This is a detail from one of a north-facing pair of lancets we’ve just completed.
The theme for these two lancets – “At the going down of the sun …”.
(Opposite them, south-facing, a second pair, whose theme is “… and in the morning || We will remember them”. You can find the full poem here.)
And I want now to take time-out from the work I’m doing on some new designs to talk you through the techniques I used to make the poppies.
Maybe then, you too can use these same steps in the work you do.
Do a face on white glass in strong outline only: step back, and the face goes to nothing; strengthen the outline till the forms are quite monstrous – the outline of the nose as broad as the bridge of it – still, at a given distance, it goes to nothing; the expression varies every step back you take. But now, take a matting brush, with a film so thin that it is hardly more than dirty water; put it on the back of the glass (so as not to wash up your outline); badger it flat, so as just to dim the glass less than “ground glass” is dimmed; – and you will find your outline looks almost the same at each distance. It is the pure light that plays tricks, and it will play them through a pinhole.”
In the studio where I learned, one man drew the design, another cut the glass, a third man painted it, a fourth assembled the glass in lead and did the soldering, while a fifth cemented the finished window, picked it clean and polished it.
I’m very excited to tell you we’ve just published a new step-by-step guide for this dramatic and beastly lion:
