Cupola Installed

We have now installed the cupola!  It was seven and a half hour process for the three of us.

I will give you some of the stages of design and installation to indicate the transformation.

The cupola originally looked like this:

The original appearance with dirt and paint

The design was quickly settled to be of the period of the house, putting it into the Arts Nouveau style.  After some playing around with ideas, I submitted this design to the client.

First pass at a design

I of course, got totally involved with elongated shapes.  Upon presenting this I was reminded of the client's statement that roses were required.  So, a second stage was required.  You can see some penciled rose shapes on the first design paper.

This was the second and approved design:

Second penciled design over laid on the first

At this stage the colour choices were made between the client and me.

Templates were checked again and final measurements made.  The full size cartoons were drawn up and the construction then began of the eight panels. Some indication has been given of this in earlier posts.

The kind of transformation that was to be created was revealed when the old glass was removed.  

Cupola ready for installation of the panels

The amount and quality of light flooding into the hallway was amazing.  This photo shows the difference in the light from the original glazing.

The cleaning of the checks and installation of support bars began.

Just over half way installed.

This view shows that there is still a lot of light being allowed through the seedy clear glass and the textured coloured glass, although the features of the underside of the ceiling is diffused. 

There continued to be a bit of jiggling and adjustment to get the design to flow as intended.  But the installation was completed to the satisfaction of the client (most important) and me.

The completed cupola

This has been an arduous project, but one which has left me happy.  I made the choice to move away from the traditional use of one design in a repetition toward realising an image for the whole cupola.  This makes more sense in modern terms (although not in economic ones).  It is less frequently chosen, as there is more design work - making a single design eight times larger than a single panel.  There is also much more care and effort required to get the flow of the design to meet over the whole opening.  But, I think it has given a much more pleasing result that can provide interest over time as new elements are discovered by the viewers.

A chandelier will hang from the central pendant post, which will reflect the colours at night especially as the spotlights above transfer the light to the glass pendants of the chandelier.

Cupola

A client has recently purchased a house built in the early 1920’s.  It contains a cupola that has become ugly over the years through exposure to nicotine and general dirtiness.

Rather than trying to clean it, the client has decided to replace it with something in keeping with the period of construction that will allow light through into the hallway, but also obscure the view of the roof.

After trying out several ideas, I came up with one that I liked and developed it.

In my enthusiasm for the flow of the piece, I overlooked the desire for roses that the client had expressed.  The client gently pointed this out to me when I showed the design.  Oops, time for a re-think.  Everyone agreed that the flow of the green forms, although not rose leaves was desirable.  You can see the beginnings of a re-design on the original.

So I came up with a variation.  I worked on making a simple but clearly rose shape instead of the elongated buds that were the colourful feature of the first design.  I also worked to bring more of the colour lower into the panels.

You can get a better impression with the new design over laid on the old.

This is now at the glass cutting stage and soon to move to the building of the panels.

Restoration Assistance

From time to time glass workers help each other out.  I send things to other people who are better at some aspect of work, or for which I don't have the time to complete in the timescale.  Other people send me things which they need help with whether because of time pressures or because of equipment which I have and am willing for them to use.

Currently, we are in the process of helping with the restoration of some church windows for another worker who does not have the time to complete all the aspects of the work.  We are helping out by doing the re-leading of these 11 windows in 22 panels.

The cartoon ready for leading

Leading in process

One panel soldered

Historic West Coast House Repairs

Last year I conducted repairs on the windows of an Alexander (Greek) Thomson designed house, and for the last six months or so, I have been involved in repairs and other work on a Lutyens designed house.

The stair windows had some cracks and was producing a lot of condensation.  As the roof was being repaired, the opportunity was taken to have something done about the window.

As you can see the window is awkward to get to so the roofer's scaffolding was essential.  The window panel was bowed with a number of broken lead joints.  The window is also installed directly into the stone, so there were additional breaks in getting them out. The iron work of the opening panel was completely corroded and covered in putty to try to weather proof it.

The decision was taken to re-lead and replace the broken pieces with a very good match of glass made in Poland (locally called Tatra glass). The opening panel was remade to be fixed into the stone.  The weep holes were cleared to disperse the condensation as originally intended.

The resulting finished window appears to be the same as the original.  The repairs are not distinguishable except by close examination.



The house also has a heavy external door that previously was solid.  The owners wanted more light into the hallway behind and proposed opening the wood panels to accept leaded glass.

After looking at some of the leaded window designs around the house a lozenge and diamond design was chosen.  This shows the completed door from the interior.

The door from the exterior still maintains an imposing presence, although softened by the insertion of the four panels.

