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charm of its own. All of these countries, it is needless to say, have, until a comparatively recent date, furnished our churches with their windows, and opportunities to judge them are not lacking.

But a change was at hand, and if the result had been less good than we maintain it to be, the attempt at making stained glass in this country would still have been interesting from the spontaneity of its growth, from its resemblance to the manner in which, in the old days, painting sprung full-blossomed from the Florentine soil. It came about the Centennial year, the date from which our future Vasari, if we ever deserve one, will trace the first concerted art movement in this country. Before that time we had in more or less isolation men who perhaps under happier auspices would have developed more, who at any rate, in a community that was more in sympathy with them, would have found more employment for certain of their faculties.

To such a man, Mr. John La Farge, who had been known for years as a painter possessed of a deep-seated feeling for color and a largeness of sentiment in composition which had found expression only in easel pictures, was given, in the year 1876, the task of decorating Trinity Church, Boston. From this building, the work of Richardson by which he is best known, and which is perhaps the most cathedral-like of our churches, the transition to stained glass seems to have been a natural one; or possibly the moment was propitious, for no sooner was Mr. La Farge engaged in his first experimental glass than Mr. Louis C. Tiffany, who, like Mr. La Farge, was a painter by profession, became interested in the same direction. Under the impetus given by these two menworking in different ways-Mr. Tiffany's sense of color and feeling for ornament leading him rather toward the Orient, and Mr. La Farge remaining more true to classic influence-the first steps of glass-making were taken.

I say first steps advisedly, for at the commencement everything had to be done anew. The rays from the lamp of convention by which the makers of glass in Europe had guided their steps did not reach across the Atlantic, and

the first windows were made by virtually reinventing the whole process. Makers of the commoner kinds of stained glass had long been established here, and the genius of the American mechanic had devised or adapted machines by which large sheets of colored glass could be rolled, sheets both broad and long, and of uniform color and depth throughout. These were admirable results of mechanical skill, but essentially inartistic. They furnished the first glass, but as they proved inadequate and as other colors and textures were imperatively demanded, the proprietor of a large glass-making establishment, I think in Brooklyn, grudgingly conceded the use of some of his material and men who, under the direction of our pioneer glassstainers, made glass that was slightly better in quality. And then the interesting discovery was made that glass made by the one-man power, as we may say, in small quantities, of uneven thickness, and undoubtedly improved by happy accident (as when by a failure to make one color another, and perhaps better one, was obtained) was greatly more varied in tone and color than that made by modern improved processes. By this discovery, and by the consequent demand for such glass, a new field was opened for ambitious men, who from workmen became masters on a small scale, and it is from men such as these, constantly experimenting and working with a small force and by hand-power, that the best glass is still obtained. As uniformity had been the criterion of excellence, now variety obtained the palm, and it has kept it, until to-day the larger stainedglass-window manufacturers carry a stock of glass that in its variety of hue and shade far exceeds the range of the painter's palette.

Soon after the commencement of the new-old art came the introduction of the opalescent glass. The credit of its introduction has been a matter of controversy which need not enter here, and the claim has also been made that it was known to the old glass-makers, but, as far as I know, this claim is supported by little proof. The opalescent glass, which has formed so large an element in the beauty of American glass, is by itself somewhat porcelain-like in appearance;

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Window in Grace Church, Providence, R. I., representing "St. John in the Island of Patmos." (Designed by Maitland Armstrong, and erected by Mrs. Byron Smith.)

but against the light, and at certain angles, has much of the fire and the changing hue of the opal. It can be combined with any other color, which then partakes of the same characteristics. Used with discretion in a window it is capable of charming effect, lighting up and vivifying tones which by themselves would be sombre and quasi-opaque.

Mr. La Farge and Mr. Tiffany had from the commencement men who worked with them and very near them, and soon the number increased, until to-day, with the facilities which are common or nearly so to them all, there is a remarkable unity of merit in American glass, the differences being largely matters of taste or dependent upon the artistic merit of the original design. Here, of course, there can be the usual variety of opinion; but it is, I think, almost without parallel that the means employed to render the effect of the original cartoon should be so uniformly good. It is somewhat like a school of painting, where the technical execution of every artist should be the same, leaving only the difference which the temperament of the different men would impose in subject and sentiment. But this fair edifice was not built in a day. Many were the failures, many the paths diligently followed only to find that they ended in quagmires, before this uniformity of excellence, worthy to be classed as a school, was reached. In the effort to avoid the error into which the European makers had fallen, of depending too largely upon painting the glass, our early makers tried various expedients. The first and most natural of these was little else than an adaptation of the principle on which are made the familiar porcelain glass lamp-shades, with landscapes modelled on their surface. As the picture is seen in transparence it is necessary to make the darkest accents the thickest and most opaque portions of the glass, and proceeding in this manner, making thinner or thicker the glass as the intensity or the delicacy of the tone requires, a curious sort of bass-relief is made, which, placed in front of a light, appears to be painted on the surface.

With great effort heads and draperies were modelled in this manner and cast

in glass, but the effect was never satisfactory; and having learned the lesson that one may be too much of a purist, our glass-makers now use vitrifiable colors when it is necessary. In the course of this experiment an advantage was gained by the making of what is now technically known as drapery glass. This is made from the glass, as it is thrown, in a melted state, upon a flat table of iron to be rolled into a disk. When the glass is spread out, very much like pie-crust, the roller by which it is spread keeping up the resemblance, the edges are seized by the glass-maker, armed with short tongs, who overlaps an edge, or pulls and twists it in various directions as his fancy may suggest. This glass when annealed and cooled reveals in great variety the flow and twist of folds of drapery, and when the artistartisan, with the main direction of the lines of the draperies of the cartoon which he is following firmly fixed in his mind, visits the racks in which, row upon row, the disks of glass are stored, he is generally able to select pieces which, placed in the window, represent in the color of the glass, unaided by the painter's skill, the most subtile gradations of light and shade in the form of the drapery. For the heads, and indeed whenever it becomes necessary, recourse is had to the painter. Here the French and Germans, with their long experience, have been, until very lately, greatly our superiors. Painting upon glass is at the best a tedious mechanical process, and a clever piece of painting may be utterly spoiled in the "firing" which is necessary to vitrify the colors used. But already we have acquired experience, and some of our work is in effect as good as that done abroad, while the grade of artists employed is somewhat better, giving occasionally a more personal character to the work.

In fact as the art stands here to-day, it has kept a more distinctly artistic character than in the old world. In Europe, with governmental patronage, and with museums ready to receive works of a large size which such encouragement creates, it is an inferior class of artists, as a rule, who engage in making stained glass. Here, on the contrary, almost every man who has the technical equip

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Memorial Window in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York, representing Christ and the Four Evangelists. (Erected to the memory of the Rev. Robert Shaw Howland, D.D., by his successor, the Rev. D. Parker Morgan, and several members of the congregation; made by the Tiffany Glass Company from a cartoon by LYELL CARR.)

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