Rants are good. Rants are our friends. As long as they're aimed at the right targets, they can accomplish many things. But I do have a question about the general topic here, the artificial duplication of age-related deterioration on old painted glass. Having taken your original class and learned about stippling and "spottling" (a word I love) I became adept at creating an antique look. But the actual paint fired into the glass froze a moment in time, that replicated the appearance of a worn piece without duplicating the actual surface condition, which can only be created by Time acting on the original paint through weather, sunlight, wind, airborne dust, cleaning, and so forth. So am I fooling myself about the long-term viability of artificial aging? If I put a repainted piece like your lion into a window that has an original just like it, as yours does; and if my applied artificial aging is ever so perfect in appearance today; will it still look like its original neighboring piece a hundred years from now? It seems unlikely that such dissimilarly-worked pieces will be acted on in the same way by Time's aging forces, and that bothers me. I know there's no practical way to duplicate the original piece and somehow accelerate natural aging forces, and we have to do the best we can to replicate the appearance today, now, this moment in time. But does it ever worry you that this beautiful and tricky matching will be exposed in future generations, and will have to be done over again to bring it into alignment with whatever Time will have done to the original piece?
I see a lot of sense in what Ann says. But I also have my own take, which, if you will buckle up and pack some food, I will now put down for you, though it will likely cause a bit of trouble with some people.
=====
"Does it ever worry you that this beautiful and tricky matching will be exposed in future generations, and will have to be done over again to bring it into alignment with whatever Time will have done to the original piece?"
Yes but no.
I must be careful about what I now proceed to say. Not because I won't say what I mean. But because my head is often in an unzipped mood, where it doesn't pay close attention to the potentially inflammatory fervour with which my lips or hands express what's in it.
It's you visitors to this letter I'm thinking about here, who are but innocent spectators of my wrath. In the clamour, however, it's easy for someone to think he is the target (which he is not).
=====
Sociology of the work-place reveals, it seems to me, that many people seek to cover their butt. This way of living drives me crazy.
If something's true or right, you defend it to the hilt, and hang the consequences or the penalty to you.
(People bang on about how they just had to "think about their family" so couldn't do what they though was right, but unless we're experiencing something like Germany before the Second War, that claim won't hold up for me. What they likely mean is they didn't want to lose their second home, their third car, or their fourth annual holiday. I've gone down fighting many times in life and wouldn't ever wish it otherwise.)
Likewise, if something's arrant nonsense, you call it out, whatever the consequences.
"Call it out" - or more: my head's the kind of head which lacks manners and sense of normative politeness. It thinks you ought to skewer lunacy and make it writhe and squirm, and reduce it to such absurdity that people's brains short-circuit with dissonance in trying to defend it, like reprogramming a pocket calculator to divide by zero.
Diplomacy just ain't my speciality when someone gets me started with their "Current Thing" which they thought was meant to indicate their goodness but instead just made my head explode.
Which is one reason I didn't do the voice-over to the video: I decided not to "let loose" on the readers. What had you done to merit hearing my bitterness and sarcasm?
=====
Back-story, and eventually this will take me to an answer for you: I'd prepared notes, the first paragraph of which was me lamenting the various English churches I'd visited, where, instead of beautiful stained glass faces, I saw white glass, obscured by a veil of fired undercoat.
"What's happened here," you'd wonder if you saw these churches for yourself.
What's happened here is that the fragments from the broken faces had been lost.
And the restorer, lacking photographs of what was there before, and backed by theory or a living expert, asserted that, since we didn't know the lineaments of the missing faces, we were enjoined from guessing but were obligated instead to cut white glass, then undercoat and fire and fit it, and that would have to do.
"Stoppings" I think these interventions might be called.
However, in the same window, other original faces remained unbroken: could the restorer not have used the remaining faces to mimic the style?
What would have been the crime in that?
I leave those questions hanging in the air.
Thus in my half-scripted voice-over, I'd resolved, in mock-conspiratorial tones, to proclaim that you innocent viewers were about to witness an illegal and revolutionary act: for who were we, mere jobbing glass painters, ignorant of academic theory, to imagine the curls of the now-missing mane or the expression in the lion's long-shattered eye?
