Chapter 34

A STRING OF BEADS

Is there anything more to say?

A whole world-full, of course; for every single thing is a part of all things. But I have said most of my say; and I could now wish that you were here that you might ask me aught else you want.

A few threads remain that might be gathered up--parting words, hints that cannot be classified. I must string them together like a row of beads; big and little mixed; we will try to get the big ones more or less in the middle if we can.

Grow everything from seed.

All seeds that are living (and therefore worth growing) have the power in them to grow.

But so many people miss the fact that, on the other hand, _nothing else_ will grow; and that it is useless in art to transplant full-grown trees.

This is the key to great and little miseries, great and little mistakes.

Were you sorry to be on the lowest step of the ladder? Be glad; for all your hopes of climbing are in that.

And this applies in all things, from conditions of success and methods of "getting work" up to the highest questions of art and the "steps to Parnassus," by which are reached the very loftiest of ideals.

I must not linger over the former of these two things or do more than sum it up in the advice, to take anything you can get, and to be glad, not sorry, if it is small and comes to you but slowly. Simple things, and little things, and many things, are more needed in the arts today than complex things and great and isolated achievements. If you have nothing to do for others, do some little thing for yourself: it is a seed, presently it will send out a shoot of your first "commission," and that will probably lead to two others, or to a larger one; but pray to be led by small steps; and make sure of firm footing as you go, for there is such a thing as trying to take a _leap_ on the ladder, and leaping off it.

So much for the seed of success.

The seed of craftsmanship I have tried to describe in this book.

The seed of ornament and design, it is impossible to treat of here; it would require as large a book as this to itself: but I will hazard the devotion of a page each to the A and the B of my own A B C of the subject as I try to teach it to my pupils, and put them before you without comment, hoping they may be of some slight use. (See figs. 72 and 73.)

But though I said that nothing will grow but seed, it does not, of course, follow that every seed will grow, or, if it does, that you yourself will reap the exact harvest you expect, or even recognise it in its fruitage as the growth of what you have sown. Expect to give much for little, to lose sight of the bread cast on the waters, not even sure that you will know it again even if you find it after many days. You never know, and therefore do not count your scalps too carefully or try to number your Israel and Judah. Neither, on the other hand, allow your seed to be forced by the hothouse of advertising or business pushing, or anything which will distract or distort that quiet gaze upon the work by which you love it for its own sake, and judge it on its merits; all such sidelights are misleading, since you do not know whether it is intended that this or that shall prosper or both be alike good.

How many a man one sees, earnest and sincere at starting, led aside off the track by the false lights of publicity and a first success. Art is peace. Do things because you love them. If purple is your favourite colour, put purple in your window; if green, green; if yellow, yellow. Flowers and leaves and buds because you love them. Glass because you love it. It is not that you are to despise either fame or wealth. Honestly acquired both are good. But you must bear in mind that the pursuit of these separately by any other means than perfecting your work is a thing requiring great outlay of TIME, and you cannot afford to withdraw any time from your work in order to acquire them.

In these days and in our huge cities there are so many avenues open to celebrity, through Society, the Press, Exhibition, and so forth, that a man once led to spend time on them is in danger of finding half his working life run away with by them before he is aware, while even if they are successful the success won by them is a poor thing compared to that which might have been earned by the work which was sacrificed for them. It becomes almost a profession in itself to keep oneself notorious.

To spend large slices out of one's time in the mere putting forward of one's work, _showing_ it apart from _doing_ it, necessary as this sometimes is, is a thing to be done grudgingly; still more so should one grudge to be called from one's work here, there, and everywhere by the social claims which crowd round the position of a public man.

* * * * *

There are strenuous things enough for you in the work itself without wasting your strength on these. We will speak of them presently; but a word first upon originality.

Don't _strive_ to be original; no one ever got Heaven's gift of invention by saying, "I must have it, and since I don't feel it I must assume it and pretend it;" follow rather your master patiently and lovingly for a long time; give and take, echo his habits as Botticelli echoed Filippo Lippi's, but improve upon them; add something to them if you can, as he also did, and pass then on, as he also did, to the _little_ Filippo--Filippino--making him a truer and sweeter heart than his father, out of the well of truth and sweetness with which Botticelli's own heart was brimming. Do this, but at the same time expect with happy patience, as a boy longs for his manhood, yet does not try to hasten it and does not pretend to forestall it, the time when some fresh idea in imagination, some fresh method in design, some fresh process in craftsmanship, will come to you as a reward of patient working--and come by accident, as all such things do, lest you should think it your own and miss the joy of knowing that it is not yours but Heaven's.

And when this comes, guard it and mature it carefully. Do not throw it out too lavishly broadcast with the ostentation of a generous genius having gifts to spare. Share it with proved and worthy friends, when they notice it and ask you about it, but in the meanwhile develop and cultivate it as a gardener does a tree. And this leads me to the most important point of all--namely, the value, the all-sufficing value, of _one_ new step on the road of Beauty. If such is really granted you, consider it as enough for your lifetime. One such thing in the history of the arts has generally been enough for a century; how much more, then, for a generation.

