John Leroux OBSCURED BRILLIANCE
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THEMATIC DOSSIER | DOSSIER THÉMATIQUE OBSCURED BRIllIANCE: FREDERICTOn’S MODERN STAINED GlASS HERITAGE JOHN LEROUX is an architect and art historian > JOHN LEROUX based in Fredericton. He has won many awards for architectural and public art projects throughout Canada, and he has taught at the University of New Brunswick, St. Thomas University, and the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. A uminous, bold and ever changing, stai- contributing columnist for the Canadian Architect Lned-glass windows are an architectural magazine, he is also the author of six books on paradox within the Modern Movement. Although dynamically exploited by New Brunswick architecture, including: Building influential modern masters ranging from New Brunswick: an Architectural History (Goose Frank Lloyd Wright to Le Corbusier and Lane, 2008), St. Andrews Architecture: 1604- Wallace Harrison, stained-glass windows 1966 (Gaspereau Press, 2010), and Glorious often seem a throwback architectural Light: the Stained Glass of Fredericton (Gaspereau element, a relic of centuries past. The Press, 2011). The latter is the first time in longstanding connection of stained glass Canada that a fully illustrated history of a city’s with medieval cathedrals and Victorian stained glass has been published. domestic parlours seems a long way from the heroic modernist experiments that pushed the boundaries of structure, materials, technical systems, and spartan industrial design. Carefully composed fragments of coloured glass set in lead can seem incompatible with the massive planes of clear plate glass and soaring curtain walls that typify the modernist visual language. Despite their association with the pre- modern, heroic and innovative modern- ist stained-glass windows did at times transcend the derided realm of “applied ornament.” The sweep of natural light as it enriches interior space aligns stained glass with a key architectural pursuit of modernism, as stated so forcefully by Le Corbusier: “Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.”1 At their best, modern stained glass approaches are exceptionally dynamic creations that radically transform with the changing light, angle of the sun, time of day, and weather conditions. When carefully designed, stained-glass windows rendered the extremely import- ant element of modern architecture—the building skin—exuberant and alive. FIG. 1. STAIR LANDING WINDOW AT 96 SECRETARY LANE, 1897. | JOHN LEROUX JSSAC | JSÉAC 38 > No 2 > 2013 > 13-27 13 JOHN LEROUX > THEMATIC DOSSIER | DOSSIER THÉMATIQUE Where traditional stained glass often con- of windows; as eminent British glass artist presented in its stained-glass windows, cerned itself as much with narrative and John Piper called it, “more and more in resides in churches, in private homes, in illustrative roles as it did with its luminous the simultaneous creation of a light-filled educational and government buildings, and decorative qualities, modern stained architectural unit.”7 in places of commerce, and even deep in glass regularly freed itself from the lim- the woods. Far from a city shackled by its its of descriptive elements and scenes. Although it is seldom celebrated, the city Victorian past, the illuminated wealth of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright of Fredericton contains some of the fin- its enduring postwar glass presents the (1867-1959) was a pioneer in making this est stained glass in eastern Canada. These multifaceted ideological and spiritual/ conceptualizing leap. And while he openly are exceptional artworks, although many secular character of Fredericton—a city appreciated the great rose windows of sit virtually unknown, their designers striving for a new progressive face at a the mediaeval European cathedrals,2 he and craftsmen largely unidentified. This time of rapid change. felt that for his own contemporary assess- oversight is most palpable with regards ment, “nothing is more annoying to me to the city’s twentieth-century modern ARTS AND CRAFTS GLASS than any tendency toward realism of form glass; not surprising in a city so closely in window-glass, to get mixed up with the tied with Loyalist roots and nineteenth- Buoyed by its ascendency in Great Britain, view outside. A window pattern should century architectural tradition. the Gothic Revival made its way to British stay severely ‘put.’”3 North America in the mid-nineteenth Akin to the commitment to new materi- century, with Fredericton being a focal Paradoxically, the new generation of als and measured ornament in Canada’s point. By the 1850s and 1860s, many new modern architects and glaziers still postwar architecture, the diversity of churches housing symphonies of stained remained typically grounded