True, we might seek to justify our crime by saying this lion's features were taken from the lion which sits above: yet surely we were criminals nonetheless, committing a vile conservatorial fraud.
=====
That was going to be for starters.
=====
I was also going to make the point that possibly well-meant but arguably limp-wristed prohibitions against full-blooded intervention can easily accrue over time until the point is reached when the window, neglected by lack of boldness, however justified by a mass of expert reasoning, will be judged for what it has become, a lifeless wreck.
=====
Getting into the swing of things, I was also going to tell the story of when we were re-leading some lovely windows by Burne-Jones: someone requested that, for posterity, we box up the original lead - presumably because Burne-Jones himself had touched the sacred cames of lead, so that scientists might one day extract his DNA, with a view to engineering some paradisiacal island resort, peopled by cloned Burne-Jones's.
Come to think of it, this would make a great film, e.g. if the cloned Burns-Jones's ran amok and started attacking the philistine day-trippers who postured and pretended that they liked Art, but really only wanted to consume it and look good amongst their peers. (OK, OK, I know it's far-fetched that people treat Art that way, like bankers buying up first night tickets to the opera and so-called blockbuster exhibitions: no way that's the kind of world we live in. Silly, silly, stupid me.)
Anyway, we didn't box up the lead: the whole thing was too ridiculous.
=====
But butt-covering is crucial. Call up an expert who's got your back, and there's no limit to the nonsense you can spout, no limit to the untested or logically incoherent actions you can pursue.
Also, experts are so skilled, when things go pear-shaped down the road, at creating the most elaborately persuasive arguments for why their views were right and beneficial at the time.
Agh!
=====
In sum, I agree with you: there'll certainly be differences between painted glass that's n years' old and painted glass that's (n - y) years' old, informally expressed.
That said, I'd like to suggest that, in the present case, we weren't trapped by the full-blooded version of the Richardsonian paradox.
(I use "paradox" in the modern and annoying sense to denote something that isn't a real paradox; it's just that I want to grab attention, so let's not worry about the meaning. I use "Richardsonian" because that adjective, for people who don't know - obviously not you - comes from your surname.)
This is because these windows will be protected on the outside by a huge thick sheet of toughened glass, and properly ventilated not just within but immediately behind as well (that is, between the stained glass and the toughened glass): all in all, a cool, stable, dark environment.
Thus to your question, "will it still look like its original neighbouring piece a hundred years from now?", I feel some justification in speculating it will therefore be at least a hundred and one years (and not the bald one hundred of your fears) before some difference might appear.
I'm imagine you'll find an absurdity here as well. Rest assured that I will join you in denouncing it. The whole thing often drives me bonkers. You only need some expert to say it's fine, and, mirabile dictu, the prevailing narrative is thereby settled. Most important of all, an insurance policy has materialised out of thin air, rather like profits and bonuses did in the lead-up to 2008.
(This project was saved by the presence of a massively practical, hands-on, no-nonsense expert, so common sense was always given a lot of credence. That's one reason why we were 'allowed' to paint the missing lion.)
=====
Sometimes it's like living in a play by Eugene Ionesco or inhabiting some vast anamorphic illusion in which the meaning of our human condition is only coherent or comforting if one stands exactly HERE.
The trouble is, my head's got the fidgets, and I for one just won't stand THERE where I am told. Give me Sisyphus any day.
=====
Thank you for your point, Steve. You're right.
(And so I think was I in choosing not to do the voice-over. It's not you my readers who deserve to be unloaded on.)
=====
If you or anyone's still reading at this point: none of this strand of letters is prescriptive, normative or - except for the emotional joy of seeing the finished set of windows - celebratory. It's descriptive. "This is what we did. This is what happened next." That's all.
We certainly have in mind that, by being open (and hopefully entertaining), people will figure out improvements.
You should seriously write a book, your prose is magical! Oh, wait - you DO have a book! :-) And now that I have a paradox named after me, I'm a happy guy. Thanks for your very interesting and thought-provoking reply!
