off

into pink? And did you never wonder at its beauty, and wonder how so

simple a thing could strike you almost breathless with pure physical

delight and pleasure? No doubt you did; but you probably may not have

asked yourself whether you would have been equally pleased if the

purple, green, and red had all been equal in quantity, and the pale pink

omitted.

I remember especially in one particular window where this colour scheme

was adopted--an "Anemone-coloured" window--the modification of the one

splash of red by the introduction of a lighter pink which suggested

itself in the course of work as it went along, and was the pet fancy of

an assistant--readily accepted.

The window in question is small and in nowise remarkable, but it was in

the course of a ride taken to see it in its place, on one of those

glorious mornings when Spring puts on all the pageantry of Summer, that

the thoughts with which we are now dealing, and especially the thoughts

of the infinite suggestion which Nature gives in untouched country and

of the need we have to drink often at that fountain, were borne in upon

the writer with more than usual force.

To take in fully and often the glowing life and strength and renewal

direct from Nature is part of every man's proper manhood, still more

then of every artist's artistry and student's studentship.

And truly 'tis no great hardship to go out to meet the salutary

discipline when the country is beautiful in mid-April, and the road good

and the sun pleasant. The Spring air sets the blood racing as you ride,

and when you stop and stand for a moment to enjoy these things,

ankle-deep in roadside grass, you can seem to hear the healthy pulses

beating and see the wavy line of hills beating with them, as you look at

the sun-warmed world.

It is good sometimes to think where we are in the scheme of things, to

realise that we are under the bell-glass of this balmy air, which shuts

us in, safe from the pitch-dark spaces of infinite cold, through which

the world is sweeping at eighteen miles a second; while we, with all our

little problems to solve and work to do, are riding warm by this

fireside, and the orange-tip butterflies with that curious pertinacity

of flight which is speed without haste are keeping up their incessant,

rippling patrol, to and fro along the length of every sunny lane, above

the ditch-side border of white-blossomed keck!

What has all this to do with stained-glass?

Everything, my boy! Be a human! For you have got to choose your place in

things, and to choose on which side you will work.

A choice which, in these days, more than ever perhaps before, is one

between such things as these and the money-getting which cares so little

for them. I have tried to show you one side by speaking of a little part

of what may be seen and felt on a spring morning, along a ridge of

untouched hills in "pleasant Hertfordshire:"[1] if you want to see the

other side of things ride across to Buntingford, and take the train back

up the Lea Valley. Look at Stratford (and smell it) and imagine it

spreading, as no doubt it will, where its outposts of oil-mill and

factory have already led the way, and think of the valley full up with

slums, from Lea Bridge to Ponders End! For the present writer can

remember--and that not half a lifetime back--Edmonton and Tottenham,

Brondesbury and Upton Park, sweet country villages where quiet people

lived and farmed and gardened amidst the orchards, fields, and hawthorn

lanes.

Here now live, in mile after mile of jerry-building, the "hands" who,

never taught any craft or work worthy of a man, spend their lives in

some little single operation that, as it happens, no machine has yet

been invented to perform; month after month, year after year, painting,

let us say, endless repeats of one pattern to use as they are required for

the borders of pious windows in the churches of this land.

This is the "other side of things," much commended by what is looked on

as "robust common sense"; and with this you have--nothing to do. Your

place is elsewhere, and if it needs be that it seems an isolated one,

you must bear it and accept it. Nature and your craft will solve all;

live in them, bathe in them to the lips; and let nothing tempt you away

from them to measure things by the standard of the mart.

Let us go back to our sunny hillside. "It is good for us to be here,"

for this also is Holy Ground; and you must indeed be much amongst such

things if you would do stained-glass, for you will never learn all the

joy of it in a dusty shop.

"So hard to get out of London?"

But get a bicycle then;--only sit upright on it and go slow--and get

away from these bricks and mortar, to where we can see things like

these! those dandelions and daisies against the deep, green grass; the

blazing candles of the sycamore buds against the purple haze of the oak

copse; and those willows like puffs of grey smoke where the stream

winds. Did you ever? No, you never! Well--do it then!

But indeed, having stated our _principles_ of colour, the practice of

those principles and the influence of nature and of nature's hints upon

that practice are infinite, both in number and variety. The flowers of

the field and garden; butterflies, birds, and shells; the pebbles of the

shore; above all, the dry seaweeds, lying there, with the evening sun

slanting through them. These last are exceedingly like both in colour

and texture, or rather in colour and the amount of translucency, to fine

old stained-glass; so also are dead leaves. But, in short, the thing is

endless. The "wine when it is red" (or amber, as the case may be), even

the whisky and water, and whisky _without_ water, side by side, make

just those straw and ripe-corn coloured golden-yellows that are so hard

to attain in stained-glass (impossible indeed by means of yellow-stain),

and yet so much to be desired and sought after.

Will you have more hints still? Well, there are many tropical

butterflies, chiefly among the _Pierinf_, with broad spaces of yellow

dashed with one small spot or flush of vivid orange or red. Now you know

how terrible yellow and red may be made to look in a window; for you

have seen "ruby" robes in conjunction with "yellow-stain," or the still

more horrible combination where ruby has been acided off from a yellow

base. But it is a question of the actual quality of the two tints and

also of their quantity. What I have spoken of looks horrible because the

yellow is of a brassy tone, as stain so often is, especially on

green-white glasses, and the red inclining to puce--jam-colour. It is no

use talking, therefore, of "red and yellow"--we must say _what_ red and

_what_ yellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a

lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet

ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies--while if one

wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of

the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one

of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the

hint from such things--to splash the golden wings of your Resurrection

Angel as he rolls away the stone with scarlet beads of sunrise, not seen

but _felt_ from where you stand on the pavement below. I want the reader

to fully grasp this question of _quantity_, so I will instance the

flower of the mullein which contains almost the very tints of the

"lemon," and the "dahlia" I quoted, and yet is beautiful by virtue of

its _quantities_: which may be said to be of a "lemon" yellow and yet

can bear (ay! can it _not_?) the little crimson stamens in the heart of

it and its sage-green leaves around.

