Purple Iris Stained Glass Window Commission

I recently finished this large purple iris window for a lovely couple who travelled all the way from Hertfordshire to commission.  They were so nice they even bought me a beautiful bouquet of irises when they came to collect it.  

The design was quite challenging, especially in a window of this size (approximately 10 square feet) to make it stable and strong.  Although the panel was to be fitted on the inside of an existing window, which would provide support and stop the panel from bowing over time, it was still important that the design allowed me to handle and manoeuvre it during the making, without being too unwieldy.

The glass used for the iris petals is a machine-made streaky, but it was perfect to recreate the delicate, tissue-paper quality of them.  I also added a little bit of silver stain to suggest the yellow area at the centre.  The background glass is an ultra-pale blue tinted Polish mouth blown glass, which has beautiful meandering striations, tiny air-bubbles and superb clarity, allowing the sunlight to sparkle as it comes through.  You can see on the top picture the reflection cast on the adjacent wall.

Here are some work-in-progress images...

Design:

The panel was so large I had to design it on the floor over 3 days.  In order to make it, I had to get a new workbench built (I needed one anyway, but it was good to have the impetus).  Pictured is the old, scruffy one I've been working on the for the last 10 years.  Working on the new one is like driving around in a Rolls Royce.

Leading:

Often my favourite stage of making a window... seeing it take form in front of your eyes is quite magical.

Ready to solder:
Because of the sword-shaped leaves, a lot of the lead joints were at quite an acute angle, and have to be cut well so that they can be soldered neatly.  I can get quite OCD about my leading...

Cementing:

Never the nicest job, but I had just cleaned out and reorganised my cementing shed, so it was nicer than it had been for a long time in there.

Birdies and Beasties

Hopefully, by the end of this evening, I will have finished all the various bits and pieces in the workshop that have been gathering dust for the past couple of weeks. And when I have, I will then have enough items to make a trip to the "Room of Doom" (or the Cementing Shed, as I believe it is sometimes known) worthwhile. Cementing is the process of filling the gaps between glass and lead with a black gloopy mixture of linseed oil, white spirit, whiting (powdered chalk) and plaster, which then sets to make the window strong and watertight. It is also very messy, dusty, and tedious. But I don't mind it too much as long as I have a few pieces to do at once and some trashy high-energy pop on the radio (this is not the time for erudition). As a result of my infrequent trips to the cementing shed, it becomes the place of choice for freakishly large spiders.