Stained glass has long been used in architecture. The light shining through stained-glass windows is painted in different colors, obeying the artist’s every whim. And the transparent pattern that covers the window like a flame is permeated by sunlight. You have a chance to find out how Russian artisans make stained glass.
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Anton Agarkov
Stained glass has long been used in architecture. The light shining through stained-glass windows is painted in different colors, obeying the artist’s every whim. And the transparent pattern that covers the window like a flame is permeated by sunlight. You have a chance to find out how Russian artisans make stained glass.
Anton Agarkov
This workshop is situated in the basement of a Moscow house. The passage way is lined with finished stained glass leaning on the walls, panes of glass, and wooden screens.
Anton Agarkov
The workshop contains shelving with bits and pieces of glass while a light table sits on the workbench. It makes it easier to notice a work’s defects. A soldering iron lies nearby.
Anton Agarkov
First, the glass is cut out. Each pane is wound with a thin tape made from copper foil. Afterwards, the glass is placed into a pattern again, the seams are degreased using flux, and they are soldered together.
Anton Agarkov
At each step, pieces of glass creak and crunch under craftsmen’s feet. In order not to distract themselves from their work, they throw the glass fragments right on the floor. Every stained glass starts with a sketch. The drawing is handed to the artist who turns the picture into a scheme on which black lines are used to mark the position of modules and numbers are used to indicate their colors.
Anton Agarkov
How beautiful the finished glass panel will be depends largely on the artisan: how precisely he can cut the pieces of glass, how painstakingly he chooses their shape and puts them together just right. And if all of all this work is, in one way or another, mechanical, then working with the color requires attention and an artistic touch from the stained glass maker.
Anton Agarkov
They have to work with materials of vastly different colors and textures. Often, the panes of glass from one brand can vary sharply from one another.
Anton Agarkov
Whimsical stains cover the surface of the glass and the shades of color mix and replace each other: red can flow smoothly into pink and green streaks can appear in the curls and waves. Sometimes transparent areas can be replaced by areas impervious to light.
Anton Agarkov
Varying amounts of time are spent on a single stained glass. Everything depends on the number of modules. There can be two or four of them on each square meter. There can also be only one or even one hundred. A client can also come when the whole stained glass is soldered and ask for a couple of colors to be changed. Then the artisan has to break out the glass with those colors and redo it.
Anton Agarkov
The most time was spent on creating a chandelier made from three panels, each two meters long. The craftsmen worked on it for three months.
Anton Agarkov
At the center of this treasure is a transparent glass with a pattern. It was made using sandblasting: they carved the pattern using a jet of sand under high pressure.
Anton Agarkov
Soldered seams are treated with acid. On the right is a seam before patina is applied: it’s clear and shiny. On the left is a seam treated with acid: it’s dark and obscure.
