Ikonografia witraży Wiktora Ostrzołka w gdańskim kościele Mariackim (1977–1980)

In 1966, a commemorative decoration appeared inside St Mary’s Church in Gdansk: its main component was the painting showing Poland’s Baptism placed in the chancel. Meanwhile, a pillar by the Priests’ Chapel was decorated with a standard bearing striped concentration camp uniform cloth with numbers of priests -prisoners in Nazi camps. This referred directly to the décor of the Priests’ Chapel created not long before, and in which Polish priests murdered during WW II had been commemorated in 1965. Thus the millennial decoration of the chancel clearly associated the history of the Polish state with the history of Christianity in Poland, while the decoration of the Priests’ Chapel emphasized the martyrology of Polish priests. Both motifs were clearly continued in two large –size stained glass windows installed in the church in the late 1970s: one of them fills in the window in the Priests’ Chapel, while the other is to be found in the window closing the church’s chancel. Both were designed by Wiktor Ostrzołek, a leading stained glass designer in post -WW II Poland. The iconographic programme of the first refers to the martyrology of priests, yet it does not limit itself to priests -martyrs in recent history, but shows those connected with it from the very beginning: St Adalbert, Five Martyr Brothers, St Stanislaus, St John Sarkander, St Andrew Bobola and Maximilian Kolbe. Respective figures are interconnected with the use of a clear red line serving as a metaphor of the martyrs’ blood. Its continuity connecting St Adalbert with St Maximilian, thus the beginnings of the Polish state with the present, at the same time shows the continuity of the presence of the Catholic Church in Polish history. This continuity is even more unequivocally expressed by the iconographic programme of the chancel stained glass. Here it is the figure of Mary that stands out; she enshrouds the presentations referring to the Church’s mission, and in particular to the Church’s mission in Poland, in her protective mantle. A deep interconnection between the history of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church was presented in the three acts of entrusting Poland to God and Mary: the Baptism of Poland in 966, the Lvov Oath of John Casimir in 1656, and the Jasna Góra Pledge connected directly with the 1966 millennial celebrations.

Dividing the Light

Images can be powerful – and the choices that go into their making, both revealing and obscuring. In 2019 I undertook to make a stained-glass window, based on a photo I had taken ten years prior at a missionary base in South Sudan. I use reflections on this art project to highlight the idea of memory as practice, with a focus on the slippery and sometimes problematic ethics of ethnographic representation as a positioned, porous, and ‘becoming’ subject. Through explaining the context in which the photo was taken, alongside the process of the window’s construction, I reflect critically on discomfort, desire, risk, and imagination, considering the work of the (white) gaze and my own internalised structures of colonial feeling. I evoke ghosts, haunting, and the phantasmal to consider affective connections between (personal and historical) pasts and present, as well as self and other – with acknowledgement that sometimes a past self can also become an other that we must learn to recognise, and dwell with, as part of grappling with the ‘splinters’ of anthropological practice and being.

St James and the Good Shepherd: windows on the landscape

Two New Zealand churches completed in the 1930s, St James' Church at Franz Josef/Waiau (James Stuart Turnbull and Percy Watts Rule, 1931) and the Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo (Richard Strachan De Renzy Harman, 1935), feature large plate glass windows behind the altar, affording expansive views of the natural landscape beyond. This represented a significant departure from prevailing ecclesiastical design ideas of the time, with the interior of the churches being intimately connected to the landscape outside, rather than the usual largely internalized atmosphere with any sense of the surroundings limited to light coming through strategically placed decorative or stained-glass windows. It is, however, a design aesthetic that has seldom been utilized in New Zealand since. This paper traverses the history and design of the two churches and their relationships with the landscapes in which they are situated, and concludes that St James' Church provides a heightened religious experience and is a more successful metaphor for the Christian journey.

Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

Green chitosan: thiourea dioxide cleaning gel for manganese stains on granite and glass substrates

The cleaning or removal of manganese stains on Cultural Heritage has not been much tested or successful so far. The aim of this article was to assess a new green cleaning gel for Mn-rich black-blue stains on different substrates. The black-blue stains were characterized at optical and chemical level through colour-related data, optical microscope, FTIR, XRF and XPS. Mn-stained granite found on historical churches at Vila Real (North of Portugal) and glass jars of Leclanché cells, belonging to the ISEP’s Museum (Portugal) collection, were the ideal case studies to test the efficiency of chitosan: thiourea dioxide (TD) cleaning gel. TD proved to be the best candidate to reduce insoluble manganese oxides, over Hydroxylamine Hydrochloride and Hydroxymethanesulfinic Acid. Cleaning assays performed on stained granite samples collected at a historical quarry and in situ application on stained granite churches allowed removal of the stains to a satisfactory level. Similar results were obtained on stained glass jars.

Color in Selected Artistic Glass Compositions by Tomasz Urbanowicz as an Element of Intervention in Historic Buildings and Contemporary Architecture

Colored glass in the form of stained-glass windows has been used to decorate buildings for over a thousand years. Due to various late-twentieth-century technological achievements, this material allows for a broad spectrum of design solutions. Glass can be used both in contemporary and historical buildings. This paper presents an analysis of the work of Tomasz Urbanowicz, an artist who works with glass, and its objective is to present not only the body of work of this artist but also the means of using colored glass in creating new values in architecture. The work is based on a study of the literature that covers the contemporary application of colored glass, on-site analysis of projects, and a series of interviews with the artist before, during, and after project completion, as well as the authors’ personal experience in the matter. One of the main research methods used was an analysis of the artist’s stance, as to him, the very process of pursuing creative inspiration is a fundamental procedure. Glassworks by Urbanowicz were displayed at the EXPO 2000 in Hanover (Germany), the EXPO 2005 in Aichi (Japan), and the EXPO 2008 in Saragossa (Spain). The United Earth glass sphere has been decorating the agora of the European Parliament building in Strasbourg (France) since 2004. In the paper, the artist’s projects are presented in two groups: The first includes solutions that employ monochromatic color schemes, whereas in the second, color has been used to create a strong contrast. The analysis presented includes interventions in historical buildings under heritage conservation, but also compositions from architectural glass in newly built buildings and that reference place-based history. Both the initial vision and the final effect of the glass architectural compositions are site-specific. The analysis of these differences and how the artist works allowed us to formulate a scheme of how he operates. Urbanowicz’s glass interventions affect the quality of the spaces they create and highlight their existing or expected features. The influence of the works can either play a primary and dominant role in relation with the surrounding space or be a secondary and delicate addition. Applied color may have different functions, from highlighting specific aspects of a building to introducing symbolic or direct reference. In many projects, color works as a source of a building interior’s atmosphere. The artistic interventions in historic spaces emphasize their features without disrupting pre-existing authenticity, whereas contemporary projects with no historic reference offer a wide variety of color applications that focus on the function and form of architecture, landscape, or surroundings.

THE ART OF STAINED GLASS IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF TEMPLE BUILDINGS OF THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN LVIV

The stained glass art of temples and chapels of the Renaissance period occupies a special place in the fine arts of Lviv. Special attention is drawn to the stained glass windows of Lviv's sacred buildings, which impress with their aesthetics, composition, colours, and artistic expressiveness. In the process of studying stained glass windows in the decoration of Renaissance churches and chapels in Lviv, the manufacturing technology, compositional solution, their colour scheme were analyzed and the main features of their artistic and figurative expression were revealed. Renaissance stained glass windows have not survived, all stained glass windows of Lviv temple buildings were made in the XIX-early XX centuries. The stained glass compositions of the Church of the Assumption are marked by a simple and at the same time refined composition and picturesque colours in light tones in contrast to the Gothic patterns. Ornamental stained glass compositions were used in the interiors of the chapels. Ukrainian artists of monumental art used the latest progressive technologies of making stained glass. Professional foreign artists - connoisseurs of stained glass art - were invited to make stained glass window compositions of Lviv Renaissance temple buildings. All stained glass windows of Lviv's sacred buildings are highly artistic decorative works and belong to Ukrainian artistic heritage.

Tiffany Technique Workshop for Beginners: Making a Stained- Glass Brooch

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