Alexander (Greek) Thomson House

One of the great things about this job is that you get to see houses that might go un-noticed because of their out-of-the way nature of their location, or non-descript face.

Such was a house I was called to to look at storm damage to the stair window.  As I finally negotiated my way down a lane and missing the entry causing me to go on to a railway station that I did not know existed, I finally went across the cattle grid to be presented with this.

Yes, as I was to learn, this is a Greek Thomson house, possibly his first outside Glasgow.  This is an architect of such importance that there is a society established to study his works.  This grand house is impressive in its size as well as in the amount of light he allowed into the building.  No other architect at the time was filling the wall with so many windows.

The front door is as impressive as the rest of the house.  And probably the scale was meant to impress visitors with the wealth of the owner.  The front doors are twice the height of the average person.

The back of the house is no less impressive than the front.  The house is marred by the modern extension at the left, but still is a handsome house.  Note the number of windows all of which face over the River Clyde to the south.

This gives an impression of part of the view just from the garden.

The view from the first floor must allow views over to the Mull of Kintyre and the Isle of Aran.

But now I have to get to work.  This is the external view of the area of storm damage.

Fortunately the leaded glass had been covered with protective glazing some years ago.  This meant that the falling slates and guttering extensively damaged the external glazing, but not much of the leaded glass.

As I was welcomed into the house, I noted the generous cloak rooms with the fine cornices at the upper level of the walls.

This kind of elegant decoration continues into the modern down stairs lounge -  which would have been the dining room originally.

As we went round the stairs to the kitchen, there were a pair of windows under the stair:

And just to the left of them the door into the kitchen:

You can see from these pictures that coloured glass was not an important element in Thomson's architectural decoration.  What there is is simple and elegant, relying on varied textures in the glass for interest.


Now, really, I must get to work.  The falling roofing materials had broken the protective glazing extensively, and in some places had come through to the leaded glass.

My job was to get up to these breaks, which were about 4 metres above the landing, and repair them.  Fortunately, the client has a friend who runs a scaffolding firm.  The scaffolding was put in place for me to get up to the glass.  It was difficult as much of the broken glass was pieces next to each other and the lead had been  twisted by the impact.  The obvious pieces are at the right centre of the picture, but there were others broken under the glazing bars.

Fortunately the broken original glass has modern imitators that are a very good match, so I was able to fit the glass and leave it appearing to be original.


I have been to this town many times, but would never have seen the outside of the house, let alone its inside.  The owner of the house is proud of it and happily pointed out lots of things to me, but of course does not want a string of visitors.  So, my job is a good job for someone - like me - who is interested in domestic architecture

The Wood in a Window

I was going to look at a building that needed some bent glass the other day and passed by a house that had this remaining piece of an evening woodland representation.  Unfortunately the paired window no longer has any leaded glass to complete the image.

Window Repair

An IT company is moving into a mid-19th century building in the Park Circus area of Glasgow and needs to have the window on the half landing from the ground to first floor repaired.  

Window from below

This is a large window of nearly 1400 mm wide and approximately 2000 mm high.  It has a large number of broken panes, although only two - where you see the tape - have fallen out. The textures are important for this window.  Fortunately, I have an exact or very near match for almost all of the clear pieces.

Upper sash

The difficulty is to get yellow glass to match the borders of this window.  There are two main shades of yellow and a few variations - all in a seedy glass.  Seedy is a term for intentional bubbles in the glass.  Various manufacturers have different ways of getting the bubbles. I am told by the people at English Antique Glass that they throw a potato into the pot just before gathering the glass to blow.

I have looked through my glass stocks and samples and have found one yellow seedy that will match.
For the other shades I will have to stain some clear seedy to get a good match.

Window from above

The above photo just gives an impression of the colour generated on the wood of the reveal.  I think this is important to preserve.  So the experimentation has begun to obtain the correct shade of golden yellow.

Bottom sash

This will be in process for a while - making samples and testing them against the window - before staining suitably sized pieces to replace the broken ones.  These pieces will be cut on site to fit into the original place.

Of course, there is no easy way to do the repairs from the outside without incurring large charges for scaffolding.

Back of the building

Christmas Present

As my wife did not like the blank fanlight above our door, I decided to give her and the flat a Christmas present of a scene that I call "The West".

View from inside during the day

View from the outside at night.

Last Before Christmas?

Yesterday I installed my final piece of work for the year.  This was a pair of windows for a bathroom that looks onto the tenement stair well.

