Matching Up in South Norwood

Many late Victorian / Edwardian properties have beautiful doors with shaped head apertures and fine decorative moulding. It's wonderful when people treasure these old doors and they are an absolute pleasure to work on. The apertures seem made for stained glass yet often they are infilled with pretty colours of textured glass - Muranese was a popular choice of glass as it has a deep cut making it a lively glass that catches the light but also has good obscurity. I have a theory that as one of the last items to go into the house stained glass was a luxury and if the builder's money was running out, pretty coloured panes would do just as well.

We are lucky that a glass so popular in the Victorian era is still made now, although the colours are paler and the pattern flatter. When a pane breaks it can be hard to match up.

One solution is to make new panels that build in some of the original colours and glasses. In this door set we used a classic Victorian boxed quarry pattern that was simple and would not overwhelm the existing glass.

Victorian boxed quarry pattern.

Photo courtesy of John Coulter.

A mixture of old glass from stock and new glasses were used to help blend in... And the original panes given a good clean up!

Photo courtesy of John Coulter.

One smart door!

The old amber mismatched glass does not get wasted and will be recycled on many jobs to come. Here are a few close ups from the first of these below....