We make it a point to share the journey with our clients as we create their projects. This creates a collaborative atmosphere and ensures that there will be no surprises at the end.
Below are some of the processes we’ll use on this project. I’m always amazed by how many details we have to coordinate and how creatively our minds work to pull everything together.
I create sketches, often on the kitchen table, to study the sections’ proportions and how the windows balance with each other. Drawings are worked over and over to refine the work and to help create a plan for their execution.
Finding the right glass is always a hurdle. We visited S.A. Bendheim in Wayne, New Jersey to select from their stock. This is a hand-blown glass from Germany, and in my opinion, some of the finest being made today. I look for color variation and movement in the striations. I’m also conscious of the surrounding colors and the “theme” of the window.
In this process, we will accent the “jewels” for our windows. Starting with hand-beveling glass on our 1915 machinery, we then select colors to laminate behind the bevels to create the various colored jewels. One trick we’ve learned is to pull glass from our supplier’s sample kits. This gives us a wide range of colors in a cost-effective way.
It seems like today, none of our projects are complete without including some of our flameworked leaves. Here, we will attach them as if they were blown across our windows on a windy day.