An Artist, a Glass Painter, a Craftsman, and a Debate about their Role in the Design and Execution of Stained Glass
Wojciech Bałus
wojciech.balus@uj.edu.plJagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7108-2184
Abstract
According to a discussion which took place in Germany in 1912, the fundamental environment for stained-glass making were workshops. It was within various workshops that simple ornamental glazing was put together. Designs were either produced by artists employed at workshops, which allowed them to sign their work with their names, or the effort was done collectively, with no singling out of the individual designers of the cartoons; in this case, the latter were treated as common property intended for multiple use. Thus, it was only in this environment that the agents emerged as “compilers” of simple glazing patterns and someone else’s models, as “salaried designers”, as artists associated with the workshop, or else as independent artists, often acclaimed ones. The authorship of the stained glass windows has always been entangled in a sui generis discourse involving the organisation, selection, control and redistribution by a certain number of procedures resulting from the nature of “workshop work”.
Keywords:
stained glass, artist, craftsman, stained-glass designing processReferences
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Authors
Wojciech Bałuswojciech.balus@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7108-2184
Wojciech Bałus (b. 1961) is an art historian, a professor at the Institute of Art History of the Jagiellonian University. His research interests focus on the theory and history of art between the nineteenth and twenty first centuries, as well as on the relationship between art and philosophy, cultural anthropology, and literary studies. Within the Corpus Vitrearum International he conducts research on Polish stained glass art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; he serves as the Chairman of the Polish National Committee of Corpus Vitrearum. He is a regular member of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and member of the AICA.
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