The Story of Glass Part 15

"Neither have any of the rest of us, Norcross," put in Mr. Cabot. "That is what we came for. I have been toting these two youthful friends of mine all over the world and together we have investigated almost every known form of gla.s.s, from the Naples Vase down to an American lamp chimney."

Mr. Norcross smiled.

"So you see," Uncle Bob went on, "I wanted them to witness this phase of gla.s.s-making."

"They certainly shall. How did you chance to be so interested in the making of gla.s.s?" inquired the artist, turning to Giusippe.

"I am a Venetian, senor. For over six generations my people have been at Murano."

"Oh, then, what wonder! And that accounts for your own personal color scheme."

The artist let his eyes dwell upon the Italian's face intently: then glanced at Miss Cartright.

"I did a portrait of Giusippe," she responded quietly, "when I was in Venice a few years ago. He did not look so much like an American then."

"Modern clothing certainly does take the picturesqueness out of some of us," answered Mr. Cabot.

In the meantime Giusippe had wandered off to the distant side of the studio and now stood before a large gla.s.s panel calling excitedly:

"Is this the window you are making, senor? How beautiful! The violet light behind the woman's head, and that yellow glow on her hair--it is wonderful! And her white drapery against the background of green!"

Mr. Norcross came to his side, flus.h.i.+ng with gratification.

"The mellow tones playing on her hair were hard to get. I spent a lot of time working at them. It isn't easy to get the results one wants when making stained gla.s.s."

"What did you do first, Mr. Norcross, when you began the window?" asked Jean timidly.

"I will show you every step I have taken in doing it if you would like to follow the process. In the first place I went to Chicago and studied the light and the setting which it was to have. Then I made this small water-color design and submitted it for approval to the persons who were ordering the window. The drawing accepted, I set about making a full-sized cartoon which I sketched in with charcoal on this heavy paper; the black lines represent the leading and the horizontal stay-bars necessary to hold the gla.s.s in place. After that I sliced up my cartoon into a mult.i.tude of small pieces from which the gla.s.s could be cut and the lead lines decided upon. All this done I went to work planning my color scheme--thinking out what dominating colors I would use and where I would place my high lights."

"And then you were ready for your gla.s.s?" inquired Mr. Cabot.

"Yes. Now selecting the gla.s.s is not alone a matter of color; it is also a problem of thickness. Sometimes a variation in tone can be obtained merely by using a bit of heavier gla.s.s in some one spot. Again the effect must be obtained by the use of paint."

"What kind of gla.s.s do you use, Mr. Norcross?" Giusippe questioned.

"What we call bottle, or Norman, gla.s.s. We get it from England, and strangely enough there is a heavy duty on it in its raw state. One can import a whole window free of duty because it is listed as an art work; but the gla.s.s out of which an art work is to be constructed costs a very high price. Odd, isn't it? As soon as I reach the point of using gla.s.s I arrange it on a large plate gla.s.s easel, using wax in the s.p.a.ces where the lead is to go. Then I experiment and experiment with my colors. You probably know that in making modern stained gla.s.s a great deal of paint is used in order to get shading and degrees of color. It was toward the end of the thirteenth century that the old gla.s.s-makers began to introduce the use of paint into their windows.

First came the grisaille gla.s.s, as it was called, where instead of strong reds and blues most of the window was in white painted with scroll work in which a few bits of brilliant stained gla.s.s were set like jewels. Then with the fourteenth century came those elaborate painted canopies and borders within which were the main figures of the window in stained gla.s.s. From that time on the combination of stained and painted gla.s.s was used. Accordingly we all work by that method now.

So, as I say, I paint in my gla.s.s and afterward it has to be fired, all the small pieces being laid out on heavy sheets of steel covered with plaster of paris."

"Do your colors always come out as you mean to have them?" inquired Giusippe, his eyes on the artist's face.

Mr. Norcross shrugged his shoulders.

"You know, don't you, how the firing often changes the tone, and how you frequently get a color you neither intended nor desired. That is one of the tribulations of stained gla.s.s making. Another is when the cutters must trim down the gla.s.s and put the lead in place. You may not realize that there are three widths of lead from which to select; it is not always easy to choose for every part of the design the thickness which will look the best. For instance, sometimes the leading will be too strong and overwhelm the picture; again it will be too weak and render the window characterless."

"It must be a fascinating puzzle to work out," mused Miss Cartright.

"Yes; but it is also a great test of the patience."

"Were the old gla.s.s windows made in this same way, do you suppose?"

asked Jean after a pause.

"I presume the old gla.s.s-makers worked along the same general plan, although they may not have followed exactly the present-day methods; certain it is, however, that they knew all the many tricks or devices for getting color effects--knew them far better than we do now. And they put endless time and thought into their work, no artist feeling it beneath his dignity to follow the humblest detail of his conception. He watched over his art-child until it got to be full-grown. This is the only way to get fine results. For, you see, there is no set rule for a gla.s.s designer to apply. Each window presents a fresh problem in the management of light and color. There is no branch of art more elusive or more difficult than this. I must be able to construct a window which will be satisfactory as a flat piece of decoration; it must be sufficiently interesting to give pleasure even when it stands in a dim light. Then presto--the sun moves round, and my window is transformed!

And in the flood of light that pa.s.ses through it I must still be able to find it beautiful."

"I think that I should like to learn to make stained gla.s.s," declared Giusippe, who had become so absorbed that he had moved close beside Mr.

Norcross.

"Would you?"

The artist smiled down kindly at him. "In your country you have many a fine example of gla.s.s. France, too, is rich in rose windows which are the despair of our modern craftsmen. But we gla.s.s-makers are working hard and earnestly, and who knows but in time we may give to the world such gla.s.s as is at Rheims, Tours, Amiens, and Chartres."

