Keeper of the Central Flame SCA event April 2018

Hi All:  I am back. I took about a 2 year break and I miss "arting"!!!

  I plan to do an entry in the Keeper of the Central Flame SCA event in April 2018.  I am narrowing in on a 12th century English cathedral window...done in scale of course...I do not have that big a workspace! Stay tuned!

Feb 20 2018 -My friend Suniffa gave me some Black Maul Willow - a variety of Salix triandra - I am going to research how to make my own charcoal with it for my "cartoons/drawings" that I will doing when I design this piece.  From my research I need to dry it/peel it and then put in a metal airtight container and put into a fire.   I need to wait for a friend to burn some brush in a couple of weeks to see if this works.   I did read that if you do not let it cool down before you open the air tight container...  it will spontaneously combust....

Over the next few days I will do research on 12th century church windows to understand the level of design.  Most church windows were done to tell the stories of the bible.  I have taken a poll of my friends on which Bible stories have stayed with them through the years.  The tie for first is Noah's Ark and Fishes/Loaves,   I also had someone say the "burning bush"  which I kind of like....as I think that this would be a cool window panel to make.

April 4 2018 - alot of time has gone by including 2 blizzards...losing my power for several days...injuries due to shoveling snow....but as of two weekends ago I started working on my project.

The Concept of the Window

I have been researching the 12th century time frame that I am interested in.  From the sources that I have found this time frame falls into the Romanesque Architecture (c.800-1200).  However in trying to research what windows would actually look like in this time frame I have not been able to find much info yet other than actual pictures.

Therefore I have decided to base my design from two windows that I have found.  The first one is from Augsburg Cathedral founded in the 11th century and St Mary's in Brabourne, Kent.

In Augsburg Cathedral there are 2 stained glass pcs - the Prophet Daniel and King David - circa after 1132 and the sizes are 222 X 54, 224x 53cm basically 87" by 22".










St Mary's Cathedral's window is very geometric in design

 This surprised me as I had always read the early church windows were based on religious themes.  I had not seen any examples of a geometric designs.  Since I have found the one above, I have found another example

The Grisalille panel at Ely - c 1200-1250 [from Vidimus.org]

Therefore I decided to incorporate, religion and geometric concepts into my design and then put in 4 half circles of religious scenes

I decided to scale the window size down to 22" by 10".  I kept the rounded top.  Then I reviewed the windows at Canterbury Cathedral from Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral by M A Michael.  I ended up only talking one of my friend's suggestions on the religious themes -Noah.

My first design incorporated the windows of Adam (page 35). I cut it to be a half round 9" circle.

The Dove (Noah) page 69

Destruction of Sodom (page 60)

Jonah Swallowed by the Whale (page 95)

I drew up the overall window in what is called a "cartoon" This is basically the concept drawing that you use to actually make the window.  First I put the color pictures against the background of the geometric pattern:

After reviewing this and working out how to translate the pictures into drawings that would work for the size of the half circles....I decided that Adam would not work.

After looking some more in the Canterbury book,I found Samson sleeping with Delilah in Gaza (page 94)

Then I took Adam out of the design and put in a Samson

As you can see, the colored pictures do not fit the 9" half circles of my design.  So I then sized up and modified the designs to fit and did basic outlines of the pieces of glass that would need to be cut.

Samson is in the upper left...Sodom upper right...Dove/Noah lower left...Jonah lower right

Close up the circles look like this:

That's all for now...more tomorrow.....

April 5 2018

I have decided to do the half circles separately and then put them into the main window.   They would have used board that had been painted with white wash from chalk.  And then they would have used charcoal to draw the design.  That is impractical to do on the half circles as there is from 40 to over 60 pcs on each of the separate designs.  In the middle ages they would have been working on a large area.  The tiny area that I am working with would be very prone to smudging and would not be practical so I am going to use my paper and ink "cartoon" to work up the 4pcs.

The first step do doing the actual glasswork is to pick out the various glass that you want to use.  Modern glass workers have an incredible selection of glass. Obviously, it was more limited in the medieval times. Their glass was solid colors and their were imperfections in it.  Therefore I have picked glass with imperfections. I have picked a white that has irregular coloring in it, clear with bubbles, and other colors with "lines" or "roughness" on them.  I will do  a section on the different types of glass that I used further on.

I have decided to start with the Destruction of Sodom. Below is the colored copy from the Canterbury book and then below is my cartoon/diagram of what pcs should be cut

 And literally you cut them out:

I use rubber cement to attach the paper to the glass.   In order to hold it so that a glass cutter can be used to cut the glass. 

 In Medieval times they would have used a very hot metal point and used that to break the "seal" on the glass which then makes it break in the direction of the cut. picture from www.khanacadamy.org





 I can not get a metal point hot enough to cut glass as I don't have a place to have an open fire.  I use a modern glass cutter, shaped to my hand because of a medical situation that makes it sometime difficult for me to cut glass.

 In order to actually break the glass you can use the edge of a table and tap it or you can use a pair of running  pliers as shown below with the red handles.

 Once you have rough cut the glass, you use grozer to chip away at the edges

This is a picture of a medieval style grozer from www.3dstaineglass.blogspot.com

 picture from www.3dstainedglass.blogspot.com

I can not find one of these but hope that maybe one of my metal working friends might be willing to try out making one.  In the meantime, I use a modern grozer

Once you have the glass cut out you need to decide if you need to paint them.  I tend to paint black lines on my pieces and also shade them

The head of Lot's Wife cut and grozed


Last weekend I painted with black paint the pieces to Sodom.  I will get into technique more in my next posting

This is what the pieces of Lot's wife looked like painted with the black tracing paint and fired in my kiln

I did the buildings and also did the brown shading which I will get into in my next posting.

The pieces are all laid out except for a couple that I am not painting.  Ready to put lead came around the pcs...more to come!