In this post I want to look at the rich history of stained glass in front doors. We are all familiar with what was once a common sight down every leafy suburb across the country, however, the slow demise of stained glass being used for front doors has continued for the last hundred years. Nowadays we can walk down a street and find that the stained glass has been replaced with cheaper sheets of safety glass with no artistic merit, we have lost over 95% of original stained glass in front doors since its hay-day in Victorian times. The main reason is the cost to have stained glass replaced when it breaks, which is inevitable if the door doesn’t have a sheet of toughened glass fitted to the exterior side to stop it bowing as the door hits the door frame. Walking down a street in a town or city today we see a mixed bag of styles of glass, if the door & frame have been replaced with PVC then the glass will be awful, if wood is retained then it may have stained glass, etched glass or sometimes fused glass. Arguably this is more interesting than a street of stained glass which all looks the same but it remains true that the use of stained glass is still declining as fewer studios manage to survive the costs involved in keeping a small glass studio going. The craft is in trouble and a walk down our streets is testimony to its demise.
Here are a few examples of front doors from our portfolio in an attempt of buck the trend.
