Willet Hauser Architectural Glass

Last updated
Willet Hauser Architectural Glass
PredecessorWillet Studios (1898),
Hauser Art Glass, Co. (1946),
Associated Crafts (1997)
Headquarters
Winona, Minnesota
Area served
North America and Abroad
ServicesDesign, Fabrication and Restoration of Architectural Stained Glass Windows
Website Willet Hauser Architectural Glass

Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Inc is a North American stained glass firm located in Winona, Minnesota that specializes in the design, fabrication, preservation and restoration of leaded stained glass and faceted glass windows.

Contents

The studio, one of the oldest in North America, was formed through the merger of two American stained glass studios: the Willet Stained Glass Studios of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Hauser Art Glass Company, Inc., located in Winona. The two united in 1977 and together are one of the largest stained glass studios in North America. In 2005 the company changed its name to Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Inc., to more accurately reflect the long-term direction of the studio. [1] In 2014 the Arizona-based national stained glass studio Associated Crafts acquired Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Inc. [2]

To date, Willet Hauser has created and/or restored windows in over 15,000 buildings located throughout the world. [3] In 2018, Inc. Magazine named Associated Crafts/Willet Hauser Architectural Glass Inc. to its 37th annual Inc. 5000 list of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. [4]

History

Willet Studios

Willet Studios was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1898 by the muralist and stained glass artist William Willet and his wife, Anne Lee. In its inception, the studio went by the title of the Willet Stained Glass Company and by 1909, had been incorporated as the Willet Stained Glass and Decorating Company. By 1921, the firm was self-identified as "An organization of artists, designers, and craftsmen in ecclesiastical and domestic art. . . Devoted to the making of windows and decorations in the spirit and technique of the best European work of the Middle Ages." and listed the following within its oeuvre: Memorial Windows, Mural Paintings, Mosaics, Leaded Glass, Stations of the Cross, Altars, Triptychs, Fonts, Bronze Tablets, Tapestries, Interior Decorations of all descriptions as well as Portraits on Glass or Canvas and Miniatures. [5]

Anne Lee and their son, Henry Lee, took over the studio after William's death in 1921. [6] Under Henry's guidance, the company expanded from a regional business to a studio of national and international renown, with completed projects in all fifty states and fourteen foreign countries. [7] Under Henry Lee's guidance, the studio experimented with new techniques, and in the 1950s, was one of the first American studios to design and fabricate faceted glass windows. Willet Studios also developed the famous sculptured gold window technique and experimented with various methods of laminating stained glass, a technique known as Farbigem. [8] In 1971, the Franklin Institute awarded Henry Lee Willet the Frank P. Brown Medal.

In 1965, E. Crosby Willet, the son of Henry Lee Willet, became the third generation president of Willet Studios. Under his leadership, Willet windows were created for many of the major churches and cathedrals in the United States including the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. [1]

Hauser Art Glass Company

The Hauser Art Glass Company, another long-standing American stained glass studio, was founded in 1946 by James E. Hauser in Winona, Minnesota. It was originally opened as a repair and restoration studio, focused on serving small, remote churches, after Hauser recognized an opportunity to aid many American churches whose stained glass windows had fallen into neglect and disrepair during the Second World War.

As the firm's projects became larger and more complex, a number of glass artists specializing in the replication of different design styles joined the studio. The firm eventually began creating moderately priced windows for neighborhood churches as well as windows for hotels, restaurants, and private homes. However, its main specialty remained the repair and restoration of existing stained glass, including those by Connick Studios, Tiffany Studios, John La Farge, Henry Wynd Young, Franz Mayer of Munich, and Innsbruck Studios. [1]

Associated Crafts

In 1973, John Phillips Sr. was living in Pennsylvania and started to work for Hauser Art Glass Co in Winona as a national salesman. In 1980, three years after Hauser merged with Pittsburgh-based Willet Studios to become Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Phillips Sr. left on friendly terms to start his own stained glass studio in Pennsylvania, in which his son John Phillips Jr. started to work. After 10 years, Phillips Sr. sold the business.

John Phillips Jr. and his wife Mary founded the Arizona-based stained-glass business Associated Crafts in 1997. Some of their work including sub-contracting work for Willet Hauser. The business grew rapidly as a national stained glass studio and in Jan 2014, Associated Crafts acquired Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Inc. combining to become one of the notable global forces in stained glass. [9]

Innovations

In the 1960s, when the industry began a movement toward contemporary design, Henry and Crosby Willet experimented in new styles and techniques including faceted glass, Farbigem (laminated glass), sculptured gold, mosaics, and sandcarving or sandblasting. [10]

Farbigem

The Willet Studio introduced the Dutch technique of Farbigem to the United States in 1966, after a visit to the Amsterdam glass factory known as Glas-Industrie Van Tetterode. Research and development was carried out at the studio from 1967 into the 1980s.

