Stained Glass Art in the Middle Ages Sculpture Art From the Middle Ages
A medieval recipe for the spectacularly colored and painted windows that decorated churches built betwixt the 10th and 16th centuries.
While examples of stained glass windows take been found dating dorsum every bit early on as the 6th century, it was the introduction of the great cathedrals of the 11th and twelfth centuries that popularized the fine art of decorative glass.
View the photograph gallery for some of the primeval examples of stained glass from the Middle Ages:
Most of what we know about how stained glass was made in medieval times comes from a 12th-century monk who, writing under the pseudonym Theophilus, left behind a sort of manual for medieval fine art, called De Divers Artu ("On various arts"). This handbook, which was rediscovered past a High german librarian in 1744, contains invaluable information on the practise of medieval art, with its detailed instructions on how to painting, perform metal piece of work, and create stained drinking glass windows.
In his own words, here is Theophilus' recipe for stained glass made from sand and ash (potash):
1. Ready beech wood ash
If you have the intention of making drinking glass, first cut many beech wood logs and dry out them out. And then burn them all together in a make clean place and carefully collect the ashes, taking care that you do not mix whatever earth or stones with them.
2. Mix sand with the ashes and place in a furnace
Mix them in a clean place, and when they accept been long and well mixed together elevator them up with the long-handled iron ladle and put them on the upper hearth in the smaller section of the furnace so that they may be fritted. When they begin to get hot, stir them at once with the same ladle to foreclose them from melting from the heat of the fire and agglomerating. Proceed doing this for a night and a day.
3. Melt the mixture (the frit) in ceramic pots
Meanwhile take some white pottery dirt, dry information technology out, grind it carefully, cascade water over it, knead information technology difficult with a piece of wood, and make your pots. These should be wide at the top, narrowing at the lesser, and should have a pocket-size in-curving lip around their rims. When they are dry, pick them upward with the tongs and set them in the blood-red-hot furnace in the holes [in the hearth] made for this purpose.14 Choice up the fritted mixture of ashes and sand with the ladle and make full all the pots [with it] in the evening. Add dry woods all through the night so that the drinking glass, formed by the fusion of the ashes and sand, may be fully melted.
4. Blow the melted frit into a cylinder.
At the outset hr next morn, if y'all want to brand sheets of glass, take the iron blowpipe, put its end in a pot full of glass, and when the glass sticks to it turn the pipe in your hand until equally much glass as yous want agglomerates effectually it. Have it out at once, put it to your oral fissure, and blow gently; and then take it immediately out of your mouth and hold it near your cheek, lest by take chances you should suck the flame into your mouth when you draw in a breath
5. …and flatten it into a sheet of glass.
And so, enfolding the rim in the centre [at the other end] with a wet stick, split up [the cylinder] from the pipe. Then give information technology to a boy who volition carry it on a slice of wood inserted through i of its holes to the annealing furnace, which should be moderately hot.
6. To brand colored glass, he explained:
If y'all run into [the glass in] a pot changing to a saffron xanthous colour, rut it until the tertiary 60 minutes and you will become a light saffron yellowish. Work upward as much of it in the aforementioned fashion to a higher place. And if you wish, let it oestrus until the sixth hour and you will get a reddish saffron yellow. Brand from it what you choose. But [alternatively] if you see [the glass in] any pot happening to plough a tawny color, like flesh, use this glass for flesh-color, and taking out as much as you wish, estrus the remainder for ii hours, namely, from the start to the third hour and you will become a calorie-free royal. Heat it from the tertiary to the 6th hr and it will be a ruddy purple and exquisite.
7. To create the windows themselves:
If you want to assemble uncomplicated windows, kickoff mark out the dimensions of their length and latitude on a wooden lath, then draw curl work or anything else that pleases you and select the colors that are to exist put on it. Cut the glass and fit the pieces together with a grozing atomic number 26. Enclose them in lead [cames], putting in nails and solder on both sides. Surround with a wooden frame, strengthen with nails and set it upwards a identify where you wish.
Read more:
This is why churches have stained glass windows
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Source: https://aleteia.org/2018/10/15/how-was-stained-glass-made-in-the-middle-ages/
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