The Sun and The Moon

At one of my part time jobs I make stained glass windows. The window I am working on is a kind of William Morris tree with bright pink doves sitting in it. These sun and moon lads are in two of the corners.
The window has not been leaded up yet and is still just lots of individual pieces of glass. Most of the window is painted, The paint is particular for glass and it needs fired in a kiln. It is browny black and you use it like a tone (the dark and light) onto the pieces of glass which are already coloured (like you would get a green or blue bottle). Then all the individual glass pieces are fixed together with H section lengths of lead, soldered at the joints, puttied, cleaned up and Bob's your uncle, the window is finished. It is very slow and time consuming and the process is resisting any attempts at mechanisation. It is made much as it was in ye old Medieval times.

Hand blown glass can be absolutely stunning, I think it's something to do with the strength of the colour and the beauty of the surface of the glass. In the photo you can see some of the bubbles and streaks that you can get (as well as the wheelie bins outside behind the window!).