Artist, a Glass Painter, a Craftsman, and a Debate about their Role in the Design and Execution of Stained Glass

Abstract

According to a discussion which took place in Germany in 1912, the fundamental environment for stained-glass making were workshops. It was within various workshops that simple ornamental glazing was put together. Designs were either produced by artists employed at workshops, which allowed them to sign their work with their names, or the effort was done collectively, with no singling out of the individual designers of the cartoons; in this case, the latter were treated as common property intended for multiple use. Thus, it was only in this environment that the agents emerged as “compilers” of simple glazing patterns and someone else’s models, as “salaried designers”, as artists associated with the workshop, or else as independent artists, often acclaimed ones. The authorship of the stained glass windows has always been entangled in a sui generis discourse involving the organisation, selection, control and redistribution by a certain number of procedures resulting from the nature of “workshop work”.