minimal familiarity with the lead came process (you may follow the Easy Lead Came
Tutorial
and/or Lead Came Tutorial I)
including cutting came, soldering joints, puttying, and finishing.
The emphasis will be on:
ordered assembly of a pattern that is just the right level of complexity to give you confidence to handle
any lead came project of similar dimensions.
The pattern is here: -
for more details, see Kelmscott Manor.
This pattern is a fresh, modern take on Victorian designs, named in honor of the Cotswold Manor that William Morris (1834-1896),
a celebrated stained glass artist and fabric designer of the Victorian era, shared with his wife Jane Burden Morris (1861-1935). William Morris'
motto was: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." He also said,
"No man is good enough to be another's master." He wrote a book, News From Nowhere, in which he
explained his philosophy that Concerning marriage, the people of Nowhere practice monogamy but are free to pursue romantic love because they are not bound by a contractual marriage.
Indeed, for a period of three years, Kelmscott Manor was inhabited not by William Morris, but by pre-Raphaelite painter
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who was madly in love with William's wife Jane Burden Morris and painted her repeatedly, if not obsessively.
Kelmscott Manor Today:
First, the pattern is cut, traced, and the glass scored and broken. It is assumed that you are familiar with these steps. In the
picture below, the glass is laid out on the pattern to verify that all have been cut, and none are missing. The glass that
was chosen is thoroughly modern: Baroque, Waterglass, Chord, Diamond, Raindrops, and various colors from the scrap pile. Victorians
liked a variety of cathedral glass with some opalescent, and they often distributed the colors/textured unexpectedly. I respected
this philosophy by making some of the diamonds in green and others in textured clear (rather than all the same color), by leaving the little circles in clear (resisting the
naive urge to emphasize them), by breaking the three-fold symmetry in the center with directional textured glass in the vertical
orientation, and allowing more than two neighboring pieces to be the same color (the light green).
STEP 1
As usual, we begin with the mitered zinc frame and the jig set up with a carpenter's square.
STEP 2
Then, we begin the assembly in earnest. Bear in mind that there is more than one way to assemble this project; you are encouraged
to follow the steps as illustrated, but you should be aware that all practitioners just make it up as they go along. You will be
able to do this, too!
