Martin Phillips and his partner, Douglas Hathaway stand on a scaffold outside St. James
Church on West Street, hoping that the wind doesn't pick up. They are at the final stage of
mounting a stained-glass window into its frame. A stained-glass window is not made of
one, rigid sheet of glass; it is composed of dozens or even hundreds of smaller panes that
are held together with soft lead. Because the lead is so soft, the window as a whole tends
to flex and bow as it is moved. It is only when it is held securely in place by its frame that
it becomes rigid. That can make lifting the window into its frame tricky - a sudden gust of
wind can wrap the window around the man who is holding it like a very large, expensive
sheet of paper.
Slowly and carefully, the men lift the window to its iron frame and tie it down with wires.
They stop for a moment and breath a sigh of relief. As Hathaway starts the process of
attaching the window to the frame permanently, Phillips climbs down from the scaffold
and looks over the other windows that they have worked on during this job. Their
company, Martin/Douglas Studios of Springfield, Mass, has been responsible for restoring
all of St. James' major stained-glass windows over the past year. ``This has been one of
our largest jobs to date,'' Phillips says. ``We've replaced all ten of the sanctuary windows
(the ones along each side of the church) and now we are doing the three in the choir-loft
(the ones in the back of the church that are visible from the street).''
Phillips uses the phrase, ``replace'' with carefully. In point of fact, the windows have not
been replaced in the sense of putting in all new windows, but in the sense of having been
removed from their frames, restored and then replaced back in their frames. Although a
few new pieces of glass have had to be substituted for panes that were damaged beyond
repair, these are the same windows. ``We try to put back every piece of glass that can
possibly be used,'' says Phillips.
Before this restoration, the windows suffered from the effects of their old age. Over time,
the lead that holds the individual pieces of stained glass together deteriorates and becomes
weaker. The glass panes are anchored more weakly and tend to sag and buckle. Left
untreated, the windows could droop to such an extent that they would fall out of their
frames completely and be destroyed. To prevent this, all stained-glass windows require
periodic maintenance - every 80 to 90 years.
Ken Dale, the chairman of St. James' Building Renovation Committee, says that the
windows were overdue for restoration. ``The windows have been a talking-point for a long
time,'' he says, ``but there's never been the money to do anything about them. Finally
though, we didn't have a choice.'' He laughs when asked how much money the restoration
will cost. ``We're still not sure yet. We're still adding it up, but it will be somewhere
between 70 and 80 thousand dollars.''
The process of restoring the windows was a long and painstaking one. Phillips and
Hathaway started by photographing each window in place. ``That was largely as
`insurance' in case of a catastrophic accident,'' says Phillips. ``If our truck crashed as we
were taking the window back to our studio, we'd have a record of what, precisely the
window looked like when we started.'' The windows were then removed and ``rubbed'' in
the same way that one would make a brass rubbing or make a copy of a gravestone. ``This
gives us what we call a `cartoon','' Phillips explains. ``That's basically our map that allows
us to exactly recreate the window. It shows us exactly where all the lead and each piece of
glass goes.''
The next step in the renovation is to take the window apart and examine each individual
piece of glass. Damaged ones are repaired or, in extreme cases, replaced. One of St.
James' windows had originally had a pane of glass with an inscription ``Lord Jesus receive
my Spirit'', which had been damaged at some point and replaced with a blank pane of
glass. Phillips and Hathaway had to recreate the original inscription by copying the style of
writing from another of St. James' windows. This involved re-``painting'' the pane with a
mixture of enamel and tiny pieces of glass, then firing it in a kiln. This process can be very
difficult. ``It's not uncommon to have to refire a complicated piece 15-20 times to get it
right,'' Phillips says.
One small change that Hathaway and Phillips did add make to some of the windows was to
add ``ventilators'' - they altered them so that they could be opened. ``None of these
windows is actually one piece,'' Phillips explains. ``Each one is made up of several
sections; most of them have three.'' The artists modified the bottom section of several
windows so that they could be tilted. the only change to the windows themselves was a
small reduction in size (about 1/2 an inch) to accommodate an additional section of iron
frame.
When all the individual pieces of glass were ready to be assembled, they were put together
with new lead with the help of the cartoon, transported back to St. James and placed back
in their frames. As each window is mounted, it is covered with a sheet of industrial-
strength plexi-glass to protect it from damage. ``It's acrylic,'' says Phillips, ``but clear as a
bell, so you don't even notice it.''
The choir-loft windows are the last ones to be replaced. The entire process has taken
almost a year and a half. According to Dale, the window restoration is part of a larger
renovation of the church building, which is also nearing completion. ``It (the window
project) was actually the start of the process,'' he says. ``It was supposed to all take place
at the same time, but we ended up starting the windows before the rest of the renovations.
As it turns out, that's worked out pretty well because everything is winding up at the same
time.''
