AURORA :

Stained Glass in Saint Luke's, SAN FRANCISCO, CA

The glass in this lovely white church on Van Ness deserved its own photoAlbum. The majority of windows are the reknown English firm of Heaton, Butler & Bayne, London, UK. They boast beautiful clerestory windows of angels with outstretched wings and exquisitely detailed painting. The aisle windows boast enamelwork, silverstain, acid etching, and delicate painting sometimes on both sides of the glass, adding a real depth to the glass when viewed up close. There are also some adequate windows by the firm of Wipple Co. of london, but they are not nearly as excellent. Much of the aisle windows are located at eye-level, and are real treats to be studied. The painterly compositions are quite complex with real sensitivity to balance and color range. website: http://www.stlukessf.org/main.htm

The Swedenborgian Church, San Francisco, CA

The Church opened its doors for worship March 17, 1895, and was designed by a distinguished group of architects including the celebrated Bernard Maybeck. Its founding pastor, Rev. Joseph Worcester, was longtime friend of John Muir. Rev. Worcester purchased the land on which the Church and its grounds are located. A Statement of Significance reads: "The Swedenborgian Church ecclesiastical complex is an ensemble of buildings that is exceptionally valuable to our understanding of the development of a style of architecture we now call the First Bay Tradition, the harbinger of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the western United States. Natural materials, domestic scale and appearance, traditional and earthy structural forms, and site-specific designs define the First Bay Tradition. The visionary Swedenborgian minister Joseph Worcester brought together leading architects of the First Bay Tradition, A. Page Brown, A.C. Schweinfurth, and Bernard Maybeck, as well as the contemporary painter William Keith, stained-glass artist Bruce Porter, artist Mary Curtis Richardson and other designers and craftsmen to create an integrated complex of buildings. ... Like the closely-allied Arts and Crafts Movement, the First Bay Tradition developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and stressed a comprehensive design approach: from architecture to interior furnishings, from fixtures to artwork. The church is one of the earliest, most influential and best surviving examples of this important national and regional building tradition." The following is an excerpt of the National Landmarking Committee's commentary supporting its decision to grant Landmark status: The Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco is "…a critically important example of the American contribution to the Arts and Crafts Movement as exemplified in new architectural imagery, integration with the site, garden design, and use of natural materials. The interior shows the employment of the decorative arts to create a special atmosphere, and also the first examples of the 'mission chairs.' ... The Church is important as an example of the Swedenborgian contribution to American religious, social theory and intellectual life."

Some Wizard windows

I was recently asked by the fabulous Mz. Barbara Butler of Barbara Butler Artist-Builder Inc. if I would like to provide a contribution for an upcoming playhouse she was creating and donating for a charitable auction. Barbara is a great and gregarious lady who for 20 years has specialized in making playhouses, treehouses, play structures and the like, complete with all manner of accessories such as cable trolleys, rope climbs, rock walls, slidepoles, trapdoors, ladders, and play furniture. Over the years her projects ave gotten more and more elaborate, sometimes incorporating many towers and arched bridges, as well as finished playhouses with lighting fixtures, professional glass windows, crown moldings, polished varnished flooring, and finished furniture.
For this donation she created the structure loosly around the theme of "The Wizard's Tower". The structure had a tower complete with catwalk and crenelations, and below a jail for 'bad wizards' (complete with a secret escape trap door). The house had steep pitched roof with multicolored shingles, a finished interior, a beautiful ancient and medieval-looking door with a sliding 'who goes there?" window. It is a beautiful play structure and I was happy to contribute a small part.

The donation gave me the opportunity to experiment with plexi-glass, because of course, the windows had to be 'child-proof' (i.e. ..shatter proof).

I made them by cutting individual pieces out of small sheets of Plexiglass, and used a solvent to tack them to the backing sheet. I then painted with acrylic the details of the design, and sealed the surface with two part resin that I colored with dyes. I also applied rounded half-spheres to catch the light, which worked to great effect.

I chose a medieval looking Sun and Moon with faces as the images, I seem to remember seeing similar imagery from old books on Alchemy and magic. They were very successful, and no doubt I shall do more with this material in the future. I should like to eventually incorporate this material with actual glass and lead and see what is possible for more serious architectural applications.