In the process of Farbigem a base plate is made by sandwiching plexiglass between two layers of glass. On this surface, layer upon layer of glass can be built up in all different directions. Designs can be traditional or abstract. The pieces are held together by a crystal clear, flexible adhesive that was developed in the Netherlands which allowed the glass to naturally expand and contract. Entire walls could be designed in decorative thicknesses of glass. The farbigem technique eventually fell out of favor due to the deficient technology of the adhesive which, with time, allowed the multiple layers of glass to separate. Changes in aesthetic taste also contributed to its decline. Today, windows similar to the farbigem technique are fabricated in stained glass studios under the name "Laminated Glass".

Sculptured gold windows

Henry Willet created the first sculptured gold window between 1948–49. When first devised, the sculptured gold overlay was based on leaded stained glass windows. Later, faceted glass set in epoxy resin was used. These glasses, about an inch in thickness, but possibly up to two inches for special effects, contribute great brilliance of color under transmitted daylight. The sheet lead overlay is formed in relief by repousse (literally "beaten up from the underside") to give a sculptured effect, and is also incised with slits of varying widths to let the richly colored glass background shine through in the daytime. The fact that the sculptured lead surface has been "flown" with 23 carat gold leaf is the secret of the brilliant metallic night effect. The appearance of silver can also be obtained by the use of palladium leaf, which does not tarnish. The first gold window installed in a church, known as the Glory Window, was designed by Henry Lee Willet and Marguerite Gaudin in 1951 for Westwood Community Church in Los Angeles, California.

Notable commissions

Cadet Chapel

Sanctuary Window, Graduate Chapel, West Point, New York WestPointNY Chapel FullWindow colorcorrected.jpg
Sanctuary Window, Graduate Chapel, West Point, New York

In 1910, William Willet was invited to compete for the design and installation of the Great Sanctuary Window in the West Point Cadet Chapel at the United States Military Academy. Ten other designers, including Nicola D'Ascenzo and Tiffany Studios joined Willet in this international competition. [11] In 1911, the studio was granted the commission of the Sanctuary window, a memorial to the graduates of the Military Academy. [12] The project for the design and fabrication of the Nave and North windows was awarded to the Willet Studio. The master plan for the nave windows, which were sponsored by individual classes in the hopes that every class would eventually be represented, [12] was devised by Bertram Goodhue, William Willet, Colonel C.W. Larned and Chaplain Edward S. Travers. The window program depicts familiar stories of the Old and New Testament, as well as stories of saints from the early church. The north window, also designed and fabricated by the studio, is a memorial to the alumni who died in World War I.

The commission, which spanned three generations of Willets over a period of sixty-six years, remains the longest continuing commission in American history. [13]

Grace Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, California

In 1965, the studio completed six leaded stained glass windows for Grace Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California. Located in the east half of the north and south aisles, [14] the studio’s windows are part of a larger collection of art at the Cathedral which includes stained glass works by Charles Connick, Gabriel Loire and an altarpiece casting of the last work [15] completed by Keith Haring in the Cathedral’s AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel. [16]

The commission began in the early 1960s when the studio was selected as a representative of the current day masters of stained glass. Designed by Marguerite Gaudin, the colorful windows are contemporary in style, an intentional departure from the more traditional aesthetic of the earlier Connick windows. [14] In 2009, a copy of Gaudin’s New Testament Baptism (1964) design was displayed at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery as part of the University of the Arts Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition. [17]

Hall of Science and Technology

The Hall of Science was designed in 1962 by Wallace Harrison for the 1964 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. Harrison modeled the 80-foot-tall (24 m) building after the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower in Berlin, Germany - a 100-foot (30 m) faceted glass tower composed of deep blue faceted glass. Harrison's cornerless serpentine shaped Hall of Science is made up of 5,400 coffers, each 2 feet (0.61 m) wide and 3 feet (0.91 m) tall. The Willet Studio, under Henry Lee Willet's guidance, was commissioned to construct the 5,400 panels that form the walls in less than one years time. [18] Each panel is composed of thick chunks of blue faceted glass held together by cement. Twenty to 30 different shades of blue glass, imported from France and the Blenko Glass Company of Milton, West Virginia, were used in the project. The blue light, which engulfs the interior, symbolizes the heavens and carries out the theme, "Rendezvous in Space." [19]

Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Arts for Transit is a program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City that encourages the use of public transit by presenting visual and performing arts projects in subway and commuter rail stations. As a part of the overall project, neighborhood artists working in various media are invited to compete for projects in nearby stations. In 1998 Willet Hauser was selected to fabricate faceted stained glass panels based on the winning designs of many of these artists. The project is one of the largest projects in the studio's history.

Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas

In 2001, the studio received the monumental commission to design and create the entire stained glass fenestration for St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. The 36 window project, completed in May 2004, is the studio’s largest-ever one-time commission. Over 100,000 individual pieces of hand-cut glass make up the clerestory windows alone. The church’s Rev. Gibson, remarking on the coloration of the different blues within The Great Commission window, compared the work to Chartres stained glass: “...the bluest window I have ever seen, next to the Jesse Tree window in Chartres.” [20]

Nearly 20 years later, in 2018, the studio was again commissioned to design and fabricate the stained glass in the church’s new Christ Chapel and Parish Life Center.

Contributing artists and designers

Other media

Ben Shahn, Frank Shoonover, Franklin Watkins, György Kepes, Jacob Landau, Ralph Pallen Coleman, Sadao Watanabe, Ellen Miret, David Pushkin, Max Abramovitz, Wallace Harrison have worked with the studio in other media. [1]

Related Research Articles

Stained glass Coloured glass and the works that are made from it

The term stained glass refers either to coloured glass as a material or to works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from foil glasswork exemplified in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Came glasswork Glass joined with came strips or foil

Came glasswork is the process of joining cut pieces of art glass through the use of came strips or foil into picturesque designs in a framework of soldered metal.

Conrad Schmitt Studios

Conrad Schmitt Studios is an architectural arts studio located in New Berlin, Wisconsin. It provides ecclesiastical art, stained glass artistry, art glass, decorative painting, mosaics, murals and sculptural arts. The studio specializes in restoration services for buildings of architectural, historical and religious significance. Founded in 1889 by German-American artist Conrad Schmitt, the company is one of the oldest and largest glass studios in the United States.

Leadlight Type of windows

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Christopher Whall

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Sarah Hall (glass artist) Canadian artist

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Brian Clarke British architectural artist and painter

Brian Clarke is a British painter, architectural artist and printmaker, known for his large-scale stained glass and mosaic projects, symbolist paintings, set designs, and collaborations with major figures in Modern and contemporary architecture.

William Willet American multimode artist

William Willet was an American portrait painter, muralist, stained glass designer, studio owner and writer. An early proponent of the Gothic Revival and active in the "Early School" of American stained glass, he founded the Willet Stained Glass and Decorating Company, a stained glass studio, with his wife and partner Anne Lee Willet, in protest against the opalescent pictorial windows which were the rage at the turn of the twentieth century.

Charles Jay Connick American painter

Charles Jay Connick (1875–1945) was a prominent American painter, muralist, and designer best known for his work in stained glass in the Gothic Revival style. Born in Springboro, Pennsylvania, Connick eventually settled in the Boston area where he opened his studio in 1913. Connick's work is contained in many preeminent churches and chapels, including examples in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. He also authored the book Adventures in Light and Color in 1937. Connick's studio continued to operate, and remained a leading producer of stained glass, until 1986.

Glass art Art, substantially or wholly made of glass

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Dieterich Spahn was a German-born American artist working in the fields of stained glass and painting. In a career spanning more than four decades he produced roughly 370 stained glass commissions for places of worship, hospitals, universities and private residences throughout the United States. In addition to stained glass, Spahn continues to explore new media and techniques with his painting.

Lawrence Lee

Lawrence Stanley Lee was a British stained glass artist whose work spanned the latter half of the 20th century. He was best known for leading the project to create ten windows for the nave of the new Coventry Cathedral. His other work includes windows at Guildford and Southwark Cathedrals as well as a great number of works elsewhere in the UK, and some in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Peter Mollica is an American stained glass artist.

Dalle de verre, from French: "glass slab", is a glass art technique that uses pieces of coloured glass set in a matrix of concrete and epoxy resin or other supporting material.

Jean-Jacques Duval was a French-born American artist who pioneered abstract art and the use of faceted glass in stained glass design in the 1960s. In 2005 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Stained Glass Association of America. Best known for his window designs in Germany, Israel, Japan, the West Indies, and the United States, his paintings and sculptures have also been exhibited throughout North America.