For indeed there is only one rule for fine work in art, that you should put your whole strength, all the powers of mind and body into every touch. Nothing less will do than that. You must face it in drawing from the life. Try it in its acutest form, not from the posed, professional model, who will sit like a stone; try it with children, two years old or so; the despair of it, the exhaustion: and then, in a flash, when you thought you had really done somewhat, a still more captivating, fascinating gesture, which makes all you have done look like lead. Can you screw your exhaustion up _again,_ sacrifice all you have done, and face the labour of wrestling with the new idea? And if you do? You are sick with doubt between the new and the old. You ask your friends; you probably choose wrong; your judgment is clouded by the fatigue of your previous toil.

But you have gained strength. That is the real point of the thing. It is not what you have done in this instance, but what you have become in doing it. Next time, fresh and strong, you will dash the beautiful sudden thought upon the paper and leave it, happy to make others happy, but only through the pains you took before, which are a small price to pay for the joy of the strength you have gained.

This is the rule of great work. Puzzle and hesitation and compromise can only occur because you have left some factor of the problem out of count, and this should never be. Your business is to take all into account and to sacrifice everything, however fascinating and tempting it may be in itself, if it does not fit in as part of an harmonious _whole_. Remember in this case, when loth to make such sacrifice, the old saying that "there's as good fish in the sea as ever came out." Brace yourself to try for something still better. Recast your composition. If it is defective, the defect all comes from some want of strenuousness as you went along. It is like getting a bit of your figure out of drawing because your eye only measured some portion of it with one or two portions of the rest and not with the whole figure and attitude. Every student knows the feeling. So in your composition: you may get impossible levels, impossible relations between the subject and the surrounding canopy: perhaps one coming in front of the other at one point and the reverse at another point. You drew the thing dreamily: you were not alert enough. And now you must waste what you had got to love, because though it's so pretty it is not fitting.

But sometimes it will happen that some line of your composition is thus hacked off by no fault of yours, by some mismeasurement of a bar by your builder, or some change of mind or whim of your client, who "likes it all but"---- (some vital feature). As we have said, this is not quite a fair demand to be made upon the artist, but it will sometimes occur, whatever we do. Pull yourself together, and, before you stand out about it and refuse to change, consider. Try the modification, and try it in such an aroused and angry spirit as shall flame out against the difficulty with force and heat. Let the whole thing be as fuel of fire, and the reward will be given. The chief difficulty may become--it is more than an even chance that it does become--the chief glory, and that the composition will be like the new-born Phoenix, sprung from the ashes of the old and thrice as fair.

Then also strike while the iron is hot, and work while you're warm to it. When you have done the main figure-study and slain its difficulty you feel braced up, your mind clear, and you see your way to link it in with the surroundings. Will you let it all get cold because it is toward evening and you are physically tired, when another hour would set the whole problem right for next day's work; now, while you are warm, while the beauty of the model you have drawn from is still glowing in you with a thousand suggestions and possibilities? You will do in another hour now what would take you days to do when the fire has died down--if you ever do it at all.

It is after a day's work such as this that one feels the true delight of the balm of Nature. For conquered difficulty brings new insight through the feeling of new power; and new beauties are seen because they are felt to be attainable, and by virtue of the assurance that one has got distinctly a step nearer to the veil that hides the inner heart of things which is our destined home.

It is after work like this, feeling the stirrings of some real strength within you, promising power to deal with nature's secrets by-and-by, that you see as never before the beauty of things.

The keen eyes that have been so busy turn gratefully to the silver of the sky with the grey, quiet trees against it and the watery gleam of sunset like pale gold, low down behind the boughs, where the robin, half seen, is flitting from place to place, choosing his rest and twittering his good-night; and you think with good hope of your life that is coming, and of all your aspirations and your dreams. And in the stillness and the coolness and the peace you can dwell with confidence upon the thought of all the Unknown that is moving onward towards you, as the glow which is fading renews itself day by day in the East, bringing the daily task with it.

You feel that you are able to meet it, and that all is well; that there are quiet and good things in store, and that this constant renewal of the glories of day and night, this constant procession of morning and evening as the world rolls round, has become almost a special possession to you, to which only those who pay the price have entrance, an inheritance of your own as a reward of your endeavour and acquired power, and leading to some purposed end that will be peace.

* * * * *

Stained-glass, stained-glass, stained-glass! At night in the lofty church windows the bits glow and gloom and talk to one another in their places; and the pictured angels and saints look down, peopling the empty aisles and companioning the lamp of the sanctuary.

