Last Saturday I went to a day class in stained glass appliqué – my project was a little ambitious and this is as far as I got
I went back today to complete the task
Here it is all cut and stuck. You may notice that a few pieces have changed from the picture above. During the week away I had concerns about some of the colours and swapped a few this morning.
The piece has now been grouted and has come home with me. I can take it back next week for a simple finishing edge and the hooks, so I can hang it. So for now it is simply standing in my window!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Pseu: if I may be so bold, you are a woman of considerable and diverse talents.
Christopher: flattery may get you anywhere….
That looks very good, Pseu. Maybe you start a business 🙂
I need to refine the skills first, Four-eyed EG!
Pseu: flattery is not one of my few talents. I simply state what’s on my mind.
thank you, Christopher 🙂
Very cool, Pseu – portraits next?
Glass portraits?
Sorry about the size 😦
Is this one of yours and is it glass or mosaic?
I realise that they wouldn’t let you loose on good quality glass to learn technique and probably were using up scraps from other projects but I think it unfortunate that they have let you use glass of differing thickness and texture.
Actually I think you have made an excellent job of it if that is your first go ever. It is the technique I dislike not your effort.
As with most things it rather depends on how much they charged you for the class as to whether is was value for money. If you enjoyed doing it perhaps you would consider learning how to make the real thing.
If I remember correctly there was some farm West of Oxford that let out their stables to artisans, one of which was a stained glass artist in those days who taught classes. Many years ago but I expect the place is still there all the artists were of a very high standard and only sold their own work.
Doing craft things myself I appreciate that I do have very high standards and these days I can’t really be bothered to try new things any more. My spinning keeps me busy enough and I am very very selective what I enter in the County Show. (This year its nothing I’m afraid, not enough time!) But, if you don’t try things you never find out if you like doing it or have any aptitude. I once took a class in pottery, went a couple of times and then did a runner. I positively hated the feel of wet squishy clay between my fingers, it offended me on every level and yet I had quite fancied doing the course initially. You never can tell until you try it yourself!
PS I preferred your first design, the more aberrant use of colour and shape showed much more spontaneity. You ended up playing it safe with a commensurate loss of interest.
All top quality glass, Christina and I chose the textured and different depths as I like the effect. I enjoyed the cutting process, but it is harder with textured glass (you have to cut on the back) and However my technique needs improvement. This course has opened my eyes to the different skills needed and I’d love to do more.
Not one of mine, Pseu, just an example, I have a few in the shed in Cyprus – nowhere to put them. The ex doesn’t like them very much and I can’t cart them around all over the place with me. I don’t know how this one was done, but I’m more of a technical sort than an artist, so I superglued them together and sandwiched the result between two sheets of clear glass 🙂
I find that the texture rather detracts from those splendid jewel tones that glass has. It seems to make it too busy. Sort of gilding the lily. Have you ever seen Marc Chagall’s work in Rheims Cathedral?
No I haven’t, Christina.
Suggest you research him for pictorial images on the internet. He was renowned for his use of colour, you may find it interesting. He designed quite a bit in stained glass.
Only piece in the UK is in Tudeley Church, near Tonbridge, unfortunately not near you.
I had a look at the images for Marc Chagall’s work, but most of it does not appeal to me.
I rather like the work of Sarianne Duri
http://www.captured-light.co.uk/index.html
CO: the Chagall images are interesting.
Chris His use of colour in both painting and all his design work was acknowledged to be seminal in the twentieth century. He was a Russian Jew that lived in France who was fortunately given safe haven and saved by the USA in WWII.
He returned to France after the war.
pseu, I just looked at her galleries. Actually I rather think she has been influenced by several phases of his work, the limited colour botanics look very similar in style to his early painting.
CO: yes, I am familiar with Chagall’s work. He was also one of the more prolific painters, hence the greater availability of his works. There was a Russian restaurant a few blocks from my old flat in San Francisco that had a few of his original paintings. Not that I ever went, it was frequently closed for “special events” and the Russian mafia was known to favour it. They often had their doors open and one could see through the glass.