And there is even something besides "tint" and "quantity." The way you

_distribute_ your colour matters very much. Some in washes, some in

splashes, some in spots, some in stripes. What will "not do" in one way

will often be just right in the other: yes, and the very way you treat

your glass when all is chosen and placed together--matt in one place,

film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw glass with

texture and bringing out its nature and its life.

Do not be afraid; for the things that yet remain to do are numberless.

Do you like the look of deep vivid vermilion-red, upon dark cold green?

Look at the hip-loaded rose-briar burning in the last rays of a red

October sunset! You get physical pleasure from the sight; the eye seems

to vibrate to the harmony as the ear enjoys a chord struck upon the

strings. Therefore do not fear. But mind, it must be in nature's actual

colour, not merely "green" and "red": for I once saw the head of a

celebrated tragic actress painted by a Dutch artist who, to make it as

deathly as he could, had placed the ashen face upon a background of

emerald-green with spots of actual red sealing-wax. The eye was so

affected that the colours swung to and fro, producing in a short time a

nausea like sea-sickness. That is not pleasure.

The training of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual;

springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things

first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once,

even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching

this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try

some simple scheme from the things of Nature. Hyacinths look well with

their leaves: therefore _that_ green and _that_ blue, with the white of

April clouds and the black of the tree-stems in the wood are colours that

can be used together.

You must be prepared to find almost a sort of penalty in this habit of

looking at everything with the eye of a stained-glass artist. One seems

after a time to see natural objects with numbers attached to them

corresponding with the numbers of one's glasses in the racks:

butterflies flying about labelled "No. 50, deep," or "75_a_, pale," or a

bit of "123, special streaky" in the sunset. But if one does not obtrude

this so as to bore one's friends, the little personal discomfort, if it

exists, is a very small price to pay for the delight of living in this

glorious fairyland of colour.

Do not think it beneath your dignity or as if you were shirking some

vital artistic obligation, to take hints from these natural objects, or

from ancient or modern glass, in a perfectly frank and simple manner;

nay, even to match your whole colour scheme, tint for tint, by them if

it seems well to you. You may get help anywhere and from anything, and

as much as you like; it will only be so much more chance for you; so

much richer a store to choose from, so much stronger resource to guide

to good end; for after all, with all the helps you can get, much lies in

the doing. Do what you like then--as a child: but be sure you _do_ like

it: and if the window wants a bit of any particular tint, put it there,

meaning or no meaning. If there is no robe or other feature to excuse

and account for it in the spot which seems to crave for it,--put the

colour in, anywhere and anyhow--in the background if need be--a sudden

orange or ruby "quarry" or bit of a quarry, as if the thing were done in

purest waywardness. "You would like a bit there if there were an excuse

for it?" Then there _is_ an excuse--the best of all--that the eye

demands it. Do it fearlessly.

But to work in this way (it hardly need be said) you must watch and work

at your glass yourself; for these hints come late on in the work, when

colour, light and shade, and design are all fusing together into a

harmony. You can no more forecast these final accidents, which are the

flower and crown and finish of the whole, than you could forecast the

lost "Chord";--

"Which came from the soul of the organ,

And entered into mine."

It "comes from the soul" of the window.

We all know the feeling--the climaxes, exceptions, surprises,

suspensions, in which harmony delights; the change from the last bar of

the overture to the first of the opening recitative in the "Messiah,"

the chord upon which the victor is crowned in "The Meistersingers," the

59th and 60th bars in Handel's "Every Valley." (I hope some of us are

"old-fashioned" enough to be unashamed of still believing in Handel!)

Or if it may be said that these are hardly examples of the kind of

accidental things I have spoken of, being rather, indeed, the

deliberately arranged climax to which the whole construction has been

leading, I would instance the 12th (complete) bar in the overture to

"Tannhduser," the 20th and 22nd bar in Chopin's Funeral March, the

change from the minor to major in Schubert's Romance from "Rosamunde,"

and the 24th bar in his Serenade (_Staendchen_), the 13th and following

bars of the Crescendo in the Largo Appassionato of Beethoven's Op. 2. Or

if you wish to have an example where _all_ is exception, like one of the

south nave windows in York Minster, the opening of the "Sonata

Appassionata," Op. 57.

Now how can you forecast such things as these!

Let me draw another instance from actual practice. I was once painting a

figure of a bishop in what I meant to be a dark green robe, the kind of

black, and yet vivid, green of the summer leafage of the oak; for it was

St. Boniface who cut down the heathen oak of Frisia. But the orphreys of

his cope were to be embroidered in gold upon this green, and therefore

the pattern had first to be added out in white upon a blue-flashed

glass, which yellow stain over all would afterwards turn into green and

gold. And when all was prepared and the staining should have followed,

my head man sent for me to come to the shop, and there hung the figure

with its dark green robe with orphreys of _deep blue_ and _silver_.

"I thought you'd like to look at it before we stained it," said he.

"STAIN IT!" I said. "I wouldn't touch it; not for sixpence

three-farthings!"

There was a sigh of relief all round the shop, and the reply was, "Well,

so we all thought!"

Just so; therefore the figure remained, and so was erected in its place.

Now suppose I had had men who did what they were told, instead of being

encouraged to think and feel and suggest?