* * * * *

The beads worth threading seem about all threaded now, and the book appears to be done. Thus we have gone on then, making it as it came to hand, blundering, as it seems to me, on the borders of half a dozen literary or illiterate styles, the pen not being the tool of our proper craft; but on the whole saying somehow what we meant to say: laughing when we felt amused, and being serious when the subject seemed so, our object being indeed to make workers in stained-glass and not a book about it. Is it worth while to try and put a little clasp to our string of beads and tie all together?

There was a little boy (was he six or seven or eight?), and his seat on Sunday was opposite the door in the fourteenth-century chancel of the little Norman country church. There the great, tall windows hung in the air around him, and he used to stare up at them with goggle-eyes in the way that used to earn him household names, wondering which he liked best. And for months one would be the favourite, and for months another would supplant it; his fancy would change, and now he liked this--now that. Only the stone tracery-bars, for there was no stained-glass to spoil them. The broad, plain flagstones of the floor spread round him in cool, white spaces, in loved unevenness, honoured by the foot-tracks which had worn the stone into little valleys from the door and through the narrow, Norman chancel-arch up towards the altar rails, telling of generations of feet, long since at rest, that had carried simple lives to seek the place as the place of their help or peace.

Plain rush-plaited hassocks and little brass sconces where, on lenten nights, in the unwarmed church, glimmered the few candles that lit the devotion of the strong, rough sons of the glebe, hedgers and ditchers, who came there after daily labour to spell out simple prayer and praise. But it was best on the summer Sunday mornings, when the great spaces of blue, and the towering white clouds looked down through the diamond panes; and the iron-studded door, with the wonderful big key, which his hands were not yet strong enough to turn, stood wide open; and outside, amongst the deep grass that grew upon the graves, he could see the tortoise-shell butterflies sunning themselves upon the dandelions. Then it was that he used to think the outside the best, and fancy (with perfect truth, as I believe) that angels must be looking in, just as much as he was looking out, and gazing down, grave-eyed, upon the little people inside, as he himself used to watch the red ants busy in their tiny mounds upon the grass plot or the gravel path; and he wondered sometimes whether the outside or the inside was "God's House" most: the place where he was sitting, with rough, simple things about him that the village carpenter or mason or blacksmith had made, or the beautiful glowing world outside. And as he thought, with the grave mind of a child, about these things, he came to fancy that the eyes that looked out through the silver diamond-panes which kept out the wind and rain, mattered less than the eyes that looked in from the other side where basked the butterflies and flowers and all the living things he so loved; awful eyes that were at home where hung the sun himself in his distances and the stars in the great star-spaces; where Orion and the Pleiades glittered in the winter nights, where "Mazzaroth was brought forth in his season," and where through the purple skies of summer evening was laid out overhead the assigned path along which moved Arcturus with his sons.

APPENDIX I

SOME SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE STUDY OF OLD GLASS

Every one who wants to study glass should go to York Minster. Go to the extreme west end, the first two windows are of plain quarries most prettily leaded, and showing how pleasant "plain-glazing" may be, with silvery glass and a child-like enjoyment of simple patterning, unconscious of "high art." But look at the second window on the north side. What do you see? You see a yellow shield? Exactly. Every one who looks at that window as he passes at a quick walk must come away remembering that he had seen a yellow shield. But stop and look at it. Don't you _like_ it--_I_ do! Why?--well, because it happens to be by good luck just _right_, and it is a very good lesson of the degree in which beauty in glass depends on juxtaposition. I had thought of it as a particularly beautiful bit of glass in quality and colour--but not at all! it is textureless and rather crude. I had thought of it as old--not at all: it is probably eighteenth-century. But look what it happens to be set in--the mixture of agate, silver, greenish and black quarries. Imagine it by itself without the dull citron crocketting and pale yellow-stain "sun" and "shafting" of the panel below--without the black and yellow escutcheon in the light to its right hand--even without the cutting up and breaking with black lead lines of its own upper half. In short, you could have it so placed that you would like it no better, that it would _be_ no better, than the bit of "builder's glazing" in the top quatrefoil of the next window, which looks like, and I fancy is, of almost the very same glass, but clumsily mixed, and, fortunately, _dated_ for our instruction, 1779.

