I believe that stained glass design follows a different set of rules than other visual arts. The idea that forms in the mind can’t be directly transferred onto a draft—because the success of the piece depends, to a large extent, on the glass itself: its hue, its texture. It’s the material that guides the maker, suggesting what kind of motif it might be the foundation for. This is a kind of magic. It’s like walking into a forest, finding a fallen tree trunk, pressing your ear against it and trying to hear what it wants to become—a piece of furniture waiting to be revealed.
A stained-glass shop, to me, is like a candy store. Every shard is different. Each bends light in its own way, carries its own history of how it was made. Each is already, in some sense, a fragment of art. Even untouched by a cutter’s knife, even before it’s fused into anything else, it could hang on a wall, framed, like a painting made of light and glass.
Design: Violet Flowers stained glass
Designer: Tomek Mucha
Materials: Stained glass, tin, gold flakes
Dimensions: W-73 cm, D-103 cm, H-5 cm