Stained glass is a craft as old as time. There’s something to say about a method of creating that has endured through the ages, first being used by the Romans in since around the first century AD. Fashioning beautiful pieces with stained glass that capture and reflect the sun in a dazzling array of light is still incredibly popular today, and if you’ve been itching to try your hands at it, now’s the time. Beginner’s classes are being offered incredibly close to Athens in scenic Hocking Hills.
Why is Stained Glass so Popular?
Staining glass is a craft where someone works with molten glass, adding various metallic oxides to the searingly hot glass to achieve certain colors. Artists piece together their stained glass creations, meld them with solder, and create lovely pieces shaped like favorite animals, plants, objects, and abstract art. Stained glass was mostly only used in churches or places of worship for religious imagery, and to also highlight the wealth of certain individuals—it was essentially designed to be a status symbol.
Thankfully today, stained glass is much more accessible to the average person, especially when it’s done on a smaller scale. It’s popular as ever due to its almost mystical quality. The way a large-scale work of stained glass captures the sunlight beaming through it is nothing short of breathtaking, creating an immediate ambience in the building you’re in. A smaller-scale piece—one you might hang in a sunny kitchen window—is equally captivating, pushing through a gentle light display onto a nearby surface. To put it simply, people are (and always will be) attracted to aesthetically-pleasing objects.
About the Class
This beginner-friendly workshop on creating your own stained glass piece is perfect if you’re curious about stained glass or are simply looking for something new to try out. With a curated selection of designs including birds, moons, mushrooms, and even pizza (the medieval people have nothing on us), participants will find a design that they like and use the two-hour class to bring it to life in their own way by choosing a color palette, shaping different pieces of glass, and adding any other extra, personalized details.
Students will learn how to cut and score glass, work pieces with a glass grinder to get their needed size and shape, and learn to solder the individual pieces together, including a hook and chain for easy hanging at home. The class is facilitated by an experienced instructor, able to offer guidance and answer questions along the way.
The absolute best part of the class—besides, you know, creating and taking home your own unique piece of stained glass art—is the fact that this is an ongoing class. There’s a class available to take all the way through the end of September, with the majority of them starting at noon.
For those looking for a fun summer activity, this could be just the thing. What will you create?