Glass Painting at Ely Cathedral
A couple of months ago I asked this sub if anyone had taken one of the glass painting courses at the Stained Glass Museum (https://stainedglassmuseum.com/) located in Ely Cathedral. As promised then, I am writing up my experience and recommendation now that I have attended. Tl;dr: I highly recommend the course.
I took the two-day course taught by Derek Hunt. I was one of half a dozen students. Derek is a fantastic artist, but also an excellent teacher. He provided high level overviews of each of the techniques, followed by a demonstration, and then individualized feedback and instruction as we worked on our projects applying what we had just learned. From pedagogical perspective, this allowed us to internalize a lot of information pretty quickly.
On the first day, we chose a template from one of the pieces in the museum. Derek provided an introduction to the brushes and tools, showed us how to mix the bistre brown paint we were to use, and then demonstrated tracing, shading, and stippling. We traced until lunch, at which point our projects were fired. After lunch, Derek demonstrated the preparation and use of silver stain. We did our shading and silver stain work, and that was then fired again after we went home for the day.
On the second day, Derek showed us how to mix tracing black with oil, and then use dipping pens to apply the paint. We again did our outline before lunch, this time either on a stencil from the samples made available or from a picture of our own, and then did our shading and silver stain after the outline had been fired. While the pieces were being fired a second time, Derek gave us a tour of the museum and the 800 years of stained glass on display, encouraging us to reverse engineer the pieces with the techniques we now knew. He made a point of discussing the pieces we had chosen as our templates and provided additional insights into conservation work and preservation.
The setting was also fantastic. Ely Cathedral was beautiful, with plenty of stained glass to study, and a background of choirs, organ practice, and warm-ups for the local series of concerts. My fellow students were all friendly and interesting, and I enjoyed hearing about their projects, as well.