A Gigantic Job for Window Fixers
By Megan • Apr 15th, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)Glen Collins reports for The New York Times:
“After a thousand years artisans are still using muscle, sweat and painstaking craftsmanship to preserve exquisitely painted pieces of colored glass that adorn majestic places of worship.
Now, in the most expensive restoration of stained glass ever undertaken in the United States, conservation is under way on the famous Whitefriars windows of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It will require three years and $20 million to renew the splendor of 33 windows, with their 9 million pieces of glass. Nine windows on the north side of the church were removed in January and February and their absence hidden by translucent scrims. Then the workers came in from the cold to toil in nine glass-restoration studios from Massachusetts to California. The largest windows will each require 4,500 worker hours of intricate effort — essentially, the labor of one artisan for two and a half years.”
Megan is a creative producer at Wise Elephant.
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