Stained Glass Terms and Definitions

Stained Glass | Terms & Definitions - B
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Banding: Process of fixing copper wire (or lead, zinc) to panels of glass for support. These wires are attached on the inside or outside of the piece then wrapped around the saddle bars (support) going across the window and twisted round themselves on the outside of the bar, bringing the bar and glass together.

Baptistery: A separate room or building of a church containing the font.

Bar (Barring): A single piece of glass formed by fusing several canes or rods. A bar can be cut into numerous slices, all with the same design, to be used as inlays or appliqués, or in making mosaic glass.

Barilla A plant, Salsola soda, which grows extensively on seashores in Spain, Sicily, and the Canary Islands. As a term referring to an impure alkali made by burning plants of this and related species, formerly used in the manufacture of soda, soap, and glass.

Baroque: 1. A pattern of glass manufactured by the Spectrum Glass Company consisting of a color or sometimes two, combined with clear class in a gently swirled pattern. Made to imitate a reamy glass. 2. A style of art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries characterized by overblown realism and curved figures.

Base: The standing support for a table lamp shade.

Batch: The mixture of raw materials (often silica, soda or potash, and lime) that is melted in a pot or tank to make glass. Cullet is added to help the melting process.

Battledore: A glassworker's tool in the form of a square wooden paddle with a handle. Battledores are used to smooth the bottoms of vessels and other objects.

Bauhaus: An artistic style derived from the principles of a German school of architecture and design founded in 1919, and terminated prior to World War II.

Bay: 1. The space between columns. 2. One complete transverse unit of the architecture, interior or exterior.

Bay Window: Three or more window units attached to a building so as to project outward.

Beading: The process of adding additional solder to a seam in a copper foil construction to produce a rounded rather than flattened surface. Often considered more aesthetically appealing and stronger than a flat soldered seam.

Bevel: Cut and polished edge usually on plate glass at an angle other than 90°, done in stages with roughing, smoothing, cork and felt wheel polishing.

Biedermeier: A style of decorative art favored by the German middle class between about 1820 and 1840. The name is derived from two fictional bourgeois characters, Biedermann and Bummelmeier, in the satirical verses of Ludwig Eichrodt. During the period in which the Biedermeier style was popular, glassmaking revived in Bohemia, where new kinds of glass such as Lithyalin and elaborate flashed, wheel-eng raved, and enameled glass were produced for middle-class consumers.

Bird Fountain: A flameworked centerpiece or mantel ornament consisting of a tall fountain with two birds perched on the rim, and two or more shorter pedestals, each with a bird on the top. The birds have tails made of glass fibers. Bird fountains were made in England in the mid-19th century.

Bit: Also router bit, diamond bit, router head, diamond head. General terms used to describe the diamond coated cylinders used on stained glass grinders (routers) to shape glass. The come in various diameters and grit sizes.

Black Bottle: A popular term for bottles of dark green or dark brown glass, the dark color of which protected the contents. "Black" glass was first made in England in the mid-17th century.

Blank: Any cooled glass object that requires further forming or decoration to be finished.

Blankschnitt (German, "polished cut"): A style of engraved decoration in which the relief effect is enhanced by polishing the ground part of the intaglio. Blankschnitt decoration is frequently found on glasses engraved in the German city of Nuremberg in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Blasting: Shorten term used for sand blasting, a technique of etching and carving glass using an abrasive under pressure.

Blobbing: The technique of decorating hot glass by dropping onto the surface blobs of molten glass, usually of a different color or colors.

Block: A block of wood hollowed out to form a hemispherical recess. After it has been dipped in water to reduce charring and to create a "cushion" of steam, the block is used to form the gather into a sphere, prior to inflation.

Blowing: The technique of forming an object by inflating a gob of molten glass gathered on the end of a blowpipe. The gaffer blows through the tube, slightly inflating the gob, which is then manipulated into the required form by swinging it, rolling it on a marver, or shaping it with tools or in a mold; it is then inflated to the desired size. Blown three-mold glass Glassware made in America between about 1815 and 1835 that was blown in a full-size mold that (despite the popular name) consisted of between two and five pieces.

Blowpipe: An iron or steel tube, usually about five feet long, for blowing glass. Blowpipes have a mouthpiece at one end and are usually fitted at the other end with a metal ring that helps to retain a gather.

Borosilicate: A hard glass with a higher melting temperature used in flameworking, especially in larger projects. Its lower COE makes it easier to rework and finished pieces more resistant to thermal shock

Borsella: (Italian) A tong like tool used for shaping glass. The borsella puntata has a pattern on the jaws, which was impressed on the glass.

Bottle Glass: A common, naturally colored, dark greenish or brownish glass. The color is characteristic of glass that includes traces of iron found in the natural silica used as the major ingredient. Sometimes, additional iron, in the form of iron oxide (or other materials), is added to darken the color.

Bow Lathe: A primitive lathe powered by the use of a bow. The bowstring is looped around the spindle of the lathe and causes it to rotate as the bow is drawn backward and forward.

Breakers: Also called breaking pliers. A specialized pliers used in stained glass to separate glass along a score line. The have flat upper and lower jaws that are often finely serrated.

Breaker/Grozier Pliers: Specialized pliers used in stained glass to separate glass along a score line. They have a curved lower jaw and flat upper jaw, both with fine serrations used to clean up or nibble away the glass edge.

Breaking the Score: The act of separating a piece of glass into the planned sections created along the 'score' or marked in line. There are several ways to achieve this break.

Brilliant-Cut Glass: Objects with elaborate, deeply cut patterns that usually cover the entire surface and are highly polished. In the United States, the vogue for brilliant-cut glass lasted from about 1880 to 1915.

Broad Glass: Window glass made by inflating a large gather and swinging it until it forms a cylinder. The cylinder is then detached from the blowpipe, and both ends are removed with shears. Next, the cylinder is cut lengthwise, reheated, and either tooled or allowed to slump until it assumes the form of a flat sheet. After annealing, the sheet is cut into panes.

Broken-Swirl Ribbing: Mold-blown decoration that has two sets of ribs. This is made by blowing the gather in a vertically ribbed dip mold, extracting and twisting it to produce a swirled effect, and then re-dipping it in the same or another dip mold to create a second set of ribs.

Bubble: A pocket of gas trapped in glass during manufacture. The term is used for both bubbles introduced intentionally (also known as air traps or beads) and bubbles trapped accidentally during the melting process. Very small bubbles are called seeds.

Bull's-eye Pane: A glass pane with a pontil mark surrounded by concentric ridges. This was the central part of a large pane of crown glass.

Burmese Glass: A type of translucent pink-shading-to-yellow Art Glass made by the Mount Washington Glass Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, between 1885 and about 1895.

Burner: The part of a lamp where the flame is produced.

Burnish: Process in copper foil construction of pressing and smoothing the copper foil tape down to the glass.

Buttering: Applying a thin layer of putty or sealant to the flat surface before installing a window

The sources for this material include:
•Glass: A Pocket Dictionary of Terms Commonly Used to Describe Glass and Glassmaking.
Compiled by David Whitehouse, 88 pp., 47 illus., 1993
•How to Work in Stained Glass. Anita & Seymour Isenberg, 247 pp., 1972
•Stained Glass Lamps. Anita & Seymour Isenberg, 222 pp., 1972
•The Techniques of Stained Glass. Partrick Reyntiens, 168 pp. 1977
•The Coming Museum Website: www.cmog.org
• The Stained Glass Association of America Website: www.stainedglass.org