Conservation is an ever-moveable feast. It’s the reason why any work that is done must be, as far as possible, reversible. New techniques, materials and skills will always arrive over time, enabling the objects to be re-conserved in a better way for the future if needed. I do get your point, that the current restoration may not age in parity with the original. However, the gentle aging of the various elements in the same environment and with similar materials used for the conserved segments as for the originals, should hopefully result in an evenness of deterioration over the years.
I so look forward to your rants Stephen - they make my fortnight 😊 The magnitude of the commission could be daunting on first appraisal, but I guess it’s one of those projects that, in the words of my ethnography conservation tutor, is done ‘like eating an elephant - one bite at a time.’ I may have missed a bit in the explanation, but I wondered what the final details post-leading are done for and with please... to even up some parts with the top lion? Also, it can’t be fired again at that stage, so I’m guessing it must be encased behind another layer of glass for longevity?
Yes, you're right, it would happen over time. It's only that the newbie with a squeaky-clean pair of brand-new shoes stands out: sometimes to fit in, it's OK to scuff things.
Another question about the Lion this time : 1) glycol wash . I watched your video about it but don’t recall what this time it gives you something better than with water ?
2) you assembled the whole sg in order to ...? It’s cold painted ?
Sir, question about the intentionally shattered piece (copper foiled). If the breakage were (were they ..?) « clean «, why copper foil and not HXTAL? Even for an older look , copper foiled was not tremendously used in the 16th century , isn’t ;)?
I must say this whole reading was disturbing. In my country , since it’s a young one compared to Europe , the « motto » is to do everything possible to keep the old glass and often not « imagine » what could have replaced it, unless there is a clear « path to follow ». I had to HXTAL many times shattered sg to the point one might ask : damn...a new-old one might have been better ? I am still debating...
Indeed your prose/sense of humour is gorgeous . Makes me thing of Chris Schwartz writings !
Rants are good. Rants are our friends. As long as they're aimed at the right targets, they can accomplish many things. But I do have a question about the general topic here, the artificial duplication of age-related deterioration on old painted glass. Having taken your original class and learned about stippling and "spottling" (a word I love) I became adept at creating an antique look. But the actual paint fired into the glass froze a moment in time, that replicated the appearance of a worn piece without duplicating the actual surface condition, which can only be created by Time acting on the original paint through weather, sunlight, wind, airborne dust, cleaning, and so forth. So am I fooling myself about the long-term viability of artificial aging? If I put a repainted piece like your lion into a window that has an original just like it, as yours does; and if my applied artificial aging is ever so perfect in appearance today; will it still look like its original neighboring piece a hundred years from now? It seems unlikely that such dissimilarly-worked pieces will be acted on in the same way by Time's aging forces, and that bothers me. I know there's no practical way to duplicate the original piece and somehow accelerate natural aging forces, and we have to do the best we can to replicate the appearance today, now, this moment in time. But does it ever worry you that this beautiful and tricky matching will be exposed in future generations, and will have to be done over again to bring it into alignment with whatever Time will have done to the original piece?
I see a lot of sense in what Ann says. But I also have my own take, which, if you will buckle up and pack some food, I will now put down for you, though it will likely cause a bit of trouble with some people.
=====
"Does it ever worry you that this beautiful and tricky matching will be exposed in future generations, and will have to be done over again to bring it into alignment with whatever Time will have done to the original piece?"
Yes but no.
I must be careful about what I now proceed to say. Not because I won't say what I mean. But because my head is often in an unzipped mood, where it doesn't pay close attention to the potentially inflammatory fervour with which my lips or hands express what's in it.
It's you visitors to this letter I'm thinking about here, who are but innocent spectators of my wrath. In the clamour, however, it's easy for someone to think he is the target (which he is not).
=====
Sociology of the work-place reveals, it seems to me, that many people seek to cover their butt. This way of living drives me crazy.
If something's true or right, you defend it to the hilt, and hang the consequences or the penalty to you.
(People bang on about how they just had to "think about their family" so couldn't do what they though was right, but unless we're experiencing something like Germany before the Second War, that claim won't hold up for me. What they likely mean is they didn't want to lose their second home, their third car, or their fourth annual holiday. I've gone down fighting many times in life and wouldn't ever wish it otherwise.)
