13th century stained glass from the Bourges cathedral in France. Seen yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
February 19, 2007
A stray devil.
13th century stained glass from the Bourges cathedral in France. Seen yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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7 comments:
Haven't all devils gone astray at some point?
I love this little devil, I see it every Friday when I go to the Met to draw.
A minor correction to Cedarford's explanation: I believe it's gold oxide that usually produced medieval ruby glass. How the gold oxide was obtained at the period, I don't know.
While in high school I worked in a small stained glass factory, mostly making the actual lead windows out of the painted glass. Some of the artists were quite old then, and remarkably talented (and precise, as mistakes are quite expensive).
The style for church windows has retained a certain similarity over the centuries. We didn't make any devils, though. Modern churches don't talk about Old Scratch much anymore, much to his glee (although he seemed quite gleeful back then, too).
New Yorkers are like that devil; expensively made, sinister to the naive, but they're the ones you remember seeing, not the umpteenth boring-ass angel!
Wow, thanks for the information, Cedarford. Faraday is a hero of a friend of mine, I guess I should do some reading about his work in this area. I've studied medieval pigments, but have not gotten into the technology of glass production.
"Just as long as no New Yorkers had to come with them"
The good thing is that 99% of the people I see at the Met each week aren't New Yorkers. The bad thing is that they don't really act any better.
Reminded me of a piece Pete McGrain did for Kokomo glass: Keepers. He had an article in Glass Craftsman a few years back explaining how he worked with glass and paints. Unfortunately, it isn't online. I have it stashed somewhere in the basement, so I'll try to find it and see if he says anything interesting.
Pete McGrain gallery
Man I love this blog! I was just going to post some little joke that Matt beat me to ages ago. And I end up with a science and culture lesson.
Well done and thank you.
Trey
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