Nicola DAscenzo

Nicola D'Ascenzo was an Italian-born American stained glass designer, painter and instructor. He is best known for creating stained glass windows for the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; the Nipper Building in Camden, New Jersey; the Loyola Alumni Chapel of Our Lady at Loyola University Maryland; the Folger Shakespeare Library and Washington National Cathedral, both in Washington, D.C.

Margaret Redmond

Margaret Redmond (1867–1948) was an American stained glass artist. Her work is characteristic of the medieval revival style, inspired by the fourteenth and fifteenth century stained glass of French and English cathedrals. She chose innovative glass materials, vibrant colors and thick leading designs for her windows, favored by the leading stained glass artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. She is best known for her stained glass work from the 1920s to the 1940s, which can be found in churches, museums, homes and libraries from New Jersey to Maine.

Robert Sowers 20th century American painter and scholar

Robert Sowers was an American painter, photographer, stained glass artist, and seminal figure in the re-emergence of stained glass as an architectural art in the United States. His architectural glass commissions cover some 20 years from St George's Episcopal Church, Durham, New Hampshire (1955) to Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York (1975) and the blue cross window for Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. In November 1953 he participated in the New Talent Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He designed the vast American Airlines terminal glass facade at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1958–59. It was demolished in 2008 to allow for an reorganization and expansion of their terminal.

Carl Huneke German-American stained glass artist

Carl Huneke was a German-American stained glass artist and master craftsman.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Studio History and Biographies. Willet Hauser Architectural Glass Archives & Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  2. ↑ John Phillips. "America's Stained Glass Window Heritage Companies Come Together as Associated Crafts Acquires Willett Hauser". PRWeb Online Visibility from Vocus. 10 Jan. 2014
  3. ↑ Pazulski, Kristin. "Local stained glass firm continues 108-year tradition of craftsmanship." Chestnut Hill Local 9 Nov. 2006.
  4. ↑ Inc. Magazine Inc. 5000. "Inc. magazine names Associated Crafts/Willet Hauser to Inc. 5000 list". Winona Daily News. 18 Aug, 2018
  5. ↑ Willet, William. Book of Results of the Willet Stained Glass and Decorating Company, Philadelphia: Willet Stained Glass and Decorating Co. (1921)
  6. ↑ "Anne Lee Willet, 1867-1943." Stained Glass Quarterly. Spring 1943
  7. ↑ Pazulski, Kristin. "Local stained glass firm continues 108-year tradition of craftsmanship". Chestnut Hill Local. 9 Nov. 2006
  8. ↑ "Stained Glass Artist Henry Lee Willet." Philadelphia Inquirer , Oct. 1983.
  9. ↑ Associated Crafts and Willet Hauser. "Willet Hauser purchased by competitor with family connection". Winona Daily News. 26 Jan, 2014
  10. ↑ Waggoner, Shawn. "Crosby Willet and Willet Stained Glass Studios: Three Generations of Glass for the Ages." Glass Art, Jan/Feb 2003:57
  11. ↑ Farnsworth, Jean M. Stained Glass in Catholic Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2002.
  12. 1 2 Pappas, George S. The Cadet Chapel: United States Military Academy. West Point, New York: U.S.M.A., 1987.
  13. ↑ Parente, Leigh Anne. "The St. Martin's Commission. The Willet Stained Glass Studio's Largest Commission (Yet)." The Stained Glass Quarterly 101:4 (2006):278.
  14. 1 2 Murphy, R. (July/August 1999). “Celebrating the Stained Glass Legacy”. Glass Art, 42.
  15. ↑ Waggoner, S; Windishar, M (July/August 1999). “To Sustain a Legacy: The Grace Cathedral Restoration”. Glass Art, 41.
  16. ↑ Grace Episcopal Cathedral "AIDS Interfaith Memorial Chapel"
  17. ↑ The University of the Arts. Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition. Edited by Joe Rapone, Regina Barthmaier and Nancy Burlan. Philadelphia: The University of the Arts, 2009. Exhibition catalogue, accessed July 22, 2020. "Silver Star Alumni Award Exhibition"
  18. ↑ Waggoner, Shawn. "Crosby Willet and Willet Stained Glass Sudios: Three Generations of Glass for the Ages." Glass Art, Jan/Feb 2003:58
  19. ↑ Long, Tania. "Hall of Science Studies Lighting." The New York Times , 7 Oct. 1964.
  20. ↑ Parente, L. (Winter 2006). “The St. Martin's Commission: The Willet Stained Glass Studios’ Largest Commission (Yet)”. The Stained Glass Quarterly. 101 (4): 278-283.
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