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ART OF STAINED GLASS
The Child of Muntins Architectural stained glass can be thought of as a derivative of muntins. In the olden days, when glass sheets were mouth-blown, and rather small, large windows were created by assembling the smaller pieces together. In their simplest expression, muntins are strips of wood holding small panes of glass in a larger window, usually a series of squares. Borrowing from the French word "montants," literally, "risers," they were called mountings, then "muntins" and they are still variously called "glazing bars" or "sash bars." Naturally, the wealthy wanted to distinguish themselves, and they did so, in Tudor England, with beautiful muntin work - the muntins were often framing elaborate geometric shapes in a tiled pattern. Two centuries after the Tudor period, one Mr Park Benjamin, writing in 1839, confided the following, without a hint of irony: Sights like these give a favorable impression of the disposition and habits of the people within — show how superior they are to their sophistications if rich, and how possessed of natural refinement, if among the poorer classes.TUDOR STYLE WINDOWS "fancying up the muntins" 
It's within this tradition of elaborate muntins that Charles Rennie Mackintosh (in Scotland) and Frank Lloyd Wright (in the USA), evolved their distinctive styles. The latter insisted, in his writings, that ornementation would be successful if it supported the lines and spirit of the structure it was meant to ornament. He went further, and very much in the direction opposite of LC Tiffany's, to write that fruits and flowers had no place in ornamentation, other than to serve as inspiration for formal shapes. Simple float glass is used abundantly, with small colored accents; one supposes that the architectural identity of a WINDOW, which by definition allows a view of the outside, and the light to come in freely, would be lost in detailed, close-to-nature depictions, or with excessive swaths of opalescent glass. Straight lines and/or geometry dominate the architectural style. EARLY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT George Blossom House, circa 1895, "fancying up the muntins"  EARLY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT George Blossom House, circa 1895, "it's all about the muntins" 
EARLY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT George Blossom House, circa 1895, "think: muntins" 
EARLY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT Hickox House, circa 1990, Experimenting with different came width: 
How To Design For Architectural Applications? Even for a large window panel, that will hang in front of a window, it is worth considering drawing from the rich and classical tradition of muntins. Using a basic framework of diamonds, squares, using Tudor window patterns for inspiration, of more contemporary sources, one can create truly timeless designs of peaceful simplicity. From An encyclopædia of cottage, farm, and villa architecture and furniture, 1838, by John Claudius Loudon: In a country like Britain, where the cottage windows are generally low and broad, nothing adds more dignity of character to a dwelling than heightening the windows; because high windows arc expressive of lofty rooms. Where height cannot be given, and the obvious tendency of the openings is to width, the effect of the elevation is improved by increasing that tendency, because the idea of a larger room is thus given. From what we have said on the subject of disguising and ornamenting windows, we hope no reader will for a moment suppose that we intend any of the frames to be placed before the windows of the dwelling-rooms of cottages, in such a manner as to diminish the quantity of light and air admitted by them, or to injure the prospect seen from them.Nothing can be truly an ornament, or an improvement, to a house, which in the slightest degree diminishes the comforts or enjoyments of the occupier.There are few things to which we have a greater dislike than the practice of some great owners of parks, of putting labourers to live in lodges, and other ornamental buildings, which, with a great display externally, are scarcely habitable within. 
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