How interesting chris, there is very little of his work that I know of in the UK, to my knowledge he never went there. The church in Kent was a memorial commission. I am particularly fond of the Cathedral in Rheims and have always gone out of my way to see it. So very interesting to see modern glass in a mediaeval buiding, whereas I particularly dislike Coventry, modern glass in a modern building, totally uninspiringly hideous and can’t imagine why they bothered!
PS chris, where are you now? Still in California or on your way North?
CO: Matisse designed a chapel in southern France. It was also interesting, but not as good as Chagall’s glass work. I suspect it’s how Chagall handled it. He experimented with colour, he managed to make things interesting without making them subject to fads. The problem with the building in Coventry its architecture was only a fad at the time, hence the fact that it’s now quite dated.
I’m still in eastern California and will be for a few more weeks, in mid-August I will fly off to Minnesota.
The stained glass windows created by Chagall for the St Stephan church in Mainz are amazing, filling the church with blue light. They are a gesture of reconciliation after the war.
Christopher, the design of cathedrals in the mediæval period was a fad too! But time has given them the advantage of familiarity and therefore ‘quality’.
The thought of Christina at a pottery class made me think of this.
Janus: by “Mediaeval” I assume you mean Gothic?
Gothic church architecture was well thought-out, it was
designed for a higher purpose. If nothing else but to inspire faith,
to creat an isand of tranquility in an other wise miserable world.
Romanesque architecture, while plain, was practical. For a time people
were somewhat preoccupied with other things. At the end they were pre-occupied
with the notion that it was not worth designing anything new as the world was going to end
any day.
Modern architecture, unlike the previous two, was and is wholey without merit. It’s a nihilistic exercise in
the cold-blooded murder of aesthetics. It was designed, like Romanesque architecture, be simple and clean — but fell flat on its face in execution. It was thought to be inspiring, but merely inspires revulsions. Betjeman’s voice is in my mind describing it now!
Chris your comment above says it far better than I could.
We should also remember that the great mediaeval cathedrals were the space shuttles or CERNs of their time – the cutting edge of technology. My personal favourite is Ely. Firstly, the damn great thing took so long to build you can actually see the progression from saxon to romanesque to gothic in the fabric of the building. Next, that great, central lantern looms massively and thunderously over the fens for miles around, reminding the serfs of their place at the bottom of society, and the nobles that they too are mortal – but when you get inside, it seems to float overhead as if weightless. Then there’s the Lady Chapel – light captured in a net of fantastic stone tracery. It is such a beautiful piece of work that the first time I walked into it and looked around, it actually brought tears to my eyes.
Bravo have you ever been able to work out how far away you can see Ely? It has to be 50 miles or so, or seemingly! It dominates the landscape for ever on those fens. The only other that seems to be similar in domination is Salisbury. I spent a summer in Blandford Forum and it never seemed to be out of sight wherever you went.
One of my favourites is St Davids. It is rather long and thin and took 200 years plus to build. Well, the first end started sinking whilst it was progressing and rather than go back and fix it they built the rest on the piss so it would stand up! None of the pillars and columns are vertical they are at the craziest angles and the floors all run downhill quite markedly. Not a place to go after a few drinks as it gives a horrible sensation of seasickness!! I used to go a lot to sung matins and a lot of concerts are held there. I have learnt to sit in one of the apses as in the main body of the nave chunks of rock are prone to fall out of the roof!
We leave those seats for the godly and the English!
Spousal unit has been there a few times and was quite gobsmacked to see pebbles descending, I don’t think elf and safety have ever got to wild west Wales.
Quite amusing until you are there when it collapses! But I would have thought any caught in such would have an immediate remission of all sins and one of the best seats in the house thereafter! (Without sponsorship!)