A serious word to you about this question of staining. It is a resource

very easily open to abuse--to excess. Be careful of the danger, and

never stain without first trying the effect on the back of the

easel-plate with pure gamboge, and if you wish for a very clear

orange-stain, mix with the gamboge a little ordinary red ink. It is too

much the custom to "pick out" every bit of silver "canopy" work with

dottings and stripings of yellow. A _little_ sometimes warms up

pleasantly what would be too cold--and the old men used it with effect:

but the modern tendency, as is the case in all things merely imitative,

is to overdo it. For the old men used it very differently from those who

copy them in the way I am speaking of, and, to begin with, used it

chiefly on _pure white glass_. Much modern canopy work is done on

greenish-white, upon which the stain immediately becomes that

greenish-yellow that I have called "brassy." A little of this can be

borne, when side by side with it is placed stain upon pure white. The

reader will easily find, if he looks for them, plenty of examples in old

glass, where the stain upon the white glass has taken even a _rosy_

tinge exactly like that of a yellow crocus seen through its white

sheath. It is perhaps owing partly to patina on the old glass, which

"scumbles" it; but I have myself sometimes succeeded in getting the same

effect by using yellow-stain on pure white glass. A whole window, where

the highest light is a greenish white, is to me very unpleasant, and

when in addition yellow-stain is used, unbearable. This became a fashion

in stained-glass when red-lead-coloured pigments, started by Barff's

formula, came into general use. They could not be used on pure white

glass, and therefore pure white glass was discarded and greenish-white

used instead. I can only say that if the practice of stained-glass were

presented to me with this condition--of abstaining from the use of pure

white--I would try to learn some useful trade.

There is another question of ideals in the treatment of colour in

stained-glass about which a word must be said.

Those who are enthusiastic about the material of stained-glass and its

improvement are apt to condemn the degree of heaviness with which

windows are ordinarily painted, and this to some extent is a just

criticism. But I cannot go the length of thinking that all matt-painting

should be avoided, and outline only used; or that stained-glass material

can, except under very unusual conditions and in exceptional situations,

be independent of this resource. As to the

slab-glasses--"Early-English," "Norman," or "stamped-circles"--which are

chiefly affected by this question, the texture and surface upon which

their special character depends is sometimes a very useful resource in

work seen against, or partly against, background of trees or buildings;

while against an entirely "borrowed" light perhaps, sometimes, it can

almost dispense with any painting. The grey shadows that come from the

background play about in the glass and modify its tones, doing the work

of painting, and doing it much more beautifully. But this advantage

cannot always be had, for it vanishes against clear sky. It is all,

therefore, a question of situation and of aspect, and I believe the

right rule to be to do in all cases what seems best for every individual

bit of glass--that each piece should be "cared for" on its merits and

"nursed," so to speak, and its qualities brought out and its beauty

heightened by any and every means, just as if it were a jewel to be cut

(or left uncut) or foiled (or left unfoiled)--as Benvenuto Cellini would

treat, as he tells you he _did_ treat, precious stones. There is a

fashion now of thinking that gems should be uncut. Well, gems are hardly

a fair comparison in discussing stained-glass; for in glass what we aim

at is the effect of a composition and combination of a multitude of

things, while gems are individual things, for the most part, to be

looked at separately. But I would not lay down a rule even about gems.

Certainly the universal, awkward, faceting of all precious stones--which

is a relic of the mid-Victorian period--is a vulgarity that one is glad

to be rid of; but if one _wants_ for any reason the special sparkle,

here or there, which comes from it, why not use it? I would use it in

_stained-glass_--have done so. If I have got my window already brilliant

and the whites pure white, and still want, over and above all this, my

"Star of the Nativity," let us say, to sparkle out with a light that

cannot be its own, shall I not use a faceted "jewel" of glass, forty

feet from the eye, where none can see what it is but only what it does,

just because it would be a gross vulgarity to use it where it would

pretend to be a diamond?

The safe guide (as far as there can be a _guide_ where I have maintained

that there should not be a _rule_) is, surely, to generally get the

depth of colour that you want by the glass itself, _if you can_, and

therefore with that aim to deal with rich, full-coloured glass and to

promote its manufacture. But this being once done and the resource

carried to its full limit, there is no reason why you should deny

yourself the further resource of touching it with pigment to any extent

that may seem fit to you as an artist, and necessary to get the effect

of colour and texture that you are aiming at, in the thing seen as a

whole. As to the exaggeration of making accidental streaks in the glass

do duty for folds of drapery, and manufacturing glass (as has been done)

to meet this purpose, I hold the thing to be a gross degradation and an

entire misconception of the relation of materials to art. You may also

lay this to mind, as a thing worthy of consideration, that all old glass

was painted, and that no school of stained-glass has ever existed which

made a principle of refusing this aid. I would never argue from this that

such cannot exist, but it is a thing to be thought on.

Throw your net, then, into every sea, and catch what you can. Learn what

purple is, in the north ambulatory at York; what green is, in the east

window of the same, in the ante-chapel of New College, Oxford, and in

the "Adam and Eve" window in the north aisle at Fairford; what blue and

red are, in the glorious east window of the nave at Gloucester, and in

the glow and gloom of Chartres and Canterbury and King's College,

Cambridge. And when you have got all these things in your mind, and

gathered lavishly in the field of Nature also, face your problem with a

heart heated through with the memory of them all, and with a will braced

as to a great and arduous task, but one of rich reward. For remember

this (and so let us draw to an end), that in any large window the spaces

are so great and the problems so numerous that a _few_ colours and

groupings of colour, however well chosen, will not suffice. Set out the

main scheme of colours first: those that shall lead and preponderate and

convey your meaning to the mind and your intended impression to the eye.

But if you stop here, the effect will be hard and coarse and

cold-hearted in its harmonies, a lot of banging notes like a band all

brass, not out of tune perhaps, but craving for the infinite embroidery

of the strings and wood.

When, therefore, the main relations of colour have been all set out and

decided for your window, turn your attention to _small_ differences, to

harmonies _round_ the harmonies. Make each note into a chord, each tint

into a group of tints, not only the strong and bold, but also the subtle

and tender; do not miss the value of small modifications of tint that

soften brilliance into glow. Study how Nature does it on the petals of

the pansy or sweet-pea. You think a pansy is purple, and there an end?

but cut out the pale yellow band, the orange central spot, the faint

lilacs and whites in between, and where is your pansy gone?