I do not know any place where you can get more study of certain properties of glass than in the city of York. The cathedral alone is a mine of wealth. The nave windows are near enough to see all necessary detail. There is something of every period. And with regard to the nave and clerestory windows, they have been so mauled and re-leaded that you need not be in the least afraid of admiring the wrong thing or passing by the right. You can be quite frank and simple about it all. For instance, my own favourite window is the fifth from the west on the south side. The old restorer has coolly slipped down one whole panel below its proper level in a shower of rose-leaves (which were really, I believe, originally a pavement), and, frankly, I don't know (and don't care) whether they are part of his work in the late eighteenth century or the original glass of the late fourteenth. I rather incline to think that they came out of some other window and are bits of fifteenth-century glass. The same with the chequered shield of Vernon in the other light. I daresay it is a bit of builder's glazing--but isn't it jolly? And what do you think of the colour of the little central circle half-way up the middle light? Isn't it a flower? And look at the petal that's dropped from it on to the bar below! or the _whole_ of the left-hand light; well, or the middle light, or the right-hand light? If that's not colour I don't know what is. I doubt if it was any more beautiful when it was new, perhaps not so beautiful. Compare it, for example, with the window in the same wall (I think next to it on the west, which has been "restored"). The window exactly opposite seems one of the least retouched, and the least interesting; if you think the yellow canopies disagreeable in colour don't be ashamed to say so: they are not unbeautiful exactly, I think, but, personally, I could do with less of them. Yet I should not be surprised to be assured that they are all genuine fourteenth-century. In the north transept is the celebrated "Five Sisters," the most beautiful bit of thirteenth-century "grisaille" perhaps in existence. That is where we get our patterns for "kamptulicon" from; but we don't make kamptulicon quite like it. If you want a sample of "nineteenth-century thirteenth-century" work you have only to look over your left shoulder.

A similar glance to the right will show you "nineteenth-century fifteenth-century" work--and show it you in a curious and instructive transition stage--portions of the two right-hand windows of the five being old glass worked in with new, while the right-hand one of all is a little abbot who is nearly all old and has shrunk behind a tomb, wondering, as it seems to me, "how those fellows got in," and making up his mind whether he's going to stand being bullied by the new St. Peter. In the south transept opposite, all the five eastern windows are fifteenth-century, and some of them very well preserved, while those in the southern wall are modern. The great east window has a history of its own quite easily ascertainable on the spot and worthy of research and study. Then go into the north ambulatory, look at the third of the big windows. Well, the right-hand light; look at the bishop at the top in a dark red chasuble, note the bits of dull rose colour in the lower dress, the bit of blackish grey touching the pastoral staff just below the edge of the chasuble, look at the bits of sharp strong blue in the background. Now I believe these are all accidents--bits put in in releading; but when the choir is singing and you can pick out every separate note of the harmony as it comes down to you from each curve of the fretted roof, if you don't think this window goes with it and is music also, you must be wrong, I think, in eye or ear. But indeed this part of the church and all round the choir aisles on both sides is a perfect treasure-house of glass.

If you want an instance of what I said (p. 212) as to "added notes turning discord into harmony," look at the _patched_ east window of the south choir aisle. Mere jumble--probably no selection--yet how beautiful! like beds of flowers. Did you ever see a bed of flowers that was _not_ beautiful?--often and often, when the gardener had carefully selected the plants of his ribbon-bordering; but I would have you think of an old-fashioned cottage garden, with its roses and lilies and larkspur and snapdragon and marigolds--those are what windows should be like.

In addition to the minster, almost every church in the city has some interesting glass; several of them a great quantity, and some finer than any in the cathedral itself. And here I would give a hint. _Never pass a church or chapel of any sort or kind_, _old or new, without looking in._ You cannot tell what you may find.

And a second hint. Do not make written pencil notes regarding colour, either from glass or nature, for you'll never trouble to puzzle them out afterwards. Take your colour-box with you. The merest dot of tint on the paper will bring everything back to mind.

Space prevents our making here anything like a complete itinerary setting forth where glass may be studied; it must suffice to name a few centres, noting a few places in the same district which may be visited from them easily. I name only those I know myself, and of course the list is very slight.

YORK. And all churches in the city.

GLOUCESTER. Tewkesbury, Cirencester.

BIRMINGHAM. (For Burne-Jones glass.) Shrewsbury, Warwick, Tamworth, Malvern.

WELLS.

OXFORD. Much glass in the city, old and new. Fairford.

CAMBRIDGE. Much glass in the city, old and new.

CANTERBURY.

CHARTRES. (If there is still any left unrestored.) St. Pierre in the same town.

SENS.

TROYES. AUXERRE.

Of the last two I have only seen some copies. For glass by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Madox-Brown, consult their lives.

There are many well-known books on the subject of ancient glass, Winston, Westlake, &c., which give fuller details on this matter.

APPENDIX II

ON THE RESTORING OF ANCIENT WINDOWS

Let us realise what _is_ done.

And let us consider what _ought to be done_.

A window of ancient glass needs releading. The lead has decayed and the whole is loose and shaky. The ancient glass has worn very thin, pitted almost through like a worn-out thimble with little holes where the alkalis have worked their way out. It is as fragile and tender as an old oil-painting that needs to be taken off a rotten canvas and re-lined. If you examine a piece of old glass whose lead has had time to decay, you will find that the glass itself is often in an equally tender state. The painting would remain for years, probably for centuries yet, if untouched, just as dust, without any attachment at all, will hang on a vertical looking-glass. But if you scrape it, even only with the finger-nail, you will generally find that that is sufficient to bring much--perhaps most--of the painting off, while both sides of the glass are covered with a "patina" of age which is its chief glory in quality and colour, and which, or most of which, a wet handkerchief dipped in a little dust and rubbed smartly will remove.

