Bless her, she’d been asked to write an article for next February’s Homes & Gardens (and she’d rung us five months early because she knew how busy we get …):
“I’m writing about buying and using stained glass and I’ve been looking at your website with great interest …
(What a lovely journalist, I thought.)
… I need to find out about the various options available to buy, and also who can restore them …
… Can you help me please?”
A colleague from Australia – wanting the smoothest possible surface for his kiln-fired painted stained glass – wrote and asked us how we prepared our trays …
OK, so let’s say you’ve made your lump of paint (not a teaspoonful as the books so wrongly say). You’ve also discovered the benefits of diluting it a little at a time to make the consistency and darkness of paint that you need for your next sequence of brush-strokes.
And then it’s time to stop for the day.
But when you return, of course your lump of paint is dry. Really dry. Dry as a bone in fact.
What do you do to bring it back to life?
James Hogan – a designer and glass painter who worked on many windows in Liverpool Cathedral – made this observation:
Stained glass painting has no relation whatsoever to picture painting.
It is an art of its own, dealing with the transmission of light through coloured material, whilst painting is the application of a coloured pigment on a flat surface upon which light is reflected.
“Oi, girls, let’s get Hogan – he’s disqualified us!”
A neat, analytical distinction, this.
As you would expect, it risks disqualifying substantial quantities of painting on glass.
But never mind that for now. I am sure that the ladies on my left will set dear Hogan straight.
And also never mind Hogan’s assumption that stained glass painting is an art. Ah, “art” is such a slippery word – especially in these post-modern times of ours.
Instead, join me on a journey to the Dark Side.
This way, please.