* * * * *

And here I must now leave it to you. But one last little hint, and do

not smile at its simplicity.

For the problem, after all, when you have gathered all the hints you can

from nature or the past, and collected your resources from however

varied fields, resolves itself at last into one question--"_How shall I

do it in glass?_" And the practical solving of this problem is in the

handling of the actual bits of coloured glass which are the tools of

your craft. And for manipulating these I have found nothing so good as

that old-fashioned toy--still my own delight when a sick-bed enforces

idleness--the kaleidoscope. A sixpenny one, pulled to pieces, will give

you the knowledge of how to make it; and you will find a "Bath-Oliver"

biscuit-tin, or a large-sized millboard "postal-roll" will make an

excellent instrument. But the former is best, because you also then have

the lid and the end. If you cut away all the end of the lid except a rim

of one-eighth of an inch, and insert in its place with cement a piece of

ground-glass, and then, inside this, have another lid of clear glass

cemented on to a rim of wood or millboard, you can, in the space between

the two, place chips of the glasses you think of using; and, replacing

the whole on the instrument, a few minutes of turning with the hand will

give you, not hundreds, but thousand of changes, both of the

arrangement, and, what is far more important, of the _proportions_ of

the various colours. You can thus in a few moments watch them pass

through an almost infinite succession of changes in their relation to

each other, and form your judgment on those changes, choosing finally

that which seems best. And I really think that the fact of these

combinations being presented to us, as they are by the action of the

instrument, arranged in ordered shapes, is a help to the judgment in

deciding on the harmonies of colour. It is natural that it should be so.

"Order is Heaven's first law." And it is right that we should rejoice in

things ordered and arranged, as the savage in his string of beads, and

reasonable that we should find it easier to judge them in order rather

than confused.

Each in his place. How good a thing it is! how much to be desired! how

well if we ourselves could be so, and know of the pattern that we make!

For our lives are like the broken bits of glass, sadly or brightly

coloured, jostled about and shaken hither and thither, in a seeming

confusion, which yet we hope is somewhere held up to a light in which

each one meets with his own, and holds his place; and, to the Eye that

watches, plays his part in a universal harmony by us, as yet, unseen.

[1] West of the road between Welwyn and Hitchin.

CHAPTER XVII

OF ARCHITECTURAL FITNESS

Come, in thought, reader, and stand in quiet village churches, nestling

amongst trees where rooks are building; or in gaps of the chalk downs,

where the village shelters from the wind; or in stately cathedrals,

where the aisles echo to the footstep and the sound of the chimes comes

down, with the memory of the centuries which have lived and died. Here

the old artists set their handmark to live now they are gone, and we who

see it today see, if our eye be single, with what sincerity they built,

carved, or painted their heart and life into these stones. In such a

spirit and for such a memorial you too must do your work, to be weighed

by the judgment of the coming ages, when you in turn are gone, in the

same balance as theirs--perhaps even side by side with it.

And will you dare to venture? Have no fear if you also bring your best.

But if we enter on work like this as to a mere market for our wares, and

with no other thought than to make a brisk business with those that buy

and sell; we well may pray that some merciful scourge of small cords

drive us also hence to dig or beg (which is more honourable), lest worse

befall us!

And I do not say these things because this or that place is "God's

house." All places are so, and the first that was called so was the bare

hillside; but because you are a man and have indeed here arrived, as

there the lonely traveller did, at the arena of your wrestling. But,

granted that you mean to hold your own and put your strength into it, I

have brought you to these grave walls to consult with them as to the

limits they impose upon your working.

And perhaps the most important of all is already observed by your

_being_ here, for it is important that you should visit, whenever

possible, the place where you are to do work; if you are not able to do

this, get all the particulars you can as to aspect and surroundings. And

yet a reservation must be made, even upon all this; for everything

depends upon the way we use it, and if you only have an eye to the

showing off of your work to advantage, treating the church as a mere

frame for your picture, it would be better that your window should

misfit and have to be cut down and altered, or anything else happen to

it that would help to put it back and make it take second place. It is

so hard to explain these things so that they cannot be misconstrued; but

you remember I quoted the windows at St. Philip's, Birmingham, as an

example of noble thought and work carried to the pitch of perfection and

design. But that was in a classic building, with large, plain, single

openings without tracery. Do you think the artist would have let himself

go, in that full and ample way, in a beautiful Gothic building full of

lovely architectural detail? Not so: rather would he have made his

pictures hang lightly and daintily in the air amongst the slender

shafts, as in St. Martin's Church in the same town, at Jesus College and

at All Saints' Church, Cambridge, at Tamworth; and in Lyndhurst, and

many another church where the architecture, to say truth, had but

slender claims to such respect.

* * * * *

In short, you must think of the building first, and make your windows

help it. You must observe its scale and the spacing and proportions of

its style, and place your own work, with whatever new feeling and new

detail may be natural to you, well within those circumscribing bounds.

But here we find ourselves suddenly brought sharp up, face to face with

a most difficult and thorny subject, upon which we have rushed without

knowing it. "Must we observe then" (you say) "the style of the building

into which we put our work, and not have a style of our own that is

native to us?"

"This is contrary to all you have been preaching! The old men did not

so. Did they not add the fancies of their own time to the old work, and

fill with their dainty, branching tracery the severe, round-headed,

Norman openings of Peterborough and Gloucester? Did fifteenth-century

men do thirteenth-century glass when they had to refill a window of that

date?" No. Nor must you. Never imitate, but graft your own work on to

the old, reverently, and only changing from it so far forth as you, like

itself, have also a living tradition, springing from mastery of

craft--naturally, spontaneously, and inevitably.

Whether we shall ever again have such a tradition running throughout all

the arts is a thing that cannot possibly be foretold. But three things

we may be quite sure of.

First, that if it comes it will not be by way of any imitative revival

of a past style;

Second, that it will be in harmony with the principles of Nature; and

Third, that it will be founded upon the crafts, and brought about by

craftsmen working in it with their own hands, on the materials of

architecture, designing only what they themselves can execute, and

giving employment to others only in what they themselves can do.

