ST. LOUIS — The new stained-glass window in Rick Roth’s kitchen reminds him of his mother. He had it installed in May, not long after she died at age 97.
It catches the morning sun and casts a prism onto the counter.
“It just brings in such amazing light,” said Roth, who lives in Soulard. “Now I’m looking around, thinking, ‘Do I have another window I can do?’”
In St. Louis — awash with churches that boast intricate, technicolor panels — the market for stained glass is self-perpetuating. City dwellers who want to hang onto the character of their old brick bungalows call about repair work. For homeowners in newer builds, commissioning a stained-glass window ensures that at least one feature in their house isn’t mass-produced. Either way, local artisans stay busy creating, fixing or replacing glass.
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“The Midwest is a hot spot for stained glass,” said Jacob Preston, co-owner of Preston Art Glass in Midtown.
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While working on a restoration, Elias Preston removes a piece of stained glass from the original lead lines and places it in a design with other removed pieces at Preston Art Glass in St. Louis on Friday, June 7. Elias and his brother Jacob are second generation owners of the studio.
A rush that was stirred during the pandemic has barely subsided. And with inflation sending the cost of run-of-the-mill window installation skyward, a stained-glass investment — usually starting at several hundred dollars — doesn’t feel like that much of a bigger bite.
The art form dates back hundreds of years. During the building boom at the turn of the 20th century, stained-glass windows became a common element in homes and places of worship. Famed glazier Emil Frei Sr. settled in St. Louis in the 1890s after designing the windows for St. Francis Xavier (College) Church. His descendants still run a studio in Kirkwood.
Residential stained glass cratered during the Great Depression and World War II but bounced back by the early 1970s, just before Preston’s father, Dale, took up the hobby.
Dale Preston, who had been a housepainter and cabinetmaker, opened his studio in Dutchtown in 1995. Ten years later, he relocated to Midtown. Now Jacob Preston runs the shop with his mom and older brother.
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Jacob Preston uses solder to secure a new piece of glass while repairing a stained glass window at Preston Art Glass in St. Louis on Friday, June 7, 2024.
“It was all learning on the job,” Preston said. “It helped that my dad was very patient.”
Sometimes, clients come to him with their design in mind. Other times, they give him free rein.
Bob Dowgwillo did a little of both. At one point, the dining room windows in his staid Skinker-DeBaliviere duplex had been stained glass, but those were long gone by the time he purchased the property in the 1980s.
For years, he thought about what a remodel could look like. Finally, after Dowgwillo retired, he called Preston. He and his wife liked the idea of bright flowers. A fleur-de-lis could represent their city. They loved a specific shade of cerulean.
They’d need six pieces in all: the main picture window; a smaller one above it; and a double-hung window on each side.
It was an investment, about $9,000, but provided a huge upgrade from their former view: their neighbor’s brick wall. Now they see glinting petals and glowing leaves winking at them in blues, greens and pinks.
“For weeks, I could not walk through the room without stopping,” said Dowgwillo. “It was just mesmerizing.”
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Jacob Preston completes a stained glass repair after replacing sections of broken glass while working at Preston Art Glass in St. Louis on Friday, June 7.
In style
Chris Cosby has been enamored with stained glass since he was a teenager a half century ago. He founded Cosby Art Glass Co. in Webster Groves in 1978. His brother Tim joined him a few years later.
Since then, shag carpeting and wicker furniture have disappeared from homes. Wallpaper came in, went out and came in again. But stained-glass accents have toed the line between modern and traditional, fresh and formal.
“In all the time I’ve been around this, it really hasn’t gone out of style,” Cosby said.
And his enthusiasm for the craft has not waned, either.
“When I get a shipment of glass, it’s like Christmas,” he said. “It gives me a real thrill to see the finished pieces.”
The uniqueness is what draws customers, said Cosby.
“In a world that’s copying itself, it’s nice to have something that means something,” he said. “It means more than something you could buy off the shelf.”
Glenn Steinkamp of south St. Louis County drove by Cosby’s shop one day a few years ago and stopped in for a look. Since then, he’s been transforming his house in Oakville, little by little, with pieces that hearken back to his childhood home near Soulard.
Cosby recently finished his fourth job for Steinkamp, who wanted the window in his front door to look the way he feels when he is hiking along a riverbank. Purple wisteria runs along the top; blue waves lap at the button. Fish and grasshoppers and woodland creatures peek out.
“It’s one of my life splurges,” Steinkamp said. “I still find myself seeing something I’ve never seen before.”
‘The glass grows’
John Schwaig came to stained glass as a second career after spending 14 years as a Catholic priest. The house he bought after he left the priesthood was in Lafayette Square and had a stunner of a window.
When Schwaig moved in, he discovered the previous owners had taken it with them.
“That negative became a great positive,” he said.
Rather than enlist someone to replace it, Schwaig decided to learn the trade himself. A couple years later, in 2007, he opened Schwaig Art Glass Works.
He has been hired to engineer everything from suncatchers to church ceilings to sconces at the Fox Theatre. Once in a while, he teaches a class. But mostly, he does residential orders, a mix of new pieces and repair work.
A decade ago, Schwaig relocated to Clifton Heights and built a workshop in his basement.
The backroom is a library of glass in every color and shade. Clear samples, technically called art glass, come in a variety of textures: bubbled, wavy, streaked. Buckets hold lengths of zinc flange for borders and pieces of rebar, used to keep larger windows from bowing.
“I never throw anything away,” Schwaig said. “The glass grows.”
Each job starts with a pattern sketched on paper. Schwaig lays the glass over the draft and rolls a scorer across. He can snap the pieces along the groove — “like a cracker,” he said. A curved tool called a grozier crimps off any jagged bits.
Then Schwaig roughs up the edges so the copper-foil tape will stick. He paints over the foil with a thin layer of flux, which helps the solder bond.
The soldering iron swelters at 900 degrees. When Schwaig touches it to the end of the wire spool, a bead of thick liquid forms. Slowly, he lays down a gleaming silver seam — part tin, part lead — to join the shapes together.
The process is not without its perils.
“I’ve burned myself plenty,” Schwaig said.
When all the pieces have been soldered, Schwaig brushes on a patina and then gives the whole thing a sponge bath. The window goes back to the workbench one last time for a coating of Formula 1 carnauba car wax.
“It’s a good little shine,” said Schwaig.
The care that Schwaig takes is what sold Emily Robinson on him.
Three years ago, Robinson moved into a turn-of-the-20th-century University City home. The art-glass windows in the entryway were barely hanging on. The frame was bent; the glass, lined with cracks.
“We’re trying to be very intentional about repairing the house,” said Robinson.
Schwaig came over, gingerly removed the three windows, fixed them up, and reinstalled them.
For about $750, Robinson felt like her house had gotten a facelift.
“It looks beautiful,” she said. “St. Louis needs these artisans to preserve our glass.”