Stained Glass Loft Window Update

My next post was going to be about the roof installation, but then I did a 4 p.m. dash up to Addison today to meet with Dave Kittrell at Kittrell/Riffkind Art Glass about my loft window - and now I have to write about that first!  I've been trying to get to Addison to see him for over a week and I just couldn't get there.  They close at 6 on Saturdays and I made it into the studio a shade before 5.  As turned out, it was just the right amount of time.

I LOVE going to meet with him.  To begin with, the gallery there is full of beautiful glass pieces.  Things that hang and catch the sun, jewelry, art pieces, glassware... if it's made from glass, they have it.  I always look longingly at items on the way out the door. Secondly, watching the way his mind works it's so obvious that he's doing what he loves, and that he's spectacularly good at it.  And he's just a nice guy.

I've written one other post about the loft window.  You can read it here.

I had narrowed my design to two figures:

The Sacred Geometry Spiral

Seed of Life - Artwork Credit Judith Shaw

I had printed several copies of them and had colored them with pencils to see what color palette I liked.  Verdict?  I can still color within the lines, but I'm not a very artsy person; I wasn't particularly whipped on any of the color combinations I'd come up with.  As per normal, I can immediately recognize what I don't like, but I have difficulty identifying what I do like.

After a bit of discussion, David and I decided on the spiral design.  He pulled out my file to review the measurements of the glass opening in the window, and drew the daylight opening on some parchment paper:

He also brought out a crate of pieces of glass that were my color palette and spread them out on the table.

Then we started laying out the design.  We started with one spiral, then added a second one.  Then he turned the second one upside down and backwards and it created sort of a yin and yang type of design.  Then he played around with overlapping the outside curve, and separating them.

That was sort of a cool look.  We tried turning the overlap in the center of the top one into a lotus flower, but the two styles were too disparate and they didn't go well together.

Then he went back to just having one spiral in the middle.  He made the remaining space on the ends of the page into separate panels, and drew a lotus in each one.  To see which way it looked better, he faced one in towards the middle, and one facing out towards the end.

 It's a bit difficult to see - and there is an extra swoopy line going through the middle.  On the left end, the lotus faces out.  On the right end the lotus faces inward.  We decided we liked the lotus facing out the best.

Then we played around with the color palette.

Some colors I nixed - like he had a mauve in there, and I am still traumatized from mauve in the 80's so it had to go.  The initial green was too kelly green for me, so we softened with with more of a shade of sage.

Then we had to decide what color the lotus petals would be - we decided on white.  With a turquoise patterned design around it.  Here is our final color palette:

The two colors on the far right are for the lotus panels.  How the rest of the colors are placed is totally up to him - I am so grateful those are his decisions because I don't have an eye for that type of thing at all.  And I know whatever he does is going to be gorgeous.  I can't WAIT to see it!  It's so exciting to be getting past the basic construction components and to be thinking about personalizing the house.