A word about each of these three conditions.

In the course of the various attempted revivals in architecture that

have taken place during the past sixty years, it has been frequently

urged both by writers and architects that we should agree to revive some

_one_ style of ancient art that might again become a national style of

architecture. It would, indeed, no doubt be better, if we must speak in

a dead language, to agree to use only one, instead of our present

confusion of tongues: but what, after all, is the adopting of this

principle at all but to engage once again in the replanting of a

full-grown tree--the mistake of the Renaissance and the Gothic revival

repeated? Such things never take firm root or establish healthy growth

which lives and goes on of its own vitality. They never succeed in

obtaining a natural, national sympathy and acceptance. The movement is a

scholarly and academic one, and the art so remains. The reaction against

it is always a return to materials, and almost always the first result

of this is a revival of simplicity. People get tired of being surrounded

with elaborate mouldings and traceries and other architectural features,

which are not the natural growth of their own day but of another day

long since dead, which had other thoughts and moods, feelings and

aspirations. "Let us have straightforward masonry and simple openings,

and ornament them with something from Nature."

So in the very midst of the pampered and enervated over-refinement of

Roman decay, Constantine did something more than merely turn the

conquering eagle back, against the course of the heavens, for which

Dante seems to blame him,[2] when he established his capital at

Byzantium; for there at once upon the new soil, and in less than a

single century, sprang to life again all the natural modes of building

and decoration that, despised as barbaric, had been ignored and

forgotten amid the Roman luxury and sham.

It is a curious feature of these latest days of ours that this searching

after sincerity should seem to be leading us towards a similar revival;

taking even very much the same forms. We went back, at the time of the

Gothic revival, to the forgotten Gothic art of stained-glass; now tired,

as it would seem, of the insincerity and mere spirit of imitation with

which it and similar arts have been practised, a number of us appear to

be ready to throw it aside, along with scholarly mouldings and

traceries, and build our arts afresh out of the ground, as was done by

the Byzantines, with plain brickwork, mosaic, and matched slabs of

marble. Definite examples in recent architecture will occur to the

reader. But I am thinking less of these--which for the most part are

deliberate and scholastic revivals of a particular style, founded on the

study of previous examples and executed on rigid academic methods--than

of what appears to be a widespread awakening to principles of

simplicity, sincerity, and common sense in the arts of building

generally. Signs are not wanting of a revived interest in building--a

revived interest in materials for their own sake, and a revived practice

of personally working in them and experimenting with them. One calls to

mind examples of these things, growing in number daily--plain and strong

furniture made with the designer's own hands and without machinery, and

enjoyed in the making--made for actual places and personal needs and

tastes; houses built in the same spirit by architects who condescend to

be masons also; an effort here and an effort there to revive the common

ways of building that used to prevail--and not so long ago--for the

ordinary housing and uses of country-folk and country-life, and which

gave us cottages, barns, and sheds throughout the length and breadth of

the land; simple things for simple needs, built by simple men, without

self-consciousness, for actual use and pleasant dwelling; traditional

construction and the habits of making belonging to the country-side.

These still linger in the time-honoured ways of making the waggon and

the cart and the plough; but they have vanished from architecture and

building except in so far as they are being now, as I have said,

consciously and deliberately revived by men who are going back from

academic methods, to found their arts once more upon the actual making

of things with their own hand and as their hand and materials will guide

them.

This was what happened in the time to which I have referred: in the dawn

of the Christian era and of a new civilisation; and it has special

interest for us of today, because it was not a case of an infant or

savage race, beginning all things from seed; but the revival, as in

Sparta, centuries before it, of simplicity and sincerity of life, in the

midst of enervation, luxury, and decay.

This seems our hope for the future.

There has already gathered together in the great field of the arts of

today a little Byzantium of the crafts setting itself to learn from the

beginning how things are actually made, how built, hammered, painted,

cut, stitched; casting aside theories and academical thought, and

founding itself upon simplicity, and sincerity, and materials. And the

architect who condescends, or, as we should rather say, aspires, to be a

builder and a master-mason, true director of his craft, will, if things

go on as they seem now going, find in the near future a band around him

of other workers so minded, and will have these bright tools of the

accessory crafts ready to his hand. This it is, if anything, that will

solve all the vexed questions of "style," and lead, if anything will, to

the art of the times to be. For the reason why the nineteenth century

complained so constantly that it had "no style of architecture" was

surely because it had _every_ style of architecture, and a race of

architects who could design in every style because they could build in

no style; knew by practical handling and tooling nothing of the real

natures and capacities of stone or brick or wood or glass; received no

criticism from their materials; whereas these should have daily and

hourly moulded their work and formed the very breath of its life,

warning and forbidding on the one hand, suggesting on the other, and so

directing over all.

I have thought fit, dear student, to touch on these great questions in

passing, that you may know where you stand; but our real business is

with ourselves: to make ourselves so secure upon firm standing ground,

in our own particular province, that when the hour arrives, it may find

in us the man. Let us therefore return again from these bright hopes to

consider those particular details of architectural fitness which are our

proper business as workers in glass.

What, then, in detail, are the rules that must guide us in placing

windows in ancient buildings? But first--_may_ we place windows in

ancient buildings at all? "No," say some; "because we have no right

to touch the past; it is 'restoration,' a word that has covered, in

the past," they say (and we must agree with them), "a mass of artistic

crime never to be expiated, and of loss never to be repaired." "Yes,"

say others, "because new churches will be older in half-an-hour--

half-an-hour older; for the world has moved, and where will you draw

the line? Also, glass has _to be renewed_, you must put in something,

or some one must."

Let each decide the question for himself; but, supposing you admit that

it is permissible, what are the proper restrictions and conditions?

You must not tell a lie, or "match" old work, joining your own on to it

as if itself were old.