In short, here is a work of art as beautiful and precious as a picture by Titian or Holbein, and probably, as being the chief glory of some stately cathedral, still more precious, which ought only to be trusted to the gentle hands of a cultivated and scientific artist, connoisseur, and expert. The glass should all be handled as if it were old filigree silver. If the lead is so perished that it is absolutely impossible to avoid taking the glass down, it should be received on the scaffold itself, straight from its place in the stone, between packing-boards lined with sheets of wadding--"cotton-wool"--attached to the boards with size or paste, and with, of course, the "fluffy" side outwards. These boards, section by section, should be finally corded or clamped ready for travelling _before being lowered from the scaffold_; if any pieces of the glass get detached they should be carefully packed in separate boxes, each labelled with a letter corresponding to one placed on the section as packed, so that there may be no chance of their place ever being lost, and when all is done the whole window will be ready to be gently lowered, securely "packed for removal," to the pavement below. The ideal thing now would be to hire a room and do the work on the spot; but if this is impossible on account of expense and the thing has to bear a journey, the sections, packed as above described, should be themselves packed, two or three together, as may be convenient, in an outer packing-case for travelling. It should be insured, for then a representative of the railway must attend to certify the packing, and also extra care will be taken in transit.

Arrived at the shop, the window should be laid out carefully on the bench and each bit re-leaded into its place, the very fragile pieces between two bits of thin sheet-glass.

Unless this last practice is adopted _throughout_, the ordinary process of cementing must be omitted and careful puttying substituted for it. While if it _is_ adopted the whole must be puttied _before_ cementing, otherwise the cement will run in between the various thicknesses of glass. It would be an expensive and tedious and rather thankless process, for the repairer's whole aim would be to hide from the spectator the fact that anything whatever had been done.

What does happen at present is this. A country clergyman, or, in the case of a cathedral, an architectural surveyor, neither of whom know by actual practice anything technically of stained-glass, hand the job over to some one representing a stained-glass establishment. This gentleman has studied stained-glass on paper, and knows as much about cutting or leading technically and by personal practice, as an architect does of masonry, or stone-carving--neither more nor less. That is to say, he has made sketch-books full of water-colour or pencil studies, and endless notes from old examples, and has never cut a bit of glass in his life, or leaded it.

Well, he assumes the responsibility, and the client reposes in the blissful confidence that all is well.

Is all well?

The work is placed in the charge of the manager, and through him it filters down as part of the ordinary, natural course of events into the glazing-shop. Here this precious and fragile work of art we have described is handed over to a number of ordinary working men to treat by the ordinary methods of their trade. They know perfectly well that nobody above them knows as much as they, or, indeed, anything at all of their craft. Division of labour has made them "glaziers," as it has made the gentlemen above stairs, who do the cartoons or the painting, "artists." These last know nothing of glazing, why should glaziers know anything of art? It is perfectly just reasoning; they do their very best, and what they do is this. They take out the old, tender glass, with the colour hardly clinging to it, and they put it into fresh leads, and then they solder up the joints. And, by way of a triumphant wind-up to a good, solid, English, common-sense job, with no art-nonsense or fads about it, they proceed to scrub the whole on both sides with stiff grass-brushes (ordinarily sold at the oil-shops for keeping back-kitchen sinks clean), using with them a composition mainly consisting of exactly the same materials with which a housemaid polishes the fender and fire-irons. That is a plain, simple, unvarnished statement of facts. You may find it difficult of belief, but this is what actually happens. This is what you are having done everywhere, guardians of our ancient buildings. You'll soon have all your old windows "quite as good as new." It's a merry world, isn't it?

APPENDIX III

Hints for the Curriculum of a Technical School for Stained-Glass--Examples for Painting--Examples of Drapery--Drawing from Nature--Ornamental Design.

_Examples for Painting._--I have already recommended for outline work the splendid reproductions of the Garter Plates at Windsor. It is more difficult to find equally good examples for _painting_; for if one had what one wished it would be photographed from ideal painted-glass or else from cartoons wisely prepared for glass-work. But, in the first case, if the photographs were from the best ancient glass--even supposing one could get them--they would be unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, because ancient glass, however well preserved, has lost or gained something by age which no skill can reproduce; and secondly, because however beautiful it is, all but the very latest (and therefore not the best) is immature in drawing. It is not wise to reproduce those errors. The things themselves look beautiful and sincere because the old worker drew as well as he could; but if we, to imitate them, draw less well than we can, we are imitating the _accidents_ of his production, and not the _method_ and _principle_ of it: the principle was to draw as well as he could, and we, if we wish to emulate old glass, must draw as well as _we_ can. For examples of Heads nothing can be better than photographs from Botticelli and other early Tuscan, and from the early Siennese painters. Also from Holbein, and chiefly from his drawings. There is a flatness and firmness of treatment in all these which is eminently suited to stained-glass work. Hands also may be studied from the same sources, for though Botticelli does not always draw hands with perfect mastery, yet he very often does, and the expression of them, as of his heads, is always dignified and full of sweetness and gentleness of feeling; and as soon as we have learnt our craft so as to copy these properly, the best thing is to draw hands and heads for ourselves.

