What to do when large panes of rare old glass break

 Many front doors were built with stained glass in mind but as one of the last stages of building work the doors were often left glazed with textured coloured panes either through money running out or simply just left up to the new home owner to choose their own designs. Often in unusual and beautiful glasses in various tints these panes remained through the years, people liked them and saw no reason to change them. The problem occurs when one of these panes breaks and large pieces of the glass are impossible to get hold of and there is really nothing similar. This is what happened with the job below.  

Below the large broken door pane...

This door was glazed with the glass Oceanic which was designed by T and W Farmiloe in 1903 with shells and starfish pattern. 

Farmiloe info courtesy of Sash Window Specialist  

The options are you could replace one or both panes with the nearest more readily available old match, Muranese, which is not close at all and as a large pane of 4mm glass doesn't meet current building regs...

Muranese (large pattern)

 Or by removing carefully both panes and preserving as much of the old glass as possible you can re-use the glass in new stained glass panels which is what we did below.

Beautifully glazed by Alan Tyfa

Keeping the design very simple but using the addition of hand-spun olive roundels and using an inner border colour match with the above panes to help link the panels together. It is very satisfying to show off the ornate door and emphasis the beautiful shaped carpentry with the borders.

Here is another similar idea below.

Before

After!