Shall we work in the style of the "New art," then--"_l'art Nouveau_"?

the style of the last new poster? the art-tree, the art-bird, the

art-squirm, and the ace of spades form of ornament?

Heaven in mercy defend us and forbid it!

Canopies are venerable; thirteenth-century panels and borders are

venerable, the great traditional vestments are so, and liturgy, and

symbolism, and ceremony. These are not things of one age alone, but

belong to all time. Get, wherever possible, authority on all these

points.

Must we work in a "style," then--a "Gothic" style?

No.

What rule, then?

It is hard to formulate so as to cover all questions, but something

thus:--

Take forms, and proportions, and scale from the style of the church you

are to work in.

Add your own feeling to it from--

(1) The feeling of the day, but the best and most reverent feeling.

(2) From Nature.

(3) From (and the whole conditioned by) materials and the knowledge of

craft.

Finally, let us say that you must consider each case on its merits, and

be ready even sometimes perhaps to admit that the old white glass may be

better for a certain position than your new glass could be, while old

_stained-glass_, of course, should always be sacred to you, a thing to

be left untouched. Even where new work seems justifiable and to be

demanded, proceed as if treading on holy ground. Do not try crude

experiments on venerable and beautiful buildings, but be modest and

reticent; know the styles of the past thoroughly and add your own fresh

feeling to them reverently. And in thought do not think it necessary to

be novel in order to be original. There is quite enough originality in

making a noble figure of a saint, or treating with reverent and

dignified art some actual theme of Scripture or tradition, and working

into its detail the sweetness of nature and the skill of your hands,

without going into eccentricity for the sake of novelty, and into weak

allegory to show your originality and independence, tired with the

world-old truths and laws of holy life and noble character. And this

leads us to the point where we must speak of these deep things in the

great province of thought.

[2] Paradise, canto vi. 1.

CHAPTER XVIII

OF THOUGHT, IMAGINATION, AND ALLEGORY

"_The first thing one should demand of a man who calls himself an artist

is that he has something to say, some truth to teach, some lesson to

enforce. Don't you think so?_"

Thus once said to me an artist of respectable attainment.

"_I don't care a hang for subject; give me good colour, composition,

fine effects of light, skill in technique, that's all one wants. Don't

you think so?_"

Thus once said to me a member of a window-committee, himself also an

artist.

To both I answered, and would answer with all the emphasis possible--No!

The _first_ duty of an artist, as of every other kind of worker, is to

know his business; and, unless he knows it, all the "truths" he wishes

to "teach," and the lessons he wishes to enforce, are but degraded and

discredited in the eyes of men by his bungling advocacy.

On the other hand, the artist who has trained himself to speak with the

tongues of angels and after all has nothing to say, is also, to me, an

imperfect being. What follows is written, as the whole book is written,

for the young student, just beginning his career and feeling the

pressure and conflict of these questions. For such I must venture to

discuss points which the wise and the experienced may pass by.

The present day is deluged with allegory; and the first thing three

students out of four wish to attempt when they arrive at the stage of

original art is the presentation, by figures and emblems, of some deep

abstract truth, some problem of the great battle of life, some force of

the universe that they begin to feel around them, pressing upon their

being. Forty years ago such a thing was hardly heard of. In the

sketching-clubs at the Academies of that day, the historical, the

concrete, or the respectably pious were all that one ever saw. We can

hardly realise it, the art of the late sixties. The pre-Raphaelite

brotherhood, as such, a thing of the past, and seemingly leaving few

imitators. Burne-Jones just heard of as a strange, unknown artist, who

wouldn't exhibit his pictures, but who had done some queer new kind of

stained-glass windows at Lyndhurst, which one might perhaps be curious

to see when we went (as of course we must) to worship "Leighton's great

altar-piece." Nay, ten years later, at the opening of the Grosvenor

Gallery, the new, imaginative, and allegorical art could be met with a

large measure of derision, and _Punch_ could write, regarding it, an

audacious and contemptuous parody of the "Palace of Art"; while, abroad,

Botticelli's _Primavera_ hung over a door, and the attendants at the

_Uffizii_ were puzzled by requests, granted grudgingly (_if_ granted), to

have his other pictures placed for copying and study! Times have

altogether changed, and we now see in every school competition--often

set as the subject of such--abstract and allegorical themes, demanding

for their adequate expression the highest and deepest thought and the

noblest mood of mind and views of life.

It is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rule about these things,

for each case must differ. There is such a thing as _genius_, and where

that is there is but small question of rules or even of youth or age,

maturity or immaturity. And even apart from the question of genius the

mind of childhood is a very precious thing, and "the thoughts of youth

are long, long thoughts." Nay, the mere _fact_ of youth with its trials,

is a great thing; we shall never again have such a chance, such fresh,

responsive hearts, such capacity for feeling--for suffering--that school

of wisdom and source of inspiration! It is well to record its lessons

while they are fresh, to jot down for ourselves, if we can, something of

the passing hours; to store up their thoughts and feelings for future

expression perhaps, when our powers of expression have grown more worthy

of them; but it is not well to try to make universal lessons out of, or

universal applications of, what we haven't ourselves learned. Our own

proper lesson at this time is to learn our trade; to strengthen our weak

hands and train the ignorance of our mind to knowledge day by day,

strenuously, and only _spurred on by_ the deep stirrings of thought and

life within us, which generally ought to remain for the present

_unspoken_.

A great point of happiness in this dangerous and critical time is to

have a definite trade; learnt in its completeness and practised day by

day, step by step, upwards from its elements, in constant subservience

to wise and kind mastership. This indeed is a golden lot, and one rare

in these days; and perhaps we must not look to be so shielded. This was

the sober and happy craftsmanship of the Middle Ages, and produced for

us all that imagery and ornature, instinct with gaiety and simplicity of

heart, which decorates, where the hand of the ruthless restorer has

spared it, the churches and cathedrals of Europe.