_Examples of Drapery._--To me there is no drapery so beautiful and appropriate for stained-glass work in the whole world of art, ancient or modern, as that of Burne-Jones, and especially in his studies and drawings and cartoons for glass; and if these are not accessible, at least we may pose drapery as like it as we can, and draw it ourselves and copy it. But I would, at any rate, earnestly warn the student against the "crinkly-crankly" drapery imitated from Duerer and his school, which fills up the whole panel with wrinkles and "turnovers" (the linings of a robe which give an opportunity for changing the colour), and spreads out right and left and up and down till the poor bishop himself (and in nine cases out of ten it _is_ a bishop, so that he may be mitred and crosiered and pearl-bordered) becomes a mere peg to hang vestments on, and is made short and dumpy for that end.

There is a great temptation and a great danger here. This kind of work, where every inch of space is filled with ornament and glitter, and change and variety and richness, is indeed in many ways right and good for stained-glass; which is a broken-up thing; where large blank spaces are to be avoided, and where each little bit of glass should look "cared for" and thought of, as a piece of fine jewellery is put together in its setting; and if craftsmanship were everything, much might be said for these methods. There is indeed plenty of stained-glass of the kind more beautiful as _craftsmanship_ than anything since the Middle Ages, much more beautiful and cunning in workmanship than Burne-Jones, and yet which is little else but vestments and curtains and diaper--where there is no lesson taught, no subject dwelt on, no character studied or portrayed. If we wish it to be so--if we have nothing to teach or learn, if we wish to be let alone, to be soothed and lulled by mere sacred _trappings_, by pleasant colours and fine and delicate sheen and the glitter of silk and jewels--well and good, these things will serve; but if they fail to satisfy, go to St. Philip's, Birmingham, and see the solemnities and tragedies of Life and Death and Judgment, and all this will dwindle down into the mere upholstery and millinery that it is.

_Drawing from Nature._--There is a side of drawing practice almost wholly neglected in schools, which consists, not in training the eye and hand to correctly measure and outline spaces and forms, but in training the finger-ends with an H.B. pencil point at the end of them to illustrate texture and minute detail. It is necessary to look at things in a large way, but it is equally necessary to look at them in a small way; to be able to count the ribs on a blade of grass or a tiny cockle-shell, and to give them in pencil, each with its own light and shade. I find the whole key to this teaching to lie in one golden rule--_not to frighten or daunt the student with big tasks at first_. A single grain of wheat, not a whole ear of corn; some tiny seed, tiny shell; but whatever _is_ chosen, to be pursued with a needle-pointed pencil to the very verge of lens-work. I must yet again quote Ruskin. "You have noticed," he says,[9] "that all great sculptors, and most of the great painters of Florence, began by being goldsmiths. Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is so fruitful? Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work and mind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo learned his business by dashing or hitting at it?"

_Ornamental Design._--It is impossible here to enter into a description of any system of teaching ornament. At p. 294 I have given just as much as two pages can give of the seed from which such a thing may spring. In some of the collotypes from the finished glass the patterns on quarry or robe which spring from this seed may be traced--very imperfectly, but as well as the scale and the difficulties of photography and the absence of colour will allow.

What I find best, in commencing with any student, is to start four practices together, and keep them going together step by step, side by side, through the course, one evening for each, or some like division.

_Technical Work._--Cutting, glazing, &c.

_Painting Work._--By graduated examples, from simple outline up to a head of Botticelli.

_Ornament_, as described; and

_Drawing from Nature_, in the spirit and methods we have spoken of.

Moulding the whole into a system of composition and execution, tempered and governed as it goes along by judiciously chosen reading and reference to examples, ancient or modern.

[9] "Ariadne Florentina," p. 108.

NOTES ON THE COLLOTYPE PLATES

It is obvious that stained-glass cannot be adequately shown in book-illustration.

For instance, we cannot have either the scale of it or the colour--two rather vital exceptions. These collotypes are, therefore, put forth as mere diagrams for the use of students, to call their attention to certain definite points and questions of treatment, and no more pretending than if they were black-board drawings to give adequate pictures of what glass can be or should be.

This is one reason, too, for the omission of all attempt to reproduce ancient glass. It was felt that it should not be subjected to the indignity of such very imperfect representation, and especially as so many much larger books on the subject exist, where at least the _scale_ is not so ill-treated.

But, besides, if one once began illustrating old glass, one would immediately seem to be setting standards for present-day guidance, and this could only be done (_if done_) with many annotations and exceptions and with a much larger range of examples than is possible here.

