LOOK right at it! Isn’t it positively glorious?!? This is the best my little camera phone could do, but in real life it is stunning!
This window graces the Redeemer Bible Church, located at 100 Verna Trail North in White Settlement, TX.
I remember, vaguely, when this church was built in 2009, because I noticed that its facade was built with these small, but lovely, flying buttresses. I thought that was pretty cool, even though flying buttresses are no longer a structural requirement for building a large church, it struck me as a sweet homage to ancient architecture. I didn’t particularly notice the stained glass window until one evening when I drove by and it was all lit up from within. It didn’t look like regular stained glass, you know, with skinny lead seams, it was chunky, and had the look of a giant mosaic picture from a coloring book. The depth and vibrancy of the color caught my eye, which wasn’t necessarily the safest thing, as I was, you know, driving…
But catch my eye it did, and it has been in the back of my mind to see if I could pop in and have a look at it from the inside to see how they got those windows so chunky and colorful. This past January, when I bought the stained glass store I discovered in the recesses of the back of the store were these huge slabs of glass, 2 inches thick and 7 pounds apiece. I had never seen such things but the previous owner informed me that they were called Dalle De Verre (see footnote 1 below) and they were used in making giant mosaic-like church windows. AH HAH!, I thought to myself. That’s how they did it. Now, I was on a mission to see this window for reals…
It took a few months, but the stars finally aligned and I managed to catch the Pastor, Scott Klemanchuck on a non-Sunday. He graciously took time out of his day to unlock the sanctuary, and allowed me to see the window up close. It was late afternoon/early evening, and the south facing window was at just the right angle to catch the retiring sunlight. It is even more beautiful in person than I imagined. The window is, indeed, constructed using the Dalle De Verre technique, and I got to see, up close, the actual chipping that gives these windows their signature visual resonance. In the pictures below you can see the chipping and the resin that holds the pieces in place:
I’m pretty tickled that I finally got to see a Dalle De Verre window in person, and Pastor Scott could not have been more kind. We got to talk briefly about the church itself and its ministry. The congregation is clearly important to him and his love of the church is obvious. I am so thankful and grateful for all the lovely people I get to meet in my stained glass travels.
– Stephanie
(1) From Wikipedia:
Dalle de verre, from French: “glass slab”, is a glass art technique that uses pieces of coloured glass set in a matrix of concrete and epoxy resin or other supporting material.
Technique:The technique was developed by Jean Gaudin in Paris in the 1930s. Slabs of coloured glass, 20 centimetres (7.9 in) to 30 centimetres (12 in) square or rectangular and typically up to 3 centimetres (1.2 in) thick, are shaped by breaking with a hammer or cutting with a saw. The edges of the resulting pieces may be chipped or faceted to increase the refraction and reflection effects.
The pieces are laid out to a design, similar to traditional stained-glass work. The pieces are laid on a bed of sand, bounded by a wooden casting frame. A matrix material, sand and cement or epoxy resin, is poured between the glass pieces and allowed to dry, typically requiring 24 hours to harden. The visible glass faces are then cleaned and the resulting solid panel can be relocated, embedded or hung as required.
The use of thicker glass produces deeper colour effects than traditional lead came stained-glass, especially when illuminated by bright natural or artificial light. The technique achieved prominence in the stained glass literature of the 1950s and 1960s.