Likewise, if something's arrant nonsense, you call it out, whatever the consequences.
"Call it out" - or more: my head's the kind of head which lacks manners and sense of normative politeness. It thinks you ought to skewer lunacy and make it writhe and squirm, and reduce it to such absurdity that people's brains short-circuit with dissonance in trying to defend it, like reprogramming a pocket calculator to divide by zero.
Diplomacy just ain't my speciality when someone gets me started with their "Current Thing" which they thought was meant to indicate their goodness but instead just made my head explode.
Which is one reason I didn't do the voice-over to the video: I decided not to "let loose" on the readers. What had you done to merit hearing my bitterness and sarcasm?
=====
Back-story, and eventually this will take me to an answer for you: I'd prepared notes, the first paragraph of which was me lamenting the various English churches I'd visited, where, instead of beautiful stained glass faces, I saw white glass, obscured by a veil of fired undercoat.
"What's happened here," you'd wonder if you saw these churches for yourself.
What's happened here is that the fragments from the broken faces had been lost.
And the restorer, lacking photographs of what was there before, and backed by theory or a living expert, asserted that, since we didn't know the lineaments of the missing faces, we were enjoined from guessing but were obligated instead to cut white glass, then undercoat and fire and fit it, and that would have to do.
"Stoppings" I think these interventions might be called.
However, in the same window, other original faces remained unbroken: could the restorer not have used the remaining faces to mimic the style?
What would have been the crime in that?
I leave those questions hanging in the air.
Thus in my half-scripted voice-over, I'd resolved, in mock-conspiratorial tones, to proclaim that you innocent viewers were about to witness an illegal and revolutionary act: for who were we, mere jobbing glass painters, ignorant of academic theory, to imagine the curls of the now-missing mane or the expression in the lion's long-shattered eye?
True, we might seek to justify our crime by saying this lion's features were taken from the lion which sits above: yet surely we were criminals nonetheless, committing a vile conservatorial fraud.
=====
That was going to be for starters.
=====
I was also going to make the point that possibly well-meant but arguably limp-wristed prohibitions against full-blooded intervention can easily accrue over time until the point is reached when the window, neglected by lack of boldness, however justified by a mass of expert reasoning, will be judged for what it has become, a lifeless wreck.
=====
Getting into the swing of things, I was also going to tell the story of when we were re-leading some lovely windows by Burne-Jones: someone requested that, for posterity, we box up the original lead - presumably because Burne-Jones himself had touched the sacred cames of lead, so that scientists might one day extract his DNA, with a view to engineering some paradisiacal island resort, peopled by cloned Burne-Jones's.
Come to think of it, this would make a great film, e.g. if the cloned Burns-Jones's ran amok and started attacking the philistine day-trippers who postured and pretended that they liked Art, but really only wanted to consume it and look good amongst their peers. (OK, OK, I know it's far-fetched that people treat Art that way, like bankers buying up first night tickets to the opera and so-called blockbuster exhibitions: no way that's the kind of world we live in. Silly, silly, stupid me.)
Anyway, we didn't box up the lead: the whole thing was too ridiculous.
=====
But butt-covering is crucial. Call up an expert who's got your back, and there's no limit to the nonsense you can spout, no limit to the untested or logically incoherent actions you can pursue.
Also, experts are so skilled, when things go pear-shaped down the road, at creating the most elaborately persuasive arguments for why their views were right and beneficial at the time.
Agh!
=====
In sum, I agree with you: there'll certainly be differences between painted glass that's n years' old and painted glass that's (n - y) years' old, informally expressed.
That said, I'd like to suggest that, in the present case, we weren't trapped by the full-blooded version of the Richardsonian paradox.
(I use "paradox" in the modern and annoying sense to denote something that isn't a real paradox; it's just that I want to grab attention, so let's not worry about the meaning. I use "Richardsonian" because that adjective, for people who don't know - obviously not you - comes from your surname.)