The following illustrations, therefore, show the attempts of a group of workers who have endeavoured to carry into practice the principles set forth in this book. It has not been found possible in all cases to get photographs from the actual glass--always a very difficult thing to do. The illustrations can be seen much better by the aid of a moderately strong reading-lens.

PLATE I.--_Part of East Window, St. Anselm's, Woodridings, Pinner, by Louis Davis._ The design, cartoons, and cut-line made, all the glass chosen and painted, and the leading superintended by the artist.

PLATE II.--_Another portion of the same window, by the same. Scenes from the Life of St. Anselm._ Executed under the same conditions as the above. The freehand drawing and the varying thickness of the leads in the quarry work should be noted.

PLATE III.--_Window in St. Peter's Church, Clapham Road--"Blessed are_ _they that Mourn," by Reginald Hallward._ The _whole_ of the work in this instance, including cutting, leading, &c., is done by the artist himself. As an instance of how little photography can do, it is worth while to describe such a small item as the _scroll_ above the figure. This is of glass most carefully selected (or most skilfully treated with acid), so that the ground work varies from silvery-white to almost a pansy-purple, and on this the verse is illuminated in tones varying from pale primrose to the ruddiest gold--the whole forming a passage of lovely colour impossible to achieve by any system of "copying." It is work like this and the preceding that is referred to on p. 266.

PLATE IV.--_Central part of Window in Cobham Church, Kent, by Reginald Hallward._ Executed under the same conditions as the preceding.

PLATE V.--_Part of Window in Ardrahan Church, Galway--"St. Robert" by Selwyn Image._ From the cartoon. See p. 83.

PLATE VI.--_Two Designs for Domestic Glass, by Miss M. J. Newill._ From the cartoons.

PLATE VII.--_"The Dream of St. Kenelm," by H. A. Payne._ The author had the pleasure of watching this work daily while in progress. It was done entirely by the artist's own hand, by way of a specimen "masterpiece" of craftsmanship, and the aim was to use to the full extent every resource of the material.

PLATE VIII.--_Six "Quarries"--"Day and Night," "The Spirit on the Face of the Waters," "Creation of Birds and Fishes," "Eden," and "The Parable of the Good Seed," by Pupils of H. A. Payne, Birmingham School of Art._ These lose very much by reduction, and should be seen with a lens magnifying 2-1/2 diameters. They are the designs of the pupils themselves (boys in their teens), and are examples of bold outline _untouched after tracing_. They are more elaborate than would be desirable for _ordinary_ quarry glazing; being intended for interior work on a screen, to be seen close at hand with borrowed light.

PLATE IX.--_Micro-photographs_. 1. _A piece of outline that has "fried" in the kiln._ Magnified 20 diameters. See p. 104.

2. _A small Diamond seen from above._ Magnified 10-1/2 diameters. The white horizontal line is the cutting edge.

3. _A larger Diamond that has been "re__set_." That is to say, _re-ground_: the diagonal marks like a St. Andrew's Cross show the grinding down of the old facets by which the new cutting edge has been produced. Magnified 10-1/2 diameters.

4. No. 2 _seen from the side_. Magnified 10-1/2 diameters; the cutting edge faces towards the left.

PLATE X.--_Micro-photographs of Glass-cutting_ Very difficult to explain. "A" is a sheet of glass seen _in section_ multiplied 15-1/2 diameters. The black marks along the _top edge_ are diamond-cuts, good and bad, coming _straight towards the spectator_. The two outside ones are very _bad_ cuts, far too violent, and have split off the surface of the glass. Of the two inner ones the left-hand one is an ideally good cut, no disturbance of the surface having occurred; the right-hand a fairly good one, but a little unnecessarily hard. Passing over B for the present--C is a similar piece of glass also magnified 15-1/2 diameters, with _wheel-cuts_ seen endwise (coming towards the spectator). The one on the left is a very bad cut, the surface of the glass having actually split off in flakes, the next to it is a perfect cut where the surface is intact, and note that though not a quarter so much pressure has been employed, the split downward into the glass is deeper and sharper than in the violent cut to the left, as is also the case with the two other moderately good cuts to the right.

D, E--_Wheel-cuts._ In these we are looking down upon the surface of the glass. They are bad cuts, multiplied 20 diameters; the direction of the cut is from left to right. In the upper figure the flake of glass is split completely off but is still lying in its place. In the lower one the left-hand half is split, and the right-hand only partially so, remaining so closely attached to the body of the glass as to show (and in an especially beautiful and perfect manner) the rainbow-tinted "Newton's rings" which accompany the phenomenon of "Interference," for an explanation of which I must refer the reader to an encyclopaedia or some work on optics. _Good_ cuts seen from above are simply lines like a hair upon the glass, but the diamond-cut is a coarser hair than the wheel-cut.

If you now hold the illustration _upside down_, what then becomes the top edge of section C shows a wheel-cut seen sideways along the section of the glass which it has divided, the direction of this cut being from left to right.

