"STAINED GLASS" WINDOWS
Quite early in the recent history of St. Augustine's, as recorded in this web site, we presented a Christmas service. It was perhaps the first such service for a long time, and we had quite a goodly number of enthusiastic helpers. One of their contributions was to devise and produce a set of overlays for some of our windows, which gave the appearance of stained glass windows, with patterns appropriate for Christmas.
The original set ( 1999 ) were made of a double thickness of black building paper of the same size as the windows, with coloured cellophane paper glued across cut-out areas. They were very effective, and we used them for some years. They were ( fairly ) easy to stick to the window frames with sticky tape, and, once up, stayed up ( fairly ) reliably.
As time went by, the building paper became harder to manage - it tended to curl up, and tear, and even when attached to the windows would warp and crack. We therefore copied them carefully onto particle board, cut in the same way as the original building paper, and with the cellophane glued as before. These were rather harder to attach to the window frames, but we were able to keep them in position using nut-and-bolt arrangements to fix them by applying quite gentle pressure to the window frames ( technical details here ). This has proved successful for several years now.
Perhaps the only problem with our present collection is that the cellophane tends to deteriorate fairly quickly in the sunlight, so must be replaced after a couple of years or so.
Here are photographs of the seven windows; click any photograph for a separate version :
Angel with halo
( The first version didn't have the red stole. It might be better that way; the stole makes it look rather more liturgical, and correspondingly less heavenly. )
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Angel with horn
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Candles
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Christingle
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Star over Manger
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Star over Village
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The items in the St Augustine's window to the right, apart from the large "star of Bethlehem", are ( well, represent ) :
- The four stars of the Southern Cross;
- Sky;
- Rangitoto Island, a volcanic island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf;
- Sea - the Hauraki Gulf;
- Achilles Point, at the other side of the Waitemata Harbour;
- Sea - the Waitemata Harbour;
- Mount Victoria and North Head, in Devonport;
- land - Devonport ( actually mostly built up ); and
- St. Augustine's church.
It's a caricature, but the geography is approximately correct.
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St. Augustine's
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( The rectangular lattice visible through the transparent parts in some of the pictures is part of the real window frame. )
Examples
We use the "windows" in most of our Christmas services, but rarely mention them explicitly. The single exception is :
- when they were mentioned in the sermon, so still don't appear in the script.
2009 November