In the course of restoring a leadlight window in the Dunedin Railway Station, stained-glass artist Kevin Casey explains why he had to juggle a couple of lions.
Steam engines charge headlong at the viewer from two sets of spectacular leadlight windows that grace Dunedin Railway Station first floor.
In both sets, east and west, the trains are identical, smoke billowing from each in synchronous fashion.
However, observant visitors to the station will have wondered why the lions on either side of the steam engine in the eastern set face the same way, while their western counterparts are back to back.
The answer is quite straightforward, though some background is instructive.
The windows are located in a four-sided gallery that provides the upper-floor link between the north and south ends of the building.
The gallery was necessitated by architect George Troup's vision of a lofty Royal Doulton-tiled foyer partly illuminated by the lantern tower above.
If visitors care to look up they will see two sets of six small Art Nouveau leadlights at either end of a translucent-panelled barrel vault, which is completely enclosed in the roof space.
Some years ago I restored the 12 soot-encrusted leadlights, two of which were badly damaged. I believe the tower's light source was originally skylights but now fluorescent tubes provide illumination, making it effective by night and day.
One of the train sets faces west but cannot be seen from the plaza, as a small meeting room comes between them and the outside windows.
This reduces available light so they do not show up as well, which means visitors gravitate east.
Although meaning no harm, visitors have caused considerable damage over the years. About a year ago I replaced the two lower rows of border glass of the left window only to see them cracked again within a month.
Two large pieces were recently dislodged, so it was time for a permanent solution.
Dunedin City Council property manager Robert Clark asked me to write a report on their condition and recommend suitable protection. While examining the windows, several incidents pointed to how the damage was occurring.
The outward bowing and lower glass breakage is largely due to visitors trying to sit on a tiny 70mm sill, their backs pushing against the glass, while a friend snaps their photo. Others feel the glass, pushing it to ''test for movement''.
Although it is not normally done in an historical building, as it alters the look of a leadlight to some extent, these windows are so vulnerable the decision was made to encase them in toughened-glass double-glazed units after complete restoration.
The central subject of these windows, the charging steam engines, are wrapped in and surmount a flowing foliate design in Art Nouveau style, very popular around 1900.
The geometric background with its borders, diamonds and rondels is Victorian, still popular even though Queen Victoria had moved on by the time of the railway station design in 1904.
Running through the top is a line of double ogee curves, reminiscent of lemons, frequently used in Art Nouveau design.
The seemingly unconnected sidelight motif of heraldic lions in rampant pose, studiously ignoring each other, is no more than obeisance to the Old Country.
High up on the clock tower, four Royal coats of arms, flanked by imposing lions gazing stony-faced over the city, provide a link to the windows. Lions feature in the coats of arms of England, royalty, British Rail and, not least, Scotland.
New Zealand Railways architect George Troup was Scottish and very proud of it. Did Troup design the windows? Probably not, but he almost certainly would have given the glass studio's artist a directive to depict the train and heraldic lions.
In writing a condition report the first thing is to establish the windows' provenance, if possible, by way of a signature or documentation.
There is no signature and nor would one be expected, as these are leadlights, not stained glass, and although these terms tend to be used synonymously, there is quite a difference.
Leadlight is a convenient way to write the correct term, leaded light, where light means window and leaded refers to its composition of many pieces of shaped glass held together in a lead matrix.
A stained-glass window, principally seen in churches, is a leadlight in which the glass has been modified with special paints that are fired permanently into the glass.
This technique dates back at least as far as the 9th century but it was the discovery, in about 1300, that silver nitrate fired on to glass stains it yellow that is the probable origin of the term stained glass.
Unless it is a contemporary artwork, it would be very rare to find a signed leadlight and, indeed, the majority of stained-glass windows are not signed, either.