But in these changeful days it would be rash indeed to forecast where

lies the sphere of duty for any individual life. It may lie in the

reconstruction by solitary, personal experiment, of some forgotten art

or system, the quiet laying of foundation for the future rather than

building the monument of today. Or perhaps the self-devoted life of the

seer may be the Age's chief need, and it is not a Giotto that is wanted

for the twentieth century but a Dante or a Blake, with the accompanying

destiny of having to prove as they did--

"si come sa di sale

Lo pane altrui, e com'h duro calle

Lo scendere e'l salir per l'altrui scale."[3]

But, however these things be, whether working happily in harmony with

the scheme of things around us, and only concerned to give it full

expression, or not; whether we are the fortunate apprentices of a

well-taught trade, gaining secure and advancing knowledge day by day, or

whether we are lonely experimentalists, wringing the secret from

reluctant Nature and Art upon some untrodden path; there is one last

great principle that covers all conditions, solves all questions, and is

an abiding rock which remains, unfailing foundation on which all may

build; and that is the constant measuring of our smallness against the

greatness of things, a thing which, done in the right spirit, does not

daunt, but inspires. For the greatness of all things is ours for the

winning, almost for the asking.

The great imaginative poets and thinkers and artists of the

mid-nineteenth century have drawn aside for us the curtain of the world

behind the veil, and he would be an ambitious man who would expect to

set the mark higher, in type of beauty or depth of feeling, than they

have placed it for us; but all must hope to do so, even if they do not

expect it; for the great themes are not exhausted or ever to be

exhausted; and the storehouse of the great thought and action of the

past is ever open to us to clothe our nakedness and enrich our poverty;

we need only ask to have.

"Ah!" said Coningsby, "I should like to be a great man."

The stranger threw at him a scrutinising glance. His countenance was

serious. He said in a voice of almost solemn melody--

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes

heroes."[4]

All the great thoughts of the world are stored up in books, and all the

great books of the world, or nearly all, have been translated into

English. You should make it a systematic part of your life to search

these things out and, if only by a page or two, try how far they fit

your need. We do not enough realise how wide a field this is, how great

an undertaking, how completely unattainable except by carefully

husbanding our time from the start, how impossible it is in the span of

a human life to read the great books unless we strictly save the time

which so many spend on the little books. Ruskin's words on this subject,

almost harsh in their blunt common sense, bring the matter home so well

that I cannot refrain from quoting them.[5]

"Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that--that what you

lose today you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your

housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings;

or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your

own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entrie

here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open

to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days,

the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may

enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your

wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by

your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own

inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with

which you strive to take high place in the society of the living,

measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the

place you desire to take in this company of the Dead."

This is the great world of BOOKS that is open to you; and how shall you

find your way in it, in these days, amongst the plethora of the second

and third and fourth rate, shouting out at you and besieging your

attention on every stall? It is no more possible to give you entire

guidance towards this than to give complete advice on any other problem

of life; your own nature must be your guide, choosing the good and

refusing the evil in the degree in which itself is good or evil. But one

may name some landmarks, set up some guide-posts, and the best of all

guidance surely is not that of a guide-post, but that of a guide, a

kindly hand of one who knows the way, to take your hand.

Do you ask for such a guide? A man of our own day, in full view of all

its questions from the loftiest to the least, and heart and soul engaged

in them, with deep and sympathetic wisdom born of his own companionship

with all the great thoughts of the ages? One surely need not hesitate a

moment in naming as the one for our special needs the writer we have

just quoted.

Scattered up and down the whole of his works is constant reference to

and commentary upon the great themes of all ages, the great creeds of

all peoples.

"Queen of the Air," "Aratra Pentelici," "Ariadne Florentina," "The

Mornings in Florence," "St. Mark's Rest," "The Oxford Inaugural

Lectures," "The Bible of Amiens," "Fors Clavigera."

With these as portals you can enter by easy steps into the whole

universe of great things: the divine myth and symbolism of the old pagan

world (as we call it) and of more recent Christendom; all the makers of

ancient Greece and Italy and of our own England; worship and kingship

and leadership, and the high thought and noble deed of all times. And

clustering in groups round these centres is the world of books. All

Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, Sacred History; Homer, Plato, Virgil, the

Bible, and the Breviary. The great doctors and saints, kings and heroes,

poets and painters, Gerome and Dominic and Francis; St. Louis and

Coeur-de-Lion; Dante, St. Jerome, Chaucer, and Froissart; Botticelli,

Giotto, Angelico; the "Golden Legend"; and many another ancient or

modern legend and story or passage from the history of some great and

splendid life, or illuminating hint upon the beauties of liturgy and

symbolism. They, and a hundred other things, are all gathered up and

introduced to us in Ruskin's books; and we are shown them from the exact

standpoint from which they are most likely to appeal to us, and be of

use. There never was a great world made so easy and pleasant of entrance

for the adventuring traveller; you have only to enter and take

possession.

Do you incline towards myth and symbolism and allegory--the expression

of abstract thought by beautiful figures? Read the myths of Greece

expounded to you in their exquisite spirituality in the "Queen of the

Air." Or is your bent devotion and the devout life, expressed in

thrilling story and gorgeous colour? Read, say, the life of St.

Catherine or of St. George in the "Golden Legend." Or are you in love,

and would express its spring-time beauty? Translate into your own native

language of form and colour "The Romaunt of the Rose."

For the great safeguard and guide in the perilous forest of fancy is to

find enough interest in the actual facts of some history or the

qualities of some heroic character, whether real or fabled, round which

at first you may group your thought and allegory. Listen to _them_, and

try to formulate and illustrate _their_ meaning, not to announce your

own. Do not set puzzles, or set things that will be puzzling, without

the highest and deepest reasons and the apostleship urgently laid upon

you so to do--but let your allegory surround some definite subject, so

that men in general can see it and say, "Yes, that is so and so," and go

away satisfied rather than puzzled and affronted; leaving the inner few

for whom you really speak, the hearts that, you hope, are waiting for

your message, to find it out (and you need have no fear that they will

do so), and to say, "Yes, that _means_ so and so, and it is a good

thought."

