RAGS TO RICHES

RAGS TO RICHES

From rags to riches, as they say. This stunning Victorian era window needed a lot of extra love. A small rebuild of a missing segment, shattered glass, and a fresh boarder gave this 120 year old window from Northern England a new sparkle. https://www.instagram.com/p/CDjzkkxHwzo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link...
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Restoration – The art of painted glass

Can you spot the reproduced piece of painted glass? Here at The Stonehouse, we often take a pile of neglected glass, and return it to its majestic glory. Sometimes, it takes a little magic to make that happen. Sometimes that magic hits some speed bumps. Let us start with the final piece. This unique and delicately painted window from England, cira 1880, was once a pair of windows. One window, perfectly intact, was kept as part of our private collection. A matching window was not so lucky. The lead on the second window had suffered corrosion, a few of the painted pieces were broken, and thus became a pile if gnarled lead came and glass, that was carefully stored away for a rainy day. Our team of restoration artists set to work. The intact pieces were laid out, and the broken panes assessed. The original lead was observed, and rescued where possible to maintain as much of the original materials as possible. Now, the hunt...
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Wales Windows Dismantle/Downsize

Over the years we have purchased thousands of windows. Most windows came from the area immediately surrounding the City of Manchester. However, we also travelled west to Liverpool, Preston, and Blackpool. Our travels to the east took us to Sheffield, and in the southeast we made purchases in Nottingham and Leister. For a few of the early years (the late 1980’s), we made purchases in Glasgow, Scotland). On one of our trips in 1992 we heard that some someone in Wales had a set of large windows. Obviously, we had to drive down and check out that ‘lead’. This was before the time of GPS and fortunately the road signs included English translation of all the Welsh names. We arrived at a farmstead that was the operation centre for a “house removal” company (it was a very large metal barn). They had a collection of very large windows. The windows had all been removed from...
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