Windows of Colored Glass
by Laura Austrian

A private tour of one of the area's grand homes on a perfect spring day? Count me in. Artist Kathleen Gavin, who invited me to accompany her to Wilderstein one afternoon in April, has spent the last few years restoring the stained glass windows at the Queen Anne style home, which has a dramatic five-story tower and spectacular Hudson River views. She suggested that we visit Wilderstein in the afternoon, when the sunlight makes the windows sparkle. Stepping inside the house was like entering another era. The colorful windows glowed in the afternoon sun, illuminating the entryway's dark oak paneling and tooled leather walls. Portraits of members of the Suckley family, who were descendants of the Beekmans and Livingstons, hang proudly in the hall.

The day before my private tour, Gavin had installed the third of three restored windows, each approximately two feet high by two-and-a-half feet wide, located on the landing of the Wilderstein's grand wooden staircase. As Wilderstein's glass artist-in-residence, her task was to remove and refurbish the window, which featured a Victorian floral pattern in a palette of pale blues, purples, pinks, and golds. In addition to hundreds of flat glass pieces, the window features cast glass—three-dimensional glass pieces resembling gemstones. According to Gavin, the main problem with Wilderstein's windows is bowing, a condition that occurred in stained glass windows made after the Civil War when silver, a strengthening agent, was removed from lead. The silver-less lead holding these pieces in place had weakened over the years, giving the window an undulating appearance. "You don't see this in medieval windows," said Gavin, who told me that the equivalent lead used today is strengthened with antimony.

The painstaking process of restoration required Gavin to release the window from the frame that had held it for over 100 years, make a charcoal rubbing of it in order to record the location of each piece of glass, remove the lead holding the glass in place and, using dental tools, chip away at the brittle cement that had once held the glass securely within its leaded channel. After removing the old cement, Gavin cleaned the glass using a gentle detergent in order to remove a century's worth of coal dust that coated it. Then, using new lead and fresh cement, she fitted and soldered the glass pieces back together, replaced the window in its frame, and returned it to its original position in the home.

"Wilderstein is a wonderful place and I feel very honored that I get to do this work," said Gavin, who spends about 150 hours over the course of a year restoring a window. In three years she has restored three windows; about 33 remain to be restored; they will be addressed in order of need. Though the creator of Wilderstein's windows is uncertain—a few resemble the style of artist John La Farge while the others seem to be closer in style to that of Louis Comfort Tiffany—Wilderstein's executive director Gregory J. Sokaris noted, "They are beautiful regardless of who made them."

Gavin does her work on Wilderstein's windows in a workshop on the property, but she has had her own studio in Red Hook since 1987. Growing up in a family that valued craftsmanship, she became interested in glass during the 1970s, when the work of artist Dale Chihuly began to attract attention. After a two-year apprenticeship with one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's glass conservators, she set up her own studio, which is called Visual Music Studio. Lately she has become interested in creating fused glass, in which pulverized glass called frit is melted in a kiln to create various abstract patterns. For Gavin, who also works full-time at the Astor Home for Children as an art therapist, glass is a medium whose textures, colors, and patterns are all expressive.

Artist Doris Cultraro, who established her Rhinebeck studio last year, was introduced to stained glass in the 1970s when a jewelry making class in which she had enrolled in New York City was cancelled and, instead of requesting a refund, she transferred into a class on stained glass. From the mid-1970s to early 1980s Cultraro had a studio and art gallery, first in Larchmont and then in New York City. In 1983 she moved to Mount Vernon and continued to attract stained glass commissions from private clients for residences, churches, and synagogues, even while she worked more than forty hours a week at a corporate job. In 2004 she returned to working on stained glass full-time. Last year she relocated from Mount Vernon to Rhinebeck and set up her own shop, called DC Studios LLC, in her home. Though Cultraro was familiar with the area since her father-in-law has lived in Staatsburg for the last 15 years, she is only now getting to know it better. She speaks excitedly about the beauty of the stained glass found in local churches and homes such as Wilderstein. She said, "I can't tell you how much I love stained glass. It is really a passion for me."

Cultraro describes her artistic style as "photo-realism." She designs all of the pieces she makes. Although she does sketch her designs occasionally, she prefers to work on the computer. After Cultraro creates a design for the window, panel, lampshade, or other item commissioned by a client, she translates it into a pattern. She then begins cutting glass and fitting pieces together. Between the pieces Cultraro typically lays copper foil or lead, depending on the type of project she is working on. She then solders the metal so that it holds the glass in place. Once she adds a patina to the piece, it is finished.

Cultraro also does restoration work. Her current project is the restoration of a ten-foot-high, six-foot-wide window whose creator is unknown. Cultraro, like Gavin, is meticulous in her work. She estimates that she will spend about 18 weeks, and more than eight hours per day, on this window, which her client found in a salvage yard in Yonkers in the 1960s and purchased for $100. The window features the figure of a woman whose white gown is rendered in pieces of pearly, three-dimensional glass called "drapery glass" because of the way it cascades out of the frame. The figure, whose face and hair are painted on a single piece of glass, is surrounded by an abstract floral pattern rendered in various shades of green, blue, purple, pink, and gold.

Cultraro's task is to take apart the window piece by piece, replace damaged glass, clean the salvageable glass, redo the metalwork, and build a new frame, which can be no more than one-half-inch smaller than the original frame. She also hopes to find a signature painted on one of the glass pieces so she can identify the maker. Regardless of who that is, however, Cultraro believes the window to be of very high quality. She said of the project, "This is really what we live for—windows like this."