The Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in downtown Honolulu will receive a Preservation Honor Award on May 31 for their church preservation project. The project provided much needed repairs, upgrades and improvements while maintaining the historic integrity and character of the church and parish hall. Adding stained glass at the alter in a new frame was part of the project. Below, stained glass master artist James Erickson, describes the work and the challenge.
The Stained Glass Alter at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
The oldest stained glass window in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is the large window group located above the altar and it was installed in 1914. When I was asked to inspect it and provide a condition report in 2016 it was clearly in very poor shape.
The original wooden frame system with multi-curved tracery design elements was badly compromised on the outside from 100 years of exposure to elements and on the interior the wood had serious termite damage. The window had begun to bulge and deflect with many pieces of cracked or broken glass. All of the structural lead-lines suffered from lead fatigue with numerous broken solder joints. It was clear that all of the glass panels would need to be removed along with the old wood frame that was too damaged to save.
In order to meet current building code standards and for structural design reasons due to the size of the window, a strong, new, double glazed aluminum frame system would be installed. It would be thinner and unfortunately would have made the entire window look more modern which was not the desired effect. This required a creative solution.
The resulting solution would offer one of the most effective visual elements that contributed to the preservation of the historic look of the window. It is the appearance of the traditional tracery from the old wood frame. This was accomplished by copying all of the original frame shapes and dimensions and then incorporating them directly into the edges of the new stained glass panels with black glass. The completely opaque black glass matched perfectly with the black silhouette of the aluminum frame to create a convincing copy of the original historic frame. The resulting visual effect worked perfectly and was extremely successful. ~James Erickson
James Erickson is the founder and owner of James Erickson Studios and has been creating beautiful stained glass windows since 1970. In 1990 the main studio relocated to the North Shore of O‘ahu in Waialua, serving all of the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific. James also maintains a working studio in Berkeley California.
Some of his past local work includes restoring windows for the Cathedral of St. Andrew that were made by Tiffany Studios of New York at the turn of the century. He’s also done work for Bishop Museum and many Hawai‘i churches.
(Photo of James Erickson courtesy of Midweek Kaua‘i .)