This is because these windows will be protected on the outside by a huge thick sheet of toughened glass, and properly ventilated not just within but immediately behind as well (that is, between the stained glass and the toughened glass): all in all, a cool, stable, dark environment.
Thus to your question, "will it still look like its original neighbouring piece a hundred years from now?", I feel some justification in speculating it will therefore be at least a hundred and one years (and not the bald one hundred of your fears) before some difference might appear.
I'm imagine you'll find an absurdity here as well. Rest assured that I will join you in denouncing it. The whole thing often drives me bonkers. You only need some expert to say it's fine, and, mirabile dictu, the prevailing narrative is thereby settled. Most important of all, an insurance policy has materialised out of thin air, rather like profits and bonuses did in the lead-up to 2008.
(This project was saved by the presence of a massively practical, hands-on, no-nonsense expert, so common sense was always given a lot of credence. That's one reason why we were 'allowed' to paint the missing lion.)
=====
Sometimes it's like living in a play by Eugene Ionesco or inhabiting some vast anamorphic illusion in which the meaning of our human condition is only coherent or comforting if one stands exactly HERE.
The trouble is, my head's got the fidgets, and I for one just won't stand THERE where I am told. Give me Sisyphus any day.
=====
Thank you for your point, Steve. You're right.
(And so I think was I in choosing not to do the voice-over. It's not you my readers who deserve to be unloaded on.)
=====
If you or anyone's still reading at this point: none of this strand of letters is prescriptive, normative or - except for the emotional joy of seeing the finished set of windows - celebratory. It's descriptive. "This is what we did. This is what happened next." That's all.
We certainly have in mind that, by being open (and hopefully entertaining), people will figure out improvements.
You should seriously write a book, your prose is magical! Oh, wait - you DO have a book! :-) And now that I have a paradox named after me, I'm a happy guy. Thanks for your very interesting and thought-provoking reply!
Conservation is an ever-moveable feast. It’s the reason why any work that is done must be, as far as possible, reversible. New techniques, materials and skills will always arrive over time, enabling the objects to be re-conserved in a better way for the future if needed. I do get your point, that the current restoration may not age in parity with the original. However, the gentle aging of the various elements in the same environment and with similar materials used for the conserved segments as for the originals, should hopefully result in an evenness of deterioration over the years.
I so look forward to your rants Stephen - they make my fortnight 😊 The magnitude of the commission could be daunting on first appraisal, but I guess it’s one of those projects that, in the words of my ethnography conservation tutor, is done ‘like eating an elephant - one bite at a time.’ I may have missed a bit in the explanation, but I wondered what the final details post-leading are done for and with please... to even up some parts with the top lion? Also, it can’t be fired again at that stage, so I’m guessing it must be encased behind another layer of glass for longevity?
The only thing I keep wondering is why any restoration needs to be aged. Wouldn’t that happen over time again?
Yes, you're right, it would happen over time. It's only that the newbie with a squeaky-clean pair of brand-new shoes stands out: sometimes to fit in, it's OK to scuff things.
Ok... I read to fast (duh...). Your glycol wash is partially dissolving the water tracing . Fair enough
That's it - it sinks in gently, then softens the gum Arabic.
Another question about the Lion this time : 1) glycol wash . I watched your video about it but don’t recall what this time it gives you something better than with water ?
2) you assembled the whole sg in order to ...? It’s cold painted ?
2) yes, cold-painted. We'll get there late this year or early next.
Sir, question about the intentionally shattered piece (copper foiled). If the breakage were (were they ..?) « clean «, why copper foil and not HXTAL? Even for an older look , copper foiled was not tremendously used in the 16th century , isn’t ;)?
In this case, as perhaps in others, appearance had to please the powerful and wealthy.
:))
I must say this whole reading was disturbing. In my country , since it’s a young one compared to Europe , the « motto » is to do everything possible to keep the old glass and often not « imagine » what could have replaced it, unless there is a clear « path to follow ». I had to HXTAL many times shattered sg to the point one might ask : damn...a new-old one might have been better ? I am still debating...
Indeed your prose/sense of humour is gorgeous . Makes me thing of Chris Schwartz writings !