In the same way section "A" seen upside down gives the appearance of a _diamond_-cut, also from left to right, and multiplied 15-1/2 diameters, while "B" held in the same position gives the same cut multiplied 78 diameters. The nature of these things is discussed at p. 48.

In their natural colour, and under strong light, they are very beautiful objects under the microscope. Even a 10-diameter "Steinheil lens," or still better its English equivalent, a Nelson lens, will show them fairly, and some such instrument, opening out a new world of beauty beyond the power of ordinary vision, ought, one would think, to be one of the possessions of every artist and lover of Nature.

The illustrations that follow are from the work of the author and his pupils conjointly. Those in which no _design_ has been added are for clearness' sake described as "by the author"; but it is to be understood that in all instances the transcribing of the work _in the glass_ has been the work of pupils under his supervision. All design of diaper, canopy, lettering, and quarries is so, in all the examples selected.

PLATE XI.--_From Gloucester Cathedral--"St. Boniface" by the author and his pupils._

PLATE XII.--_From the same--"The Stork of Iona" and "The Infant Church," by the same._ Canopies from Oak and Ivy.

PLATE XIII.--_Portion of a Window in progress (destined for Ashbourne Church), by the author._ This has been specially photographed _on the easel_, to show how near, by the use of false leadlines, &c., the work can be got, during its progress, to approach to its actual conditions when finished.

PLATE XIV.--_Drawings from Nature, by the author's pupils._ Pieced together from various drawings by three different hands; made in preparation for design of Oak "canopy." See p. 324 and Plate XI.

PLATE XV.--_Part of East Window of School Chapel, Tonbridge, by the author._ From the cartoon: the figure playing the dulcimer is underneath the manger, above which is seated the Virgin and Child.

PLATE XVI.--_Figure of one of the Choir of "Dominations." From Gloucester, by the author and his pupils._

The names of the pupils whose work appears in Plate VIII. are J. H. Saunders and R. J. Stubington. In Plate XIV. A. E. Child, K. Parsons, and J. H. Stanley; and in the Plates XI. to XVI. J. Brett, L. Brett, A. E. Child, P. R. Edwards, M. Hutchinson, K. Parsons, J. H. Stanley, J. E. Tarbox, and E. A. Woore. The cuts in the text are by K. Parsons and E. A. Woore.

GLOSSARY

_Antiques_, coloured glasses made in imitation of the qualities of ancient glass.

_Banding_, putting on the copper "ties" by which the glazed light is attached to the supporting bars.

_Base_, (1) the light-tinted glass, white, greenish or yellow, on which the thin film of ruby or blue is imposed in "flashed" glasses; (2) the support of the niche on which the figure stands in "canopy work."

_Borrowed light_, a light not coming direct from daylight, but from the interior light of a building as in the case of a _screen_ of glass. (The result is similar when a window is seen against near background of trees or buildings.)

_Calm_ (of lead), the strip of lead, 3 to 4 feet long, as used for leading up the glass.

_Canopy_ or "tabernacle work," the architectural framing in imitation of a carved niche in which the figure is placed. The vertical supports (sometimes used alone to frame in the whole light) are called "shafting."

_Cartoon_, the design of the window, full size, on paper.

_Chasuble_, the outermost sacrificial vestment of a bishop or priest.

_Cope_, the outermost ceremonial and processional vestment of a bishop or priest.

_Core_ (of lead), the crossbar of the "H" section as shown in fig. 34.

_Crocketting_, the ornamenting of any architectural member at intervals with sculptured bosses or crockets.

_Cullet_, the waste cuttings of glass. Generally used over again in greater or less quantity as an ingredient in the making of new glass.

_Cut-line_, the tracing (containing the lead lines only) by which the work is cut and glazed.

_Flux_, the solvent which assists the melting of the metallic pigments in the kiln. Various materials are used, _e.g._ silica and lead, but unfortunately borax also is used, and I would warn the student to buy no pigment without a guarantee from the manufacturer that it does not contain this tempting but very dangerous and unstable ingredient. (See p. 112).

_Form_, the sheet of "continuous cartridge" or cartoon paper on which the dimensions, &c., are marked out for drawing the cartoon.

_Gauge_, (1) the shaped piece of paper by which the diamond is guided in cutting; (2) the standard of size and shape in any piece of repeated work (as quarry-glazing).

_Grisaille_ (from Fr. _gris_, grey), work where a pattern, generally geometrical, in narrow coloured bands, is superimposed on a background of whitish, grey, or greenish glass diapered with painted work in outline or slight shading.

_Groseing_, the biting away the edge of the glass with pliers to make it fit. With regard to this word and to the term "calm," I have never found any one who could give a reason for the name or an authority as to its spelling, the various spellings suggested for the _latter_ word including Karm, Calm, Carm, Kaim, and even Qualm! But while writing this