by Susan Ewing
Stained glass gifts make excellent presents for all occasions. One of the greatest things about stained glass gifts is that each one is a unique work of art. Although some are cast, and others are handmade, nonetheless the dying is a deeply individual project undergone by a specific artist to make a unique creation for you to give to a friend or lover. Stained glass jewelry, in my opinion, is especially elegant. It has an exquisite delicateness to it, the tiny bits of stained glass glowing in luminous designs which are fascinating to inspect.
Vast chain of Being, which from God began,
Natures aethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing!—
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Another of my favorites, and probably the most classic of all stained glass gifts, is the sun catcher. This is a pane of colored glass designed to be hung in a window. When the sun shines through it, it dies is different colors corresponding to what ever image it depicts, and shines a beautiful projection of it into the room. What makes sun catchers such great stained glass gifts is that they become part of your daily life. Any time the sun is out and shining, you can see its rays reflected in the luminous, multicolored hues of the sun catcher, adding a touch of brilliance to the whole room.
If sun catchers are a type of stained glass gifts which you really appreciate, you might consider purchasing a kit instead of a finished one. Although sun catchers make great stained glass gifts, kits also do for their own reasons. First of all, a great thing about a kit is that you get to customize it, making the decisions about exactly what colors it has. Besides, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you made it, even if not completely. Finally, many people really just like to have a project to do with their hands, and sun catcher kits are a stained glass gift which allow them to do just that.
What were our praise to them? They eat
Quiet’s wild heart, like daily meat;
Who when night thickens are afloat
On dappled skins in a glass boat,
Far out under a windless sky;
While over them birds of Aengus fly....
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
If you like stained glass gifts, you might also like blown glass. Unlike stained glass, blown glass comes in a variety of different organic forms, such as vases, lamps, and many other things. And there are as many varieties of blown glass as there are stained glass gifts. Perhaps more. Blown glass has even more uniqueness than stained glass, because very often there is not one central design to it, but on the contrary, each piece is the individual vision of the artist who made it. There is only one in the world.