Stained Glass

Stained glass is colored glass, its hue produced by metallic oxide additives during manufacture, cut and assembled into pictorial or decorative panels held together by strips of lead or, in some traditions, copper foil, an architectural glazing tradition most closely associated with the windows of medieval European cathedrals from the twelfth century onward. Its use extended beyond religious buildings into secular civic and domestic architecture from the nineteenth century, particularly during the Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements, and its capacity to transform ordinary daylight into colored, narrative or abstract patterns of light has kept it a valued architectural material into contemporary ecclesiastical, memorial and decorative commissions.