To tell the truth, I don't like stained glass. Or rather, I haven't liked it. I never gave it much thought. To me, stained glass has always been synonymous with churches and billiards; two things I never really understood. Artists have used it as a medium for decoration and storytelling for well over a thousand years, but to me stained glass has never made sense. As a home design element, forget about it.
While pulling together photos for this post, my thoughts started to evolve. I didn't have a full change of heart, but I'm started to see stained glass differently. I actually gave it thought. I realised there's a permanence to it. The deliberate placement of a painting that's permanently attached to the wall. It becomes part of the room, part of the house. Instead of as a tacky window, I now see the art for what it is. Albeit some of it's still tacky but that's true about all art. I started to have favourites (the geometric stairwell) and would argue with myself the merits of each room. You see, I found it extremely difficult to narrow the list to only ten pictures. There were too many good representations of stained glass to choose from. Perhaps that's a testament to the greatness of 1970s design.
