How To Light Stained Glass Window On Wall

Nosotros know what you're thinking: Stained drinking glass looks great in churches and…actually, just churches. But the charming textile is having a modern resurgence in popularity. A Tiffany lamp sold for just over $three million final calendar month at auction, and when A-list pattern firm Roman & Williams revamped New York's Ace Hotel—arguably the city's coolest hangout—they maintained an original stained drinking glass ceiling instead of ripping it out. Plus, Brooklyn artist Tom Fruin has made a career of creating contemporary stained glass installations effectually the world. Consider this our official argument for using it throughout your abode.

Tom Fruin's stained glass installation in The Jackson, a condo building designed by architectural firm Fogarty Finger in Long Island City, New York.

Alexander Severin

Of course, incorporating stained glass in residential interiors isn't exactly a new fad. Frank Lloyd Wright loved putting what he called "calorie-free screens" in homes like Buffalo'southward Darwin Martin House. There, he created 400 geometric compositions meant to evoke trees, wisteria, and other natural forms originally found on the property. When you lot see how the colored glass refracts and transmits sunlight in various patterns throughout the infinite, it's easy to see why Wright preferred them to regular old windowpanes—and why lots of other aesthetes are getting in on the current resurgence.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Tree of Life stained glass window

Frank Lloyd Wright's Tree of Life light screen.

Courtesy of Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House | Photograph by Biff Henrich

London-based illustrator Chrissie MacDonald began accepting commissions for her stained-glass pieces after receiving all kinds of compliments on her aesthetic have on the practice, a Pop-Art interpretation that's anything only fusty. Los Angeles musician-turned-artist David Scheid has spent the last few years edifice a reputation as the city's go-to stained drinking glass designer for both residential and retail locations.

Chris Fogarty of New York firm Fogarty Finger besides makes a strong argument for incorporating stained drinking glass in an updated way. When the builder purchased what he calls a "crazy sometime" Queen Anne house in Bellport, New York, he was determined to somehow maintain the habitation'due south stained glass windows, which were an amber color with a rainbow array of other glass mixed in. "The windows were kind of chaotic," he remembers.

Stained glass in the living room of a Bellport, New York, house designed by architect Chris Fogarty.

Stained glass in the living room of architect Chris Fogarty's Bellport, New York, house.

Howie Guja

And so he did what any modernist with an appreciation for historical resonance might, replacing the eye amber panel with clear glass and moving and coordinating the colored pieces with paint finishes in each room then that the spaces felt more orderly and thoughtful. Information technology wasn't necessarily an piece of cake set—there are more than 50 kinds of stained glass in the house, then "you accept to go through layers of decision and cognition," as he puts information technology—but the result is worth the try. "Yous tin can see why people buy Marvin windows—they merely come and y'all're done with it—but stained glass has and so much character," Fogarty says.

What say you?

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