Stained glass is one of the oldest arts that is still made today. This page follows it from its beginnings to the present, in broad steps. Dates are approximate, because the surviving evidence is patchy.
Coloured glass before the cathedrals
Coloured glass was made in the ancient world, and fragments of coloured glass have been found in the windows of early churches. The oldest stained glass windows that are still in place with figures in them date from around the year 1100, and the prophet windows at Augsburg Cathedral in Germany are often cited as among the earliest. An early twelfth century monk who wrote under the name Theophilus described how glass was made and painted, which shows the techniques were already well developed.
The medieval Gothic window
Stained glass took off in the twelfth century when the Gothic style opened up church walls into large windows. Abbot Suger rebuilt the abbey church of Saint-Denis near Paris in the 1140s with glass as a central feature. In the thirteenth century, cathedrals such as Chartres were filled with glass that told Bible stories in small panels, for a congregation that mostly could not read. The glass was made of pot metal, glass coloured all the way through with metal oxides, and details were painted on in a dark paint and fired in a kiln. The panels were held together with lead.
Silver stain and painted windows
Around 1300 glass painters discovered silver stain, which turned clear glass yellow when fired. It meant a single piece of glass could hold two colours, and it was widely used for hair, crowns and decoration. Over the next two centuries painters used enamels and more elaborate shading, and windows began to look more like paintings.
Destruction and decline
In England, the Reformation in the sixteenth century and the iconoclasm of the seventeenth century destroyed or removed a great deal of church glass, and many windows were replaced with clear glass. Making stained glass declined for a long time, and many of the old skills were nearly lost.
The Victorian revival
In the nineteenth century a new interest in medieval buildings, the Gothic Revival, brought stained glass back. Architects such as Augustus Pugin wanted churches filled with glass that recalled the Middle Ages. Firms across Britain made windows for the many churches that were built and restored. You can see this revival in the Victorian windows at St Andrew’s in Chippenham, where windows from several well-known studios sit side by side.
Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau
From the 1860s, firms such as Morris & Co. made designs by artists including Edward Burne-Jones, and the Arts and Crafts movement argued that glass should be designed and made by the same people. In America, Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge developed opalescent glass, and Tiffany’s studio made wide use of the copper foil method, which allowed lampshades and curved forms. Around 1900 the flowing lines of Art Nouveau reached glass, and in Glasgow Charles Rennie Mackintosh made his own spare, stylised leaded designs. See the section on Mackintosh.
The twentieth century
The two world wars damaged many windows, and replacing them became a major task. After the Second World War, artists such as John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens made large modern windows, including the baptistry window at Coventry Cathedral, which was completed in the early 1960s. Abstract and modern styles joined the traditional ones.
Skills that have been lost
In Victorian and Edwardian Britain, most large towns had glass decorators, stained glass studios or cutting works. Between them they produced a wide range of decorative glass: brilliant cut and hand bevelled panels, hand painted and kiln-fired work, acid etched and embossed glass, and leaded lights in great quantity. Pubs, shops, churches, banks and ordinary houses were glazed with it.
In the twentieth century demand fell. Machine production, changing taste and, later, lower-cost imports from overseas, including from China, made handwork harder to sell. Many workshops closed, apprenticeships stopped, and some skills passed out of use because there was no longer enough work to keep them going. Hand bevelling, brilliant cutting and glass painting are now practised by only a few people.
Today skilled glass artists are harder to find, and those who remain are in demand, especially for restoration. Where an old window or door needs repairing, it can take time to find someone who can match the original work. See the histories of brilliant cut and bevelled glass and acid etched glass, and the page on conservation and restoration.
Today
Stained glass is still made and repaired in studios around the world, using traditional methods alongside newer ones. In 2007 the artist Gerhard Richter completed a window of coloured squares at Cologne Cathedral. At the same time there is a lot of conservation and restoration work to keep old windows safe, and newer approaches such as overlay stained glass offer a different way to get a similar look.
A short timeline
- 600s: coloured window glass is used at the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow in north-east England.
- Early 1100s: large figured windows appear, and a monk writing as Theophilus describes how glass is made, cut, painted and leaded.
- 1300s: silver stain gives yellow on clear glass.
- 1500s to 1700s: stained glass declines and enamel painting on clear glass takes over.
- Early 1800s: the Gothic Revival brings back pot metal glass and leaded construction. Crown glass is made at St Helens from 1826.
- 1845 and 1851: the glass tax and window tax are abolished, and plate glass becomes affordable.
- 1850s: brilliant cutting is introduced. Acid etching becomes a commercial trade in the following decades.
- 1870: Benjamin Tilghman patents the sand blast.
- 1880s: opalescent glass and the copper foil method are developed in the United States.
- 1930s: toughened glass becomes commercially available. Dalle de verre is developed in Paris.
- 1959: the float glass process is announced.
- 1974 and 1979: a glassworks in Portland, Oregon starts making hand-rolled sheet glass, then develops compatible glass for fusing.
- 1978 to 1982: patents are filed and issued for simulated leaded and stained glass, the forerunner of overlay stained glass.
- 1991 and 1992: overlay stained glass becomes popular in the UK from 1991, and bonded decorative bevels follow in 1992.
The articles
- Medieval Stained Glass and the Origins of Leaded Lights
- How Window Glass Was Made: Crown, Cylinder, Plate and Float
- Stained Glass from the Gothic Revival to the Twentieth Century
- Opalescent Glass, Tiffany and the Copper Foil Method
- The History of Brilliant Cut and Bevelled Glass
- The History of Acid Etched Glass
- The History of Sandblasted and Deep Carved Glass
- The History of Fused and Kiln Formed Glass
- Where Overlay Stained Glass Came From
Related
- Glass Types: what each kind of glass is and how it is made today.
- Tools and Equipment: how stained glass is made by hand.
- How Coloured Glass Is Made: the metals that give each colour.
- How Lead Came and Overlay Lead Are Made: casting, milling and overlay lead.
- Artists: the designers and makers who shaped the craft.
- Glass Glossary: definitions of the terms used.
See also The History of Stained Glass in the USA.
Sources and further reading
- Victoria and Albert Museum: stained glass, an introduction
- Victoria and Albert Museum: stained glass, Gothic Revival and beyond
For a quick overview of how decorative glass developed, see the timeline of decorative glass.