Stained Glass Work: A text-book for students and workers in glass — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Contrast of Methods

Whall devotes a long passage to comparing the painter's and the glass-painter's working conditions. The painter, he writes, comes each day with a clean palette and colours in tubes, 'beginning, as it were, all over again each time,' relying on memory and skill to mix harmonies from a few pigments. The glass-painter, by contrast, has his specimens of glass round him—'some hundreds, perhaps, of all possible tints'—and must compose a subject by placing bits side by side, with no possibility of slurring or diluting. Whall's language is deliberately vivid: the painter 'rakes in his cold and meagre memory,' while the glass-worker's colours are 'burning round him; singing to him to use them.' This is not a neutral description but a polemical argument for the superiority of working directly with the material.

Sketching in Glass

Whall's central practical recommendation is that the student should 'sketch in glass'—cutting little bits, waxing or gumming them into groups on sheets of glass, and trying effects in the material itself. He advises doing this side by side with a water-colour sketch, 'making each help the other, and thinking in glass.' The method is presented as common sense: 'Is it not far more easy, less dangerous?' Whall even suggests making the water-colour sketch after the glass arrangement. This reverses the usual hierarchy of design over craft, insisting that the material should lead. The passage is notable for its rhetorical questions and exclamatory tone—'Tints! pure tints! What great things they are'—which convey the enthusiasm of a teacher who has tested his methods in practice.

Salvation from Irresolution

Whall describes stained glass as 'a great means of salvation' from two faults: irresolution and garishness. But he immediately qualifies this: 'the fact of salvation lies always in one's own hands,' because these faults are not unknown in stained glass itself. They arise, he says, from 'ignorance of their own material.' This self-critical note is characteristic of Whall's approach: he does not claim that the medium automatically produces good work, but that knowledge of its properties is the safeguard. The passage echoes the editor's preface, which warned that ornamentation divorced from workmanship 'is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation.' Whall's warning to his own students is thus part of a broader Arts and Crafts critique of mechanical reproduction and superficial design.

The Role of the Teacher

The book's dedication and Whall's frequent use of direct address—'you, student of stained-glass'—establish a pedagogical relationship that is both authoritative and affectionate. He refers to his pupils and assistants as having 'learned as much from him as he has from them,' and expresses hope that they have 'enjoyed learning as much as he has teaching.' This reciprocity is reflected in the text's structure: Whall does not simply prescribe rules but models a process of discovery. The inclusion of diagrams 'by two of his apprentices' further underscores the collaborative workshop ethos. Readers are positioned not as passive recipients of information but as participants in a craft tradition that values experiment, material sensitivity, and the joy of making.

Whall's textbook rewards a first reading that pays attention to its rhetorical strategies as much as its technical instructions. The contrasts between painter and glass-worker, the advocacy of sketching in glass, and the repeated emphasis on material knowledge are not merely practical tips but expressions of a coherent philosophy of craft. Readers should note how Whall uses personal anecdote, rhetorical questions, and even humour to make his case. The book is best approached as a workshop companion rather than a systematic treatise: its value lies in the attitudes it cultivates as much as the techniques it describes.

Whall wrote that stained glass begins not with a picture, but with the light held in a worker’s hand. When I close that book, I sometimes recall The Library of Work and Play: Home Decoration — Edition Insights, a gentler volume, where a room, too, is composed from small, patient choices rather than grand plans. Both whisper of making a space honest through humble hands.