Saint Barbara Window Restoration

Buckle up, this is gonna be another long one!

Quite some time ago, we were contacted by a local tattoo artist who had purchased an old stained glass window on eBay. The window had originally come out of a church in Montana, and the client was looking to get the whole thing rebuilt as the original lead was deteriorated and mangled-- plus, it had originally been two windows, and she was hoping to make it into just one. The border was also nearly entirely missing.

The picture from the original eBay listing

Here are a few photos from the cleaning process, showing the state of the lead but also the complexity of the matte painting (the brown you see here). This window was painted traditionally, using enamels, where the line and color are on one side and the shading is done by covering the whole back in brown paint and carefully removing what you don't want.

The white bars you see are just reflections of the light fixtures. Because of the age of the lead, the window had to be disassembled in a water bath to avoid exposure to toxic dust.

Once it was taken apart fully, and cleaned thoroughly, the next step was to build the new corners and border. The new owner wanted it to be fully rectangular, so we chose some greens that went well with the original glass and filled it out.

Here's a close-up of one of the painted pieces:

Look at that detail! The rest of the rebuild was fairly straightforward, except for one thing. Since the glass was mouthblown, some of the pieces were so thick that extra lead had to be added to fully cover the edge!

Then we added the dedication panel. The new owner wasn't aware of it before buying the window, but when we found it in the crate she said she'd like to include it, to honor the history of the piece.

The final step before puttying was to add the rebar reinforcement. These are zinc-coated steel and are tricky to bend, but Janelle did an amazing job shaping it around the saint's head. You can hardly see it at all!

Then, after a lengthy putty and whiting process, she was finally complete!

The full window, backlit. It wound up measuring about 76" x 18".

Detail of the filigree at the top

Detail of St Barbara's head and torso

Detail of the dragon and drapery

We don't have a photo of it installed, but I'll update this post if/when we get one. This was a gorgeous piece, and it was an honor to be part of its history!