STAINED

GLASS TRADITION

sunday news

Newsroom 985-2131

FASHION - FOOD TRAVEL

Keeping alive art of the past

NORTH VANCOUVER

artist Brad McFarlane

used to only admire stained glass work, thinking of it as a lost art, but today he carries on the

craft, keeping the beauty alive.

After two months of detailed manual work, McFarlane, with assistance from Karen Lister, has just finished a large Tiffany lamp, made to order for Puccini’s Restaurant in Van- couver. The time-consuming art of cutting glass to fit in- tricate patterns and sodder- ing the pieces together takes a great deal of skill and pa-

tience which are finally rewarded by the finished product.

The Tiffany lamp McFarlane recently com- pleted is a copy of an ex- isting lamp in Puccini’s,

which he duplicated by tak- ing a paper rubbing of the Oonginal. He then traced the design from the paper onto a large plexiglass dome, which the new lamp was built upon.

Molds for Tiffany lamps were once only made from wood, McFarlane explained, but now companies use - styrofoam, since it is less ex- pensive and can be made in sections and put together. But for lamps the size McFarlane made (36"’ in diameter at the base), plex- iglass is the most realistic mold material to use.

Once the lamp’s pattern _

has been transferred to the mold, McFarlane then retraces individual designs on paper, puts them onto a light table, and cuts the glass on top, following the pattern freehand. He attributes the freehand method to. the English, whereas the Ger- man method has an extra step, making cardboard cut-outs from the traced

paper, and then cutting the glass from that.

‘‘Using the cardboard method is an extra step that isn’t necessary for me. Why spend time on another step?”’

McFarlane then smooths the rough edges of the glass

BRAD McFarlane stands beside the Tiffany lamp he recently completed, after about two months work, with help from assistant Karen Lister. The extra large lamp has a diameter of 36 inches, weighs about 28 pounds,

BARRETT FISHER

pieces with a grinding wheel and wraps each piece with coppér foil, which is sticky on one side so it clings to the glass. The glass pieces gre then fitted together on the mold. Starting at the top of the half globe, the pattern evolves as each piece is sod- dered to the next.

The soddering steps in-

chide tacking, tinning and beading, McFarlane says. A tack of sodder holds the pieces of glass together, joined by the copper foil. Tinning is where a thin layer of sodder is done over all the seams for strength, and beading is where a thicker layer of sodder is built up on the seams for appearance. When the lamp is sod- dered together, the mold is removed and the piece of art

‘

is cleaned. Then, to make the metal, which is presently bright silver, more subtle, McFarlane uses a patina, an antiquing agent, to make the metal seams copper colored or black.

Finally, the completed lamp will be placed inside a metal framework, an = ar- mature, where it will hang and radiate its beauty.

McFarlane laughs when he remembers how he first

became interested in stained glass. ‘‘When I was about 10 years old, | always wanted to send away for those cast resin lamps they had in the back of comic books, where you made colored plastic in trays, like grapes and things, and fit them into a frame.’’ When he was a little older he used Dippity Glass and

See page C2

oto lan Smith

EWS. p and will hang inverted held by a brass armature in Puccini’s Restaurant, to match an original lamp it was modelled after.

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