Care of Old Windows
People often ask whether I like new work or restoration best. I think it may be an even split. Old windows are studies in styles, colors, and materials that stretch my perceptions of what can be beautiful - of what is possible.

I learn a lot from them. The work is always different depending on the window. Some get flattened and re-puttied, others need replacement pieces for serious breaks. The worst ones are taken apart and re-assembled. It takes time, care, and fine craftsmanship to do right by these old windows and get them back in shape for another hundred years.

If you have an old window that needs attention, send me some pictures or give me a call. We can set up a meeting to look at the glass in person, assess its needs, and determine the best course of action. 

I recently attended the joint conference of the Stained Glass Association and the Glass Guild of America in San Antonio, Texas. We held an auction of small panels to raise scholarship money for artists working in stained glass. This was my submission.
Rupert Brooke was a British WWI poet who died in the war at the age of 27. Everyone swooned over him when he was alive, and dying made him tragically immortal. I came across his picture in a photography book way back in college and was smitten. So, thirty years later, looking for a portrait to replicate, I figured I’d revisit his image. 
​
The portrait is hand painted and fired onto the glass. It is surrounded by river stone shaped fragments of old stained glass windows, with a graduated blue background of mouthblown glass. The borders are cut from typography from old dedication plates.

My work this past year was an invigorating mix of new residential commissions, restoration/repair work, and creating product for my studio showroom. The projects are always changing, and I love that.

I find the design challenges of client-led commission work satisfying, but there are always quirkier ideas that I find myself wanting to explore.

One of these ideas was my Nameplate Panel. I had collected many broken and discarded nameplates over the years, and making a panel of them had been on my mind for ages. I turned the graphic fragments into anonymous pieces and parts to be assembled like a quilt. I wove them together with a color palette of reds, plummy browns, and distressed painted borders that mimic the age of the fragments. The finished piece is more like art than anything I’ve done.

Naturally, I want to do more. Over these next few months I’m going to be working on some of these autonomous panels for a show of gallery work. Stay tuned for updates. I can’t wait to see what comes.

While much of my work deals with formal design and traditional architectural ornament, sometimes I get to design and build windows that are truly unique. This window was designed for an updated mid-century home overlooking Lake Erie.

I took cues from the homeowners’ love of art, color, architectural cast-offs, and the lake. They wanted to obscure the view of the home next door, but still see the lake and western sky.  The resulting design is meant to represent beach debris or flotsam and jetsam caught in a net. It incorporates bits of old stained glass in a new, modern format. The colors are dense and saturated where needed, but otherwise nearly transparent. The window itself becomes another piece of art in their home.
​
Bring me your design challenges. Tell me what you’ve always envisioned. I love working with clients to find and craft beautiful solutions.

When my friend and mentor, Kate DuPuis, retired, I purchased/inherited her glass inventory, which included box upon box of cut-offs and scrap glass accumulated over decades. I’ve always been one to use the materials at hand, and these materials were extraordinary - German mouth blown glass in the most gorgeous colors. The irregular pieces might sit in boxes for another decade or so if I didn’t concoct a project for them.

My striped panels are the result. I cut hundreds of pieces into regular sizes that can be stacked and assembled however they come to be arranged. Given the premise that all colors go with all colors, I have taken to reaching into the bin, laying the pieces out, and seeing where the stripes end up. The unusual color combinations are then tweaked and assembled with lead came.

These small light-catching panels express modern design and expert craftsmanship with the finest materials available, and make stained glass accessible to anyone.

I do a lot of work in century homes with windows on their stairwell landings. The period stained glass often needs attention after years of weather and gravity. In some cases, tho, the original glass has regrettably been removed. Bruce to the rescue!

Here, the original windows had been replaced with poorly built ones that began to fail after a few years. The home had other leaded glass, so I looked to it for inspiration. The result is a simple, clean, classic design (with a little textural sparkle) that is properly reinforced and feels like it has always been there.  ​

I created this stairwell window a few years ago. Visitors to the studio are always drawn to it.

Like most of my work, I wanted to design something with one foot in the past and another in the present. To this end, I took design cues from other stained and leaded glass in their home. Formal elements like the overlapping circles, wide edge border, and central “medallion” speak to traditional stained glass design. Then I introduced a flurry of colored roundels, deconstructed some of those formal shapes, and started playing with color.

The result is joyful and exuberant while still somehow bowing to the constraints of geometry and order.

A few months back, I was asked to recreate a window for a church in Elk Mills, Maryland.

I worked with Willet Hauser & Associated Crafts Inc., a stained glass company with a national reputation that is based in Winona, Minnesota.

The original window, a welcoming Christ with the words, “Come Unto Me” was destroyed in a fire, but the church was being rebuilt. The Christ window behind the altar would be recreated for the new sanctuary.

The challenge was substantial. The church only had a few photographs of the original window to work from, and those left a lot to be desired. Changes in the actual dimensions of the new window meant a slimmer redesign of the background. I worked with the Willet Hauser’s Art Director, Kathy Jordan, and the head of their Painting Department, Melissa Janda, to craft a solution to the task before us.

The whole process from design to completion of the finished window took just under a month. I think we captured the essence of the original and gave the church a beautiful window for their new sanctuary.

Visit just a few of the photos of the Baldwin United Methodist Church Window project as it unfolded in the Photo Album on Facebook.
​

When I moved into 78th Street Studios last July, I already planned on making a batch of my Bar Code Blocks.  I had made some a few years earlier, but never really planned to revisit them. People kept liking them and asking for them, though, and as I would now have my own studio in which to show and sell them, I figured that it was time for another batch. The wood was milled and ready to go, and I’d surely get some together by the 2017 Christmas Season. ​

Well, here it is March! I still hardly have the time to get these guys assembled, but I got the glass cut and laid out and am committed to having at least some ready for the Third Friday open house. I love these things. They are joyful and substantial and say almost nothing. Come and get ‘em!