Seeing Art of Stained Glass Through the Prism of Time

Stained glass has been a glory of churches since the Dark Ages. We can hardly imagine the impact that a glowing expanse of stained glass had on a serf whose life was almost as circumscribed as that of animals he tended.

We tend to think of ours as an era of relentless change--one in which your new computer is barely up and running before it is out of date. And yet stained glass, made much as it was a thousand years ago, still moves us and continues to be one of the glories of liturgical architecture.

Consider the Moses window to be installed next month at the First Presbyterian Church in Granada Hills. Seven and a half feet tall and more than 2 feet wide, the glass portrait of the great Hebrew leader who led his people out of bondage in Egypt is one of eight windows commissioned by the Valley church from the venerable Judson Studios.

As the organizers of the current “Painting on Light” show at the J. Paul Getty Museum point out, stained glass is an art form brought to life by the light that streams through it. As the quality of light changes in the course of a day, the bright glass shines with ever-changing intensity. In the words of David Judson, the 31-year-old director of the Judson Studios, a successful work in stained glass “tells a story without words.”

The Moses window is being fabricated not far from South Pasadena in the part of Los Angeles recently renamed Garvanza, for the garbanzo beans that once bloomed on its hills. Judson is a fifth-generation stained-glass artist, working in an internationally respected studio founded in 1897 by his great-great-grandfather, William Lees Judson.

David Judson, who spent his childhood hanging around the studio as did his father, Walter, before him, says he has been working in stained glass since he was 13 or 14. Cutting the jewel-like glass into the shapes required for the finished work was his favorite part of the process.

“My mother always talks about taking me to the hospital when I cut my finger,” Judson recalls with a laugh.

The first step in creating the Moses window was meeting with church officials to discuss a design. Next, one of the studios’ artists came up with a design, executed in watercolor on a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot of the finished work. Once approved, the design was translated into a full-size drawing, or cartoon. Three paper copies of the cartoon were made--the top one numbered to keep the pieces from becoming hopelessly jumbled, the middle one showing the glazier where to put the lead, and the bottom one cut into pieces (with a special tool that removes the lead line) that serve as patterns for the individual pieces of glass.

The Judson Studios has three designers among its 14 staffers, as well as three glass painters and other artisans who cut glass, connect the pieces with grooved lead and waterproof and clean the finished product.

Ann Smyth was responsible for the Moses design, with its parted Red Sea and other Old Testament motifs. She used to work on site at the studios, but now telecommutes from her native Ireland, juggling her artful profession with motherhood.

Judson says most of the firm’s clients--about 85%--are religious institutions, “of all different creeds, from Jewish to Christian to Islamic.” But the company also does commissions for private homes, hotels and other institutions. The same Ann Smyth who did the moving glass portrait of Moses also did heraldic designs for flamboyant Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried and Roy. Predictably those designs incorporated the white lions and tigers that are the trademark of the popular illusionists.

The technology of stained glass has changed little over the centuries, according to Hudson and other practitioners. A major innovation was the introduction of the glass cutter in the 15th century. More than 500 years later, another new wrinkle came along--dichronic glass, some of which is being used in the Moses window. Covered with a film based on NASA technology, dichronic glass shimmers in the light like a prism or rainbow.

Hudson says the cost of a stained-glass window varies, according to the complexity of the design, the amount of painted detail and other factors, from $250 to $2,500 per square foot.

You’d think that one perk of being a stained-glass artist in the West would be a steady stream of restoration work, thanks to earthquakes. In fact, Judson says, stained glass stands up pretty well in quakes, especially faceted glass, a more contemporary type than leaded glass, in which chunks of glass are set in epoxy or concrete.

The Judson Studios got some restoration work as a result of the Northridge quake, he says, “but that was mostly from things going through the windows rather than the windows simply breaking.”

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There is a powerful sense of history at the studios’ headquarters at 200 S. Ave. 66. The turn-of-the-20th-century building that houses its offices and workshops served as USC’s first School of Fine Arts and Architecture, with William Lees Judson as its head.

An admirer of Gustav Stickley, who brought the Arts and Crafts principles of William Morris from England to the United States, Judson was a founder of a local Arts and Crafts alliance--the Arroyo Guild, which described itself as “an association of expert workers in the applied Arts.”

Judson and his descendants worked with such giants of the movement as Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1909, Judson and like-minded artisans produced a single issue of a guild magazine called Arroyo Craftsman. Convinced that art could be incorporated into every object and aspect of life, they proclaimed: “Art is only the beautiful way of doing things.” An electrician who took out an ad in the journal boasted, “There is Art even in our business.”

The Judson Studios was so highly regarded it was able to attract such major artists as A.E. Brain and Frederick Wilson away from America’s premiere maker of stained glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany.

David Judson will lead tours of the Getty show, which features stained-glass masterpieces by Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger and other Renaissance artists, today at 6 and 7:30 p.m. You can sign up at the museum information desk at 4:30 p.m. He will participate in a demonstration of stained-glass making at the Getty on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Additional demonstrations are scheduled throughout the month of August.

The Judson Studios has a small gallery with an exhibit illustrating its vivid history. It also schedules tours, lectures and other special events. For more information, call (323) 255-0131.

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Spotlight appears each Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at [email protected].