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This is a few examples of the detrioration of the stone and why we have to replace it.
This stone here we have had to take this out, due to fixing in new
pieces here, this piece fits in up here as you can see, here. I'm not
going to hold it for too long. There you go. Just behind me is some where the new stone
that we've been put in. We've kept this in here as it is structurally sound,
it hasn't deteriorated as much as some of the old staff has. But
here was a complete mess, so we've had to replace the whole lot. Well, this stone has
been up here about 2-300 years. Its been affected, and deteriorated, due to
acid rain and general weathering. It's actually just tracery arcading, not
a window. These mullions here, go all the way down to the roof at the bottom and are
holding up the parapet above you. So this is structurally...
it is there for structural purposes. But it's made aesthetically
pleasing by the tracery arcades itself. Back when they were designing it, it was all for
the glory of God, I suppose, that's why they put so much effort
into making it so beautiful. Every mason has, what they call,
a banker mark, which is their own personal signature mark that they put into every stone.
Its been quite interesting taking some of the old stones out and seeing the marks
of mason's of 400, 300 years ago, and their marks in their individual stones.
That's been quite interesting. But apart from that, just slight differences in the way they
fixed it and they dressed the stone. It hasn't really changed
from then to now really. We all put our mark in our stones, so maybe
in a few hundred years time other mason's can be seen looking at our marks when they
are replacing our stuff. And as you come round on to the the east front - this
is the Great East Window, which the York Glaziers' Trust are currently restoring.
This is a panel from the East Window which that we've just actually removed to start
working as a further development of some trials. It's from the second row of the East Window.
You can see that the condition of a panel before we do any work at all to it.
The leads are very wide, very heavy, and there are a lot more leads in the panel than there
were originally intended to be. And we'll be looking at whether we can actually
remove some of those leads and clarify the panel and try and
understand what the original intention of the artist was. And this panel dates from
between 1405 to 1408. Some of the other interesting things to note are:
a number of pieces of glass that are not original. They were probably put
in at an earlier restoration to fill a gap, or to replace a very broken piece. Some examples
of that are the white areas of drapery here. The contract for designing
and painting the window was by John Thornton. He was an artist, a
stained glass artist from Coventry, and he was brought up by the Dean and Chapter to
specifically to design and paint this window. He probably had an extensive
team of craftsmen, but John Thornton was the man responsible for painting the
faces. That was in the contract. You can see the impact that a lot of the breakages and
the addition of leads has had in areas like this which has a very great
area of leading and little glass is visible. Once we've photographed, and analysed
and documented the panels in this condition, we then make the decision to move the old
leading away - which is leading that dates back to after the Second World
War, when the panels were re-leaded entirely. Once we've carried that procedure out,
we can see all the pieces of glass in one assemblage, and we have a panel over where
it is possible to see that. So once we've looked at the panel and documented it,
we take a rubbing of the lead work, before we take the lead work away. This panel
we've actually taken the lead work away and this is from the centre of the East Window,
and it's a very important panel in the scheme. You can see that all the pieces have
been dismantled, laid onto a rubbing, and they're now ready to work on. The panel
depicts St John, in the corner, kneeling before God, and God has a sword in his mouth, and
there are seven candlesticks and seven stars, which represent the seven churches.
So it is a very important and dramatic scene, with a very large figure of God.
And it is in the very centre of the window. What we'll be trying to do next is to understand
how much of this glass is original to the panel and how much of it is perhaps
replacement glass put in during previous periods of restoration. Interestingly, the face of
God has lost a lot of its pigment, and some of that pigment has come away because of the
corrosion process. One thing we may look to do, in this case, is to find a way of putting
those details back. We can't do that on the original pieces, but what we can do
is that we can cut a piece of glass and we have very very thin optical glass, which is
just over 1mm thick. We can cut exactly the same shape
then we can paint some more detail onto that glass, and that will sit at the back. So this
is something we may wish to do to the face of God; that we paint the eyes, and the
nose, a little bit stronger so that people looking at the panel can see that. Another
thing we may wish to look at is where pieces have broken. We may look to bond those pieces
back together. And if I can point to the drapery, you can see here probably this
whole section would have been in one piece. And that there are; one, two, three, four
mending leads through. We can see that when we try
to put the pieces together, they fit very well, and they can be quite easily be bonded
with resin, and that will make them very strong and put them back into one section again.
And we can see there that those pieces belong together. If we were to bond those
pieces, we would then be able to take away these leads, which will add greater clarity
to the reading of the drapery. It might be possible to repair the entire section, but
what's interesting here is that in this area, this is a clean break, but part of this glass
has been nibbled away to provide room for a mending lead through here. So, the fit
isn't perfect anymore and that may necessitate, it may require us to keep a mending lead in
through that area. However, this piece can easily be fitted together and edge bonded
with a resin. Each panel will vary in the amount of time it takes to conserve. Some
panels will be fairly straight forward for us in some ways, but some will be far more
difficult and present more challenges. However, each panel has so many processes to go through
that they will take upwards of 500 hours for each panel. Danya is carrying out
cleaning of the glass, and you can see that she's using a lens to get a closer view of
the glass; and she's removing the very hard cement
around the edge of each piece. Once the conservation is complete, the pieces can be re-leaded.
Ian Tomlinson is currently re-glazing a panel from the Chapter House vestibule,
which is a very old panel - just over 700 years old. You can see that he's at the beginning
stages of that process, just starting to assemble all the pieces in their lead framework and
they will subsequently be soldered on both sides and that will then be secure again.