Liturgical stained glass appears to be alive and well. We are seeing strong liturgical revivals among Catholics and Lutherans, and even among less liturgical bodies, stained glass is seen as an important way to beautify the church and teach the faith.

The process can be done by a single artist from start to finish, but that limits the size and scope of the project. If a window takes 5,000 man-hours to make, it will take a lot longer for one person to put in the work (2.4 years) than 20 people (6-8 months?). The large stained-glass studios of the early 20th Century economized by having artists specialize in one area (design, cartooning, selecting, painting, etc.). That's our approach, too. After the cartooning process, it gets passed to the next department and our contact with the project grows less and less.

Hi, Paul. Thanks for your enthusiastic comment and questions. The big projects are certainly time-intensive—many of them are in the studio for over a year. Because we do work all over the country, I seldom get to see the final results installed. One exception was a large project we recently finished for St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church in Omaha, NE. I grew up in Omaha, so I got to stop in and see them when I visited recently. The large figure on the horse near the end of the video (10:05) is one of two large transept windows I worked on for that church. The figures are about twice life-size, so it was both technically challenging and visually impressive. We have an ongoing commission with the church, so there will be many more windows to follow.

The St. Patrick window that I followed through most of the video is part of a series that is still being painted, but they'll be installed in Idaho when complete. I wish there were more churches in the upper midwest that we have recently done work for. I'm sure with more time at the studio, we'll land some jobs closer to "home."

Hi, Robert. Thanks for your questions!
1) I wouldn't say stained glass is limited to wealthy churches. We do aim for high-dollar commissions, but we have a breadth of experience that allows us to work within a range of budgetary requirements. The complexity of the design, the amount and level of painting, etc. will of course affect the bottom line. To bid a job, we multiply the square footage of glass by a numerical factor that represents the relative complexity (pieces per sq. ft., figurative vs. symbolic, abstract, etc.). That's all based on years' worth of data collected that figures in the time and labor at different levels of complexity. So we can be fairly precise in bidding a job.

2) Cost is indeed a factor, though I think there is a sub-culture within Lutheranism that is unaware or uninterested in stained glass and other "high church" things. In the Omaha area, for instance, most of the churches in our fellowship were built since the 60's, and there was not much interest in stained glass. Indeed, even if the congregation suddenly became interested, the architecture often didn't anticipate or allow for that sort of thing. So my interest in stained glass has come fairly recently—and certainly wasn't due to early exposure to the art.

3) My perception is that interest is increasing. (But that could be in part because I grew up totally unaware of the art.) I think that while the younger generations are saturated in new media, there is a growing longing for things that are permanent and rooted in tradition and culture. That certainly fits with the liturgical renewals that many churches are seeing. We want church to be something "other"— a break from a fast-paced consumerist society. Stained glass is wholly unlike a video screen. It is just there—teaching the faith unflinchingly day after day, year after year.

4) Stained glass does require some maintenance—from occasional cleanings to full restoration. Many studios get a portion of their income from restoration work, ours included. Stained glass will last a long time, but not forever. Eventually the forces of nature cause the lead to weaken and oxidize, heat and moisture buildup can cause sagging and buckling, and so windows need to be removed and re-leaded every hundred years or so. Protective coverings can also be installed that allow air flow to the interior, extending the life of the stained glass.

5) I'm not sure if you mean installation? There might be installation jobs that are within the skillset of your congregation's handyman, but installation is such a small part of the labor of making a stained glass window that I'm not sure you'd save anything by doing it yourself. And depending on the location of the windows, there may be ladders, scaffolding, or lifts involved; it's just not the sort of thing you want to DIY. If an accident occurs during installation (and it does happen occasionally), you definitely want it to be on the company that made them—not on you.

6) We do consider point of view, but not to the degree that we would distort a figure to look 'normal' from one particular angle. You do have to be careful with figures though, because often one is tempted to draw them from slightly above. (That's especially true of me, because I'm a head taller than average.) But if you take a drawing made from an overhead angle, blow it up life-size, and view it from an extreme low angle, it would look quite unnatural.

Hi, Isaiah. Thanks for your question.

There are existing technologies that can reduce labor in certain areas, but they are not without drawbacks. For instance, there are water jet machines that can cut pieces of glass with laser precision. But while it can save labor, it also creates more waste (unusable scrap glass), and the advantages really aren't apparent until you're doing huge jobs with lots of repetition. There are companies that "print" ceramic inks onto solid sheets of glass and call it "stained glass." But it will never have the transparency, brilliant color, or refractive properties that mouth-blown glass has.