For, remember always that, even if you conceive that you have a mission

laid upon you to declare Truth, it is most sternly conditioned by an

obligation, as binding as itself and of as high authority, to set forth

Beauty: the holiness of beauty equally with the beauty of holiness. No

amount of good intent can make up for lack of skill; it is your business

to know your business. Youth always would begin with allegory, but the

ambition of the good intention is generally in exactly the reverse

proportion to the ability to carry it out in expression. But the true

allegory that appeals to all is the presentment of noble natures and of

noble deeds. Where, for most people at any rate, is the "allegory" in

the Theseus or the Venus of Milo? Yet is not the whole race of man the

better for them?

Work, therefore, quietly and continually at the great themes ready set

for you in the story of the past and "understanded of the people," while

you are patiently strengthening and maturing your powers of art in

safety, sheltered from yourself, and sheltered from the condemnation due

to the too presumptuous assumption of apostleship. For it is one thing

to stand forth and say, "_I_ have a message to deliver to the world,"

and quite another to say, "_There is_ such a message, and it has fallen

to me to be its mouthpiece; woe is me, because I am a man of unclean

lips." It is needless, therefore--nay, it is harmful--to be always

breaking your heart against tasks beyond your strength. Work in some

little province; get foothold and grow outwards from it; go on from

weakness to strength, and then from strength to the stronger, doing the

things you _can_ do while you practise towards the things you hope to

do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to

try your own individual battle in the great world of thought and

feeling; till, mature in strength equal to the portrayal of great

natures, the Angels of God as shown forth by you may be recognised as

indeed Spirit, and His Ministers as flaming Fire.

There is even yet one last word, and that is, in all the _minor_

symbolism surrounding your subjects, to observe a due proportion. For

you may easily be tempted to allow some beautiful little fancy, not

essential to the subject, to find expression in a form or symbol that

will thrust itself unduly on the attention, and will only puzzle and

distract.

Never let little things come first, and never let them be allowed at all

to the damage, or impairing, or obscuring of the simplicity and dignity

of the great things; remembering always that the first function of a

window is to have stately and seemly figures in beautiful glass, and not

to arrest or distract the attention of the spectator with puzzles. Given

the great themes adequately expressed, the little fancies may then

cluster round them and will be carried lightly, as the victor wears his

wreath; while, on the other hand, if these be lacking no amount of

symbolism or attribute will supply their place. "_Cucullus non facit

monachum_," as the old proverb says--"It is not the hood that makes the

monk," but the ascetic face you depict within it. Indeed, rather beware

of trusting even to the ordinary, well-recognised symbols in common use,

and being misled by them to think you have done something you have not

done; and rather withhold these until the other be made sure. Get your

figures dignified and your faces beautiful; show the majesty or the

sanctity that you are aiming at in these alone, and your saint will be

recognised as saintly without his halo of glory, and your angel as

angelic without his tongue of flame.

* * * * *

In my own practice, when drawing from the life, I make a great point of

keeping back all these ornaments and symbols of attribute, until I feel

that my figure alone expresses itself fully, as far as my powers go,

without them. No ornament upon the robe, or the crosier, or the sword;

above all, no circle round the head, until--the figure standing out at

last and seeming to represent, as near as may be, the true pastor or

warrior it claims to represent--the moment arrives when I say, "Yes, I

have done all I can,--_now_ he may have his nimbus!"

[3]

"how tastes of salt

The bread of others, and how is hard the passage

To go down and to go up by other's stairs."

--_Paradise,_ xvii. 58.

[4] Coningsby, Book iii. ch. i.

[5] "Sesame and Lilies," Lecture 1.

CHAPTER XIX

Of General Conduct and Procedure--Amount of Legitimate

Assistance--The Ordinary Practice--The Great Rule--The Second Great

Rule--Four Things to Observe--Art _v._ Routine--The Truth of the

Case--The Penalty of Virtue in the Matter--The Compensating

Privilege--Practical Applications--An Economy of Time in the

Studio--Industry--Work "To Order"--Clients and Patrons--And

Requests Reasonable and Unreasonable--The Chief Difficulty the

Chief Opportunity--But ascertain all Conditions before starting

Work--Business Habits--Order--Accuracy--Setting out Cartoon

Forms--An Artist must Dream--But Wake--Three Plain Rules.

Having now described, as well as I can, the whole of your equipment--of

hand, and head, and heart--your mental and technical weapons for the

practice of stained-glass, there now follow a few simple hints to guide

you in the use of them; how best to dispose your forces, and on what to

employ them. This must be a very broken and fragmentary chapter, full of

little everyday matters, very different to the high themes we have just

been trying to discuss--and relating chiefly to your conduct of the

thing as a business, and your relationships with the interests that

surround you; modes of procedure, business hints, practical matters. I

am sorry, just as you were beginning (I hope) to be warmed to the

subject, and fired with the high ambitions that it suggests, to take and

toss you into the cold world of matter-of-fact things; but that is life,

and we have to face it. Open the door into the cold air and let us bang

at it straight away!

Now there is one great and plain question that contains all the rest;

you do not see it now, but you will find it facing you before you have

gone very far. The great question, "Must I do it all myself, or may I

train pupils and assistants?"

Let us first amplify the question and get it fairly and fully stated.

Then we shall have a better chance of being able to answer it wisely.

I have described or implied elsewhere the usual practice in the matter

amongst those who produce stained-glass on a large scale. In great

establishments the work is divided up into branches: designers,

cartoonists, painters, cutters, lead workers, kiln-men: none of whom, as

a rule, know any branch of the work except their own.

Obviously one of the principal contentions of this book is against the

idea that such division, as practised, is an ideal method.

On the other hand, you will gather that the writer himself uses the

service of assistants.

While in the plates at the end are examples of glass where everything

has been done by the artists themselves (Plates I., II., III., IV.,

VII.).