The light was heavenly here the other day – just as David was working on a water-colour design in our stained glass Studio #2 …

Sunlight in the studio at Stanton Lacy

But that’s not in fact the water-colour you see right there.

What you’re looking at is the full-sized black-and-white predecessor of the final full-colour design.

The actual water-colour is on a bench to the right and tantalizingly out of view.

(Well, our clients haven’t seen it yet. So you too, dear friends, must exert due patience!)

We’ve found this to be a most useful three-stage way of preparing our stained glass designs.

1. A small sketch which reveals the broad geometry of the window – you can just see this pinned to the left-hand timber post.
2. A full-sized design in black-and-white (graphite) that articulates the precise geometry and also specifies all the tonal details (vital for the glass painting and silver-staining that we do).
3. A full-sized water-colour design which the client sees and – within the limits of the medium (light-reflective paper) – understands to give a good impression of how their glass will eventually look.

At each stage, there’s plenty of time for conversations with our clients, so that everyone knows that all the hundreds of individual ideas are taking shape and coming together.

Canny eyes amongst you will note there’s colour in the border of the black-and-white design.

Yes, indeed.

Not just ordinary colour, but stolen colour.

Stolen from a Mondrian in fact.

Some call this “theft”. We call it “inspiration” and “hommage”.

A fine line, of course. And it’s one that we tread carefully.

We naturally informed our clients.

Larceny, yes – sometimes.

Fraud, deception and “passing off”, most definitely not!

Such, at any rate, will be the substance of our defence should we one day get a knock on the studio doors from some ferret-t00thed attourney for the New York Museum of Modern Art …