Back in April I spent a few days in New York. My guidebook pointed me in the direction of a couple of churches with interesting stained glass so I paid them a visit. The first was St Ann and the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights. Almost all the windows in this church were designed by an English man,William J. Bolton between 1844 and 1888. Apparently the cycle of windows is the first of its kind in America and has been declared a National Historic Landmark. Rather amazingly the windows are national treasures considered by architectural historians to be comparable to those at Canterbury and Chartres. And yet the church seemed to be rather forgotten and was all in darkness until the caretaker spotted us and switched the lights on revealing windows with beautiful jewel-like colours. We were invited to go upstairs to see the windows on the upper level from balconies that ran down each side of the church. It was fantastic to be able to get so close to the windows and really study them. The two pictures here show details from two windows.
The second church I visited was on Madison Avenue, not far from the Empire State Building. Although most of the windows in the Church of the Incarnation were fairly bog standard late Victorian fare (by British glass studios) there were some remarkable exceptions as not only were American stained glass artists represented in windows by Tiffany and La Farge but there were also windows designed by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. I have to say that the latter two were much more to my taste. The American technique seems to be one of using very small peices of glass to create detail rather than paint and etching. In one La Farge window he used oil paints for a portrait with a rather blurry effect. It was a very dull day when I visited which didn't do the American windows, with their heavy leading, any favours either. The pictures here show some details of the Burne Jones and a La Farge.
