Last year, churchgoers at the Episcopal Church of St. Andrew and Holy Communion in South Orange noticed that one of their prized possessions — a 116-year-old stained-glass window made in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio — needed to be repaired.
“Some of the glass panes on the outside started to fall,” said Kelly Crick, chair of the church’s property committee. “Most things at the church we can cobble together, but this project was special. We see ourselves as stewards of a historic place and need to take care of it.”
The 165-year-old church began a fundraising campaign to restore the window and a few months and $38,000 later, the congregation unveiled the newly restored windows at this month’s meeting of the South Orange Historical & Preservation Society.
The historical society usually meets later in the evening, but Bryn Douds, its president and a member of the congregation, scheduled the meeting at 6 p.m., when sunlight pours into the west-facing stained-glass window in a spectacular display.
“As you can see, this is the perfect time for admiring that window,” Douds said.
What stands out about the window is the rich, and somewhat unusual, scarlet hues of the panels. Since the window has returned to church, Douds said the artwork is much clearer. He and other church members once thought it depicted a roadway threading the center of the window, but it turns out it was a rippling stream all along, he said.
The window, installed in 1910, is called the Return from Calvary and was dedicated to husband and wife John Walter Wood and Sabina Redmond Wood, who both died in 1905. The Woods’ daughter, Harriet Amelia Wood Hoskier, is believed to be the donor of the window.
The Wood and Redmond families were among the founding members of the church, built in 1861, later expanded in 1892 and 1897. In 1972, the church of Holy Communion merged with St. Andrew’s Church. The church is home to three other Tiffany stained-glass windows, including the Theriot Memorial Window from 1905, Good Shepherd from 1910, and Nativity and Annunciation of the Shepherds from 1926.
There are other stained-glass windows at the church made in J&R Lamb Studios. It was fitting that the congregation hired J&R Lamb Studios, the nation’s oldest stain-glass studio and onetime contemporaries of Tiffany and John LaFarge, the three leaders in the opalescent glass movement, to restore the Return from Calvary window.
David Bleckman, president of J&R Lamb Studios, said the window’s hues had darkened over the years because the panes, comprised of six layers of glass, had cracked and allowed water to seep in. Linseed-oil putty used to seal the window had dried out creating gaps where dirt and even insects infiltrated the window.
“As we took it apart and cleaned each piece of glass, we found that we could brighten it up a little,” he said. “We were able to clean all the layers and when we put it back together, we sealed all the plates so dirt wouldn’t get in there in the future.”
Bleckman said he has worked on dozens of Tiffany windows. Many times his studio is hired to correct a botched restoration project when an inexperienced glassworker attempts to restore one.
“You have to know what you’re looking at or else you can really destroy one of these windows,” he said. “Unfortunately a lot of people work on windows that shouldn’t be working on them, and they end up calling us after they’ve done too much damage.”
Both Douds and Krick agree that the window is best seen in person and the congregation is more than happy to welcome visitors. “We’re very proud of it and happy to show it to people,” Krick said. “If they’re willing to make a donation, we’ll take it, too.”