in materi- themes contained in Fredericton’s mod- glass and decorative Gothic delights filled als and techniques that had existed for ern stained glass is remarkable, ranging the streets of New Brunswick. These a thousand years; although therein laid from religious and historical subjects to included magnificent British-made win- the challenge… Wright inferred that the a bestiary of animal figures, stylized por- dows at Fredericton’s St. Anne’s Anglican proper use of architectural glass was not traits, and abstract fields of colour and Parish Church (1846-1847) and Christ only a responsibility, it was loaded with pattern. This glass embodies the para- Church Cathedral (1845-1853), both unlimited possibility, calling “glass and dox of being a visual legacy connected monuments of North American Gothic light—two forms of the same thing!”4 to past centuries, as well as at times a Revival. It was not long before the fer- direct aesthetic refutation of traditional vent religious use of coloured glass spread Echoing Le Corbusier’s devotion to light, craft practices, all the while needing to to the domestic and institutional spheres. Wright also felt that “light is the beauti- physically express the soul and character The eclectic and ornamental splendour fier of the building,”5 and he laid out his of this particular place. Perhaps more so of the late Victorian era revelled in the clarion call: than the typical decorative or narrative exuberant (and at times excessive) use of forms of the city’s pre-modern stained stained glass in dining rooms, parlours, Let [the architect] work, now, with light dif- glass, Fredericton’s modernist examples stairway landings, and entry vestibules fused, light refracted, light reflected—use seek to create transcendent visual and in the houses of the wealthy as well as light for its own sake—shadows aside. The spatial experiences by the transmission those of the middle classes. Glazed panels prism has always delighted and fascinated of light through colour. abounded, flaunting social virtues, histor- man. The machine gives him his opportun- ical scenes, lavish patterns, and extrava- ity in glass. The machine can do any kind Fredericton’s identity has always been cen- gant colouration. of glass—thick, thin, colored, textured to tred on its political position as the provin- order—and cheap. A new experience is cial capital, as well as its major role as a While much of Fredericton’s late-nine- awaiting him.6 centre of higher education, religion, and teenth-century stained glass was text- culture. The city has consistently punched book Victorian graphic indulgence, By the end of the Modern Era, stained above its weight in literature and the fine instances of clever restraint were begin- glass artists and designers were striving to arts, and its beautiful site along the Saint ning to be seen. A large Queen Anne make their works part of the architecture John River has made for surroundings of Revival house at 96 Secretary Lane, itself and less about the simple decoration visual richness. This aesthetic spirit, as behind the Provincial Legislature, has a 14 JSSAC | JSÉAC 38 > No 2 > 2013 JOHN LEROUX > THEMATIC DOSSIER | DOSSIER THÉMATIQUE FIG. 2. STAIR LANDING WINDOW AT 31 LANSDOWNE FIG. 3. FRONT DOOR WINDOW AT 57 ROOKWOOD AVENUE, c. 1925. | JOHN LEROUX. STREET, 1915. | JOHN LEROUX. unique stairway landing window that instances of this was the popularity of bungalows that blend fine craftsmanship is unusually clean and innovative for its the Craftsman bungalow house between and materials, along with comparatively 1897 date, with an ordered palette of 1905 and 1925. By the early twentieth cen- open and unfussy layouts compared to red, blue, green, and yellow glass, clear tury, the democratic ideals of the British their neighbours from previous decades. bevelled circles and an off-centre crescent Arts and Crafts movement had spread The bungalows have low-pitched shel- moon (fig. 1). As a pictorial exercise, it has throughout North America, while the tering roofs with wide eaves and exposed more in common with a 1950s Paul Rand California Arts and Crafts homes designed wood rafters/braces, deep porches with logo than with the typical designs of the by the Greene brothers and the horizon- square columns, interior stained wood day, and hints at compositional themes tal Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright paneling and simple rectangular trim, that will emerge in the glass of the first inspired construction across the continent. and leaded/stained-glass windows. The half of the twentieth century. This architectural approach found wide- latter were calculated and controlled, spread acceptance in the new Craftsman with areas of clear or opaque frosted EMERGING MODERN style, which takes its name from a widely white glass in a generally