The History Of Stained Glass Lamps

Stained glass, in common, is related to both the colored glass as well as the craft or art of making it. The color is acquired by adding metallic salts – such as copper, gold, and cobalt – to molten glass. The colored glass pieces is then stuck together using lead strips – to form designs, habits, or images – and held in place with the aid of a inflexible frame. The same principle works for stained glass window panes and also stained glass lamps.

The most attractive aspect with stained glass making is the engineering skills needed to bring together the collage. When amassed, now as a single entity, the stained glass piece has to stand the weight of its own without cracking at any point. In the case of stained glass windows, it in addition has to withstand the wind stress continuously. No wonder, even now, stained glass manufacture stays a capable art that needs training and meticulousness.

Looking back at the history of stained glass making, it becomes obvious that historians’ from world through had failed to check in when precisely humans have mastered the art of stained glass manufacture with meticulousness, regardless the history of stained glass lamps is known with more certainty. It is believed that in as early as 2nd century BC, Egyptians were previously established glass makers. Artifacts unearthed from Herculaneum and Pompeii gives tip that the Romans were in addition adept in making stained glass materials in 1st century AD. But, the earliest surviving stained glass piece with a image on it was excavated from Lorsch Abbey, a place in Germany, and it dates back to the 10th century AD. By the 11th and 12th centuries, when the amount of churches in Europe had increased dramatically, stained glass manufacture in addition witnessed a positive surge and shortly it were being used in homes in addition, thus giving the art a non-religious identity further. Until then, stained glasses were normally related to cathedrals, and it even had the name – ‘cathedral glass’.

In the 16th century, in the course of Reformation, anyhow, stained glass panes in cathedrals were destroyed in large scale and were substituted by plane glass windows. This was a period when stained glass making took a beating, and the art would have slipped through the brink into a doable extinction in the course of the next two centuries, owing to the renaissance period that followed – the Victorian and Edwardian eras – in the late 1700s and early/mid 1800s.

Stained glass making received a shot in its arm in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s – in the course of the Art Nouveau period – when American glass makers introduced then a lately patented translucent “milky” glass known as opalescent glass in Europe. The patent was owned by John La Farge. This was in addition the period when Louis Tiffany revolutionized the lamp making industry with his innovative Tiffany decorative lamps or easily, stained glass lamps. He introduced a method that was approximately confined to window pane decoration for centuries to the making of lamp shades. This was a move that had changed the lamp making industry forever. The same technique, the core principle intact, is used even today in stained glass lamp making worldwide.

Louis Tiffany used copper foils to tape individual glass pieces, which are then soldered together to form the glass pane. It was in truth the same technique utilized by people in the previously centuries, but then they used lead as the material to hold together the glass pieces. But, the replacement of lead with copper foil brought in the benefits of lesser weight, and the metal’s malleability ensured that finer lines and hence complicated designs may be weaved in more simply to the stained glass lamps.

Years have gone by, and with changing times, Tiffany stained glass lamps have progressively ceased to be hand produced any more. The process has been mechanized and instead of copper foils and colored glass, other expensive materials are used as an alternative. The visible fact that there are certain Tiffany lamps that cost hundreds and thousands of dollars will give one an idea as to what all materials can go into the making of fancy Tiffany lamps.

Post World War II, plenty of people have taken to stained glass lamp – other stained glass craft further – making as a hobby, and now there are tens and thousands of capable hands making stained glass lamps and other products worldwide. Fusing, bending, and slumping of glass in modern electric residence kilns has in fact produced the job a lot easier, as it took away the element of expertise that was needed in the early days, and this is the factor why stained glass lamp making, the vocation, has turned so common nowadays. in addition, the easy availability of factory made inexpensive glass in plenty, availability of teaching formulas, and demand for stained glass lamps as decorative items in homes and offices, have contributed enormously to the popularity of stained glass craft in such a large scale.

Stained glass lamps and windows have evolved continuously in the last 10 centuries, and will resume to do so. As long as we humans enjoy the rainbow of colors that the light undergoing a stained glass piece makes, stained glass lamp industry, the craft, will survive the vagaries of time of course. could be the formulas and formulas would suffer sophistication and revolution with time; but, of course, not the final product.