Stained Glass

Stained Glass is the name given to many types of Glass Work that's dealing with colored Sheet Glass by the general population. While this is how it's most often used, this isn't technically correct!

There's been a long history behind what exactly stained glass encompases, but true "Stained Glass" would be glass that is stained with Silver Stain. Silver stain is where the "Stain" in Stained glass originates from and has lead to it covering more than just glass stained in this way. Stained glass has also historically been used to specifically refer to Church windows as they are often highly Painted or Stained.

Stained Glass in the Modern Age

As modern glass has greatly expanded and stained glass isn't mostly limited to Churches and other large entities, it's often used interchangeably where Art Glass would be used instead.

While technically not everything is stained glass, people made it common to refer to the glass itself as stained glass instead. Thus connecting many of these processes together by using the same base material.

Some common types of work that are lumped into the stained glass group are the following:

• Mosaic of all types.
• Foil/Tiffany Method where the glass is joined with foil wrapped around each part of glass.
• Came is the traditional construction with some sort of profiled metal.
• Fusing contains all sorts of merging and shaping of glass within a Kiln.
• Painted Glass where a glass like paint is used and then fired in a Kiln.

While all of these are vastly different things, they all share the common use of sheet glass that is then broken down or altered to make a finished work. In many cases, there's even large overlaps between these areas within a single project. Painted Glass being widely used within Came windows within churches is a great example of this crossover where massive portions or even the whole window is painted to depict religious figures, symbols or animals.