It's difficult to see very far into the future, but making stained glass is more of an art than a manufacturing process, and for that reason it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that could ever be automated. And, I don't imagine that that end result would be a desirable one. The technology we have helps us go from one step to the next with less time and labor, and those advances are certainly welcome.

Think about it, too, from the perspective of vocation. When a stained glass window is made, it passes through the hands of maybe 20 people. Not every person in the studio has faith, but many do, and every time they touch the window it is a labor of love—for God, and for their neighbor. And God is providing an income for those craftsmen through their labor. And so especially when we are considering something made for a church, it should probably make a difference to us whether that object was crafted by hands of faith, or whether somebody just pressed a button that said "print."

Hi, Haden. Thanks for your questions. I'm afraid I can't give you anything like a cost to restore your windows. Even if I had more information, I have nothing to do with pricing. What you are describing sounds like paint loss, and that's a difficult thing to deal with. Color can be naturally existing in the glass, or it can be added by applying vitreous paints and enamels and firing them in the kiln. Sometimes with antique windows the paints were not fired to the right temperature, which affects the adhesion, and so they begin to flake off over time. There is really no way to reverse that. But if enough of the image is left that it is recognizable, sometimes a replacement piece can be made and patched into the window. Depending on how extensive the losses, and how many pieces need replacing, it could exceed the cost of new windows. Figurative work would be the most expensive, due to the difficulty of matching the shading, flesh tones, and style of paint application.

Hi, Justus. Thanks for the comment and questions. Simple stained glass windows can be beautiful, too, though I'm not sure if I can comment on whether their popularity is growing or not. Even in 120-year-old churches, you'll sometimes find simple grid or diamond pattern glass. Sometimes a decorative stencil would be applied to each piece, to give it some ornate texture. And there might be a small medallion with a church symbol in the center. That was a cost-effective way to fill a church with stained glass that did not cost exorbitant amounts of money, and still had the ability to teach. The design process would be much simpler, because a single design could be used for all the windows, and stencils would make the process of repeating a design quite easy. We still use some of those same techniques on windows today.

Minimalist architecture often doesn't consider stained glass—or if it does, it prefers something entirely abstract that will not compete with the structure. Unfortunately, it's rare to find an architect who will consider stained glass from the outset, and work to incorporate it into a harmonious whole.

Stained glass is a pretty resilient medium, assuming the paints are all fired properly, and can last for centuries. The lead cames, on the other hand, will oxidize and start to lose their structural integrity within 60-100 years, depending on how well they are cared for and the conditions they were installed in. So some maintenance is necessary. Protective coverings and proper air flow will ensure the maximum life of the windows. Every century or so windows should be cleaned and re-leaded, to be ready for the next 100 years.

Thanks for the compliments, Nathan! I appreciate the pun as well. :) I am not sure if there is any hard data on hand as to whether stained glass is trending up or down. But in my limited field of view, it seems surprisingly healthy. Like many industries, we were worried that churches would be hit hard by the shut-downs and subsequent recession, and the result would be a drop in sales. But the Lord saw fit to bless many congregations with increased offerings, and we haven't seen any decreased interest in stained glass. I think that, together with the liturgical renewals that are happening in Catholic, Lutheran, and other historically liturgical churches, seems to indicate a healthy (perhaps increasing?) interest in liturgical art in general and stained glass in particular.

I also hope more churches make use of stained glass. It beautifies worship, transforming the space, and it is such a rich opportunity for catechesis.

Hi, Natalie. Great question. Most of the design work we do is for new churches. It is very rare for a church to want to replace its old windows with new ones—the exception being if the windows were perceived as being particularly ugly. That does happen, unfortunately, but it happens more often with work done by amateurs. A well-meaning member of the congregation, for instance, dabbled in stained glass and made some windows for the church. Or, windows were made in a "contemporary" style in the middle of the last century, which didn't fit the architecture of the older building, and/or the style is now perceived as distasteful. So that happens on occasion.

Usually, churches aim for uniformity. We have had a few commissions where a new church wanted to utilize a set of antique windows, but they included more openings than they had windows to fill them. So we made new windows in the style and technique of the existing antique windows. I don't know if it's any more difficult matching old windows than designing with a blank slate. Certainly each has its own challenges.

Hi, Meg. Prices are a hard thing to give a ballpark for, but jobs with painted glass typically range from $50,000 to $2 million. It depends a lot on the complexity of the design (whether it is figurative, symbolic, or abstract), the level of painting, the square footage of glass, the number of pieces per square foot, etc. We have years' worth of data that we've tracked that can help us price a window pretty accurately—knowing how size and complexity affect the amount of labor it will require.