The client picked the image from the gallery section of my site.  We worked on the colours and final design together and produced a result pleasing to both of us.  The design is based on my "Piquant Bouquet" series of autonomous panels.

view from the stair well

Stair Window

I was called out to advise on what can be done for this stair window in Dunfirmline made around the beginning of the 20th century.  It is about 1200 mm wide and 1500 mm high.  It appears to be made in a single piece, which is very unusual.  It has 19 mm square glazing bars and you will notice that at the bottom there is an extra one, presumably for safety if anyone fell down the stairs they would not go through the window to the ground.

You can see there is internal secondary glazing up to where the round head of the window springs.  In spite of it being open at the top there is considerable condensation within the gap as you can see from this picture of a broken pane.  This makes the point that ventilation needs to be both at the top and the bottom.

The above image shows the only major break in this whole window.  There are of course small cracks here and there, but nothing obvious or likely to impair the function of the window.  The more major defect is at the bottom of the window where there has been a repair using violet instead of bronze coloured glass.

At the bottom, the window is beginning to develop an accordion style bend which is it major problem.  Had the window been built in three sections as I would expect for this size of window, the bottom section could be removed, taken to the studio to be flattened and repaired.  Trying to take this window out in a single section above a glassed in conservatory will be difficult and is bound to cause some breakage.

The owners have already decided to put a double glazing unit on the outside of this window.  This will have a gap of about 100 mm between the stained glass and the unit.  This will prevent any further ingress of water and drafts.  It will preserve the life of the window by many years without further action, but will not stabilise it.  I have made recommendations to the owners and await their response.

In addition, they have some breaks in this entrance screen.  They are all side by side, which is the most difficult to repair in situ.  So I am recommending that they let me take the panels out (filling the gap with clear glass) and repair them in the studio.

Porch Door

Having previously completed the complete rebuild of a window for a sagging frame, I was asked to provide a reproduction front door. This involved removing the dark timber cladding of the door to reveal the original opening in the door.

This is the completed panel installed.

General view, outside

Inside view

Detail of the painting

Old into New

A while back a client was given an old panel by a friend to enliven their new house.

As you can see there is some interesting and no longer available vaseline glass included in the panel. The varying light between the bottom and the top shows some of the difference in colour caused by the level of light striking the glass. It is also a better example of arts nouveau than many and so seemed to be worth while keeping.

These same people who gifted the panel recommended me as a person who could arrange the mechanisms to hang the panel. The client brought the panel to me and we discussed the proposal to hang this in the door. I was unhappy about hanging a panel in a door for reasons of safety of the panel and of the clients.

I also was unsure of how the size of the panel related to the size of the door and arranged to go to their house to get a better idea of what was being proposed. The door is considerably larger than the panel and of different proportions.

So I said that the minimum required to keep the panel and people safe was to mount the existing panel in steel bars which would be fixed to the sides of the door. This wiould give two strong horizontal lines across the door opening. The client (and certainly not me) was not happy with this. So I quickly went on to say that the panel could be remade into a larger one for the door, removing the deep flemish glass that existed. This was difficult to envisage, so I agreed to devise a setting (for a fee which would be incorporated into the whole cost if they agreed) for the panel and bring it to them for approval.

In the end, I developed a full size cartoon which I took to them and placed in the door for them to consider. As the proportions of the two were so different, I needed some way of lengthening the image contained in the panel. This extension needed to be sympathetic with the original. My decision was to extend the acorn shaped buds at the bottom and add two formal elements - the half circles - at the top and bottom to draw the whole together. It also provided a "base" or cradle at the bottom and gives an overall oval appearance.

The image was approved and after some discussion about colours of glass, light loss and other aesthetic matters, a price was agreed.

The disassembly began. I removed the perimeter glass so the panel would not have an appearance of being inserted whole into the surrounding glass. Various repairs were made and decisions taken on the placing of the grid lines. The cartoon you see here was modified from the one shown to the clients in the detail of where the verticals and horizontals were placed.

The glass was selected to match as nearly as possible to the existing glass where relevant, and clear glass was chosen to surround the main image.

In the leaded up state, you can see that exact matches for the vaseline glass was not possible. Instead a translucent white glass was chosen that transmits amber in sunlight to compliment the way the vaseline glass changes its colour.

Finally, it was cemented and had its ties for the glazing bars attached. After some hesitation I went for two instead of four glazing bars. This was on the grounds that as a laminated glass sheet was to be placed on the outside, the two bars would be enough to protect the glass from bowing inwards if the door happened to slam into the wall.

The finished panel installed. I think the door fits well with the terrazzo tiling of the hallway.

Although the panel is a large one - 1140 by 850 mm - it does not appear to be out of place in scale. As soon as this was installed, the client began to think of how they could deal with the remainder of the large flemish glass. That of course, will be when funds are again available.