"What sort of paint do you use?" asked Mr. Cabot as he took up a brush and idly examined it in his fingers.

"A kind of opaque enamel containing fusible material which is melted by heat and thereafter adheres to the surface of the gla.s.s. It must, however, be used carefully, as it possesses so much body that too much of it will obscure the light--the thing a stained gla.s.s window should never do. We should have many more successful windows if the people making them would only bear in mind that a window is not a picture, and should not be treated as one. For my part, I make my window a window. I join the pieces of gla.s.s frankly together, not trying to conceal the lead that holds them. I cannot say that I get the results either with colors or lights that I want to get; but I am trying, with the old masters as my ideal."

"Certainly you are a long way on the road if you can turn out a window as beautiful as this one promises to be. None of us reaches the ideal, Mr. Norcross, but in the past is the inspiration that what man has done man can do. Perhaps not now, but in the future," Miss Cartright said softly.

"I wish I might try stained gla.s.s making," Giusippe said again.

"Perhaps some time you will, my boy," answered Mr. Norcross, "and perhaps, too, your generation may succeed where mine has failed, and give to the world another Renaissance. Remember, all the great deeds haven't been done yet."

CHAPTER X

TWO UNCLES AND A NEW HOME

Uncle Tom Curtis arrived in New York toward the end of the children's visit, good-byes were said to Miss Cartright and to Uncle Bob, and within the s.p.a.ce of a day Jean and Giusippe were amid new surroundings.

Here was quite a different type of city from Boston--a city with many beautiful buildings, fine residences, and a swarm of great factories which belched black smoke up into the blue of the sky. Here, too, were Giusippe's aunt and uncle with a hearty welcome for him; and here, furthermore, was the new position which the boy had so eagerly craved in the gla.s.s works. The place given Giusippe, however, did not prove to be the one his uncle had secured for him after all; for during the journey from New York Uncle Tom Curtis had had an opportunity to study the young Italian, and the result of this better acquaintance turned out to be exactly what Uncle Bob Cabot had predicted; Uncle Tom became tremendously interested in the Venetian, and before they arrived at Pittsburgh had decided to put him in quite a different part of the works from that which he had at first intended.

"Your nephew has splendid stuff in him," explained Mr. Curtis to Giusippe's uncle. "I mean to start him further up the ladder than most of the boys who come here. We will give him every chance to rise and we'll see what use he makes of the opportunity. He is a very interesting lad."

Accordingly, while Jean struggled with French, algebra, drawing, history, and literature at the new school in which Uncle Tom had entered her and while she and Fraulein Decker had many a combat with German, Giusippe began wrestling with the problems of plate gla.s.s making.

The factory was an immense one, covering a vast area in the manufacturing district of the city; it was a long way from the residential section where Jean lived, and as the boy and girl had become great chums they at first missed each other very much. Soon, however, the rush of work filled in the gaps of loneliness. Each was far too busy to lament the other, and since Uncle Tom invented all sorts of attractive plans whereby they could be together on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays the weeks flew swiftly along. There were motor trips, visits to the museums and churches of the city, and long walks with Beacon wriggling to escape from the leash which reined him in.

Uncle Tom's home was much more formal than Uncle Bob's. It stood, one of a row of tall gray stone houses, fronting a broad avenue on which there was a great deal of driving. It had a large library and a still larger dining-room in which Jean playfully protested she knew she should get lost. But stately as the dwelling was it was not so big and formidable after all if once you got upstairs; on the second floor were Uncle Tom's rooms and a dainty little bedroom, study, and bath for Jean. On the floor above a room was set apart for Giusippe, so that he might stay at the house whenever he chose. Sat.u.r.day nights and Sundays he always spent at Uncle Tom's; the rest of the time he lived with his uncle and aunt.

To Giusippe it was good to be once more with his kin and talk in his native language; and yet such a transformation had a few months in the United States made in him that he found that he was less and less anxious to remain an Italian and more and more eager to become an American. His uncle, who had made but a poor success of life in Venice, and who had secured in his foster country prosperity and happiness, declared there was no land like it. He missed, it is true, the warm, rich beauty of his birthplace beyond the seas, and many a time talked of it to his wife and Giusippe; but the lure of the great throbbing American city gripped him with its fascination. It presented endless opportunity--the chance to learn, to possess, to win out.

"If you have brains and use them, if you are not afraid of hard work, there is no limit to what a man may do and become over here," he told Giusippe. "That is why I like it, and why I never shall go back to Italy. Just you jump in, youngster, and don't you worry but you'll bring up somewhere in the end."

There was no need to urge a lad of Giusippe's make-up to "jump in"; on the contrary it might, perhaps, have been wiser advice to caution him not to take his new work too hard. He toiled early and late, never sparing himself, never thinking of fatigue. Physically he was a rugged boy, and to this power was linked the determination to make good.

Before he had been a month in the gla.s.s house he was recognized by all the men as one who would make of each task merely a stepping-stone to something higher. His uncle was congratulated right and left on having such a nephew, and very proud indeed he was of Giusippe.

In the meantime Uncle Tom Curtis, although apparently busy with more important matters, kept his eyes and ears open. Frequent reports concerning his protege reached him in his far-away office at the other end of the works. Indeed the boy would have been not a little surprised had he known how very well informed about his progress the head of the firm really was. But Uncle Tom never said much. He did, however, write Uncle Bob that to bring home a penniless Italian as a souvenir of Venice was not such a crazy scheme after all as he had at first supposed it. From Uncle Tom this was rare praise, a complete vindication, in fact. Uncle Bob chuckled over the letter and showed it to Hannah, who rubbed her hands and declared things were working out nicely.