HOUSE AND GARDEN 
166 
September, 1910 
A scheme worked out in lead and textured “English White” glass for a cottage at Bar Harbor, Maine. Some of the most appropriate glass 
for the home of moderate size is worked out in this way with only the leading and translucent white glass as a medium. Designed and 
executed by H. E. Goodhue 
quality of distinction that sets it apart 
from its neighbors. 
The use of silver stain on white or 
light tinted glass—to come around to a 
technical matter which is not without 
popular interest—affords a treatment for 
domestic purposes which is exquisite in 
effect and which has not yet received the 
consideration it deserves in North Amer¬ 
ica. It is, to be sure, most appropriately 
employed in the Georgian or Renaissance 
styles of architecture, but it can be worked 
into almost any design with brilliant re¬ 
sults. Silver stain, I might say, is the 
only absolutely transparent color in the 
glass painter's palette, one giving a pure 
yellow tinge—or orange, if more heavily 
applied—to a clear or tinted glass. In 
rooms where delicate coloring is desired 
it is most effective, giving a tint of silver 
and gold, sifting the light which might 
otherwise be too strong even for the more en¬ 
during colors in the rugs and hangings of the 
apartment. For excellent examples of the use 
of stain reference might be made to the mag¬ 
nificent windows in the Bibliotheque Lauren- 
tienne at Florence and to the Cupid and Psyche 
series at Chantilly. 
If the distinction of inherited arms belongs 
to the owner, the great window on the stair 
landing might well contain a small central panel 
of these in full color, set in the background of 
simply leaded clear glass. For while heraldry 
in America has no practical significance, it as¬ 
suredly has a sentimental value. Or, lacking 
the arms, there can usually be found some mo¬ 
tive that will suggest the owner's individual 
taste and characteristics, be his hobby history, 
humor, frank quaintness or merely a love of 
knights on horseback or ships at sea. 
The library offers a fascinating problem in 
which the book plates of distinguished men, the 
early printers’ marks, or the arms of universi¬ 
ties may be used. 
Again, in the music room, if there be one, 
there will be no lack of subjects for the colored 
medallions. 
In the dining-room one might work out a 
scheme of panels from the trophies of the chase 
unless these are hung in reality upon the walls. 
To sum up, the possible domestic uses of 
leaded and stained glass are many and varied. 
Few except true craftsmen have any realizing 
sense of their importance and possibili¬ 
ties. Many of them, fortunately for the 
average American, are comparatively in¬ 
expensive if executed by a competent 
and sensible artist. The greatest desid¬ 
eratum at present, from the craftsman’s 
standpoint, is a campaign of popular 
education, to lift from a noble art the 
stigma that has fallen upon it, and it is 
my hope that this brief plea with its 
accompanying illustrations may help 
some readers to understand that the time 
has come when serious attention may be 
paid to the claim that the art of domes¬ 
tic glass is not necessarily decadent or 
hopelessly commercialized, but that in it 
lie remarkable possibilities of value and 
beauty. 
So much for leaded glass without 
color, or with color used only in modera¬ 
tion. While work of this character is 
eminently fitting for houses of moderate size, 
it might be found unsatisfying in many homes 
of palatial proportions and gorgeous furnish¬ 
ing. In homes of this type no limit is placed 
upon the scope of the designer's imagination, 
especially if the building is essentially Gothic 
in its style and feeling. For it should never 
be forgotten that stained glass is primarily a 
Gothic craft. Because of its better preserva¬ 
tion in ecclesiastical structures, the average 
man will always associate it chiefly with 
churches, although a glance at what is left in 
old buildings abroad, both civic and domestic, 
quickly reveals to what extent the architects 
of an earlier day counted upon “painted glass” 
to set off in color their creations in stone. 
Nor is there any reason why people of wealth 
who to-day are building homes which they 
expect to hand down to posterity, should be 
afraid of embellishing these homes with glass 
that the best judgment of this age regards as 
good. Fashions in ornamentation change, to 
be sure, as one realizes in considering the past 
three or four decades of American building. 
The spirit of Gothic art, however, does not 
change, nor would the vagaries of fashion af¬ 
fect the estimation in which people of taste 
would hold a window if it were made to be 
an integral part of a successfully designed 
Gothic building. Rather would it grow in 
popular estimation from decade to decade and 
from century to century. 
In designing glass for the home, 
there is a refreshing freedom 
permitted the designer 
A small panel, chiefly in whites but with 
some touches of color in the design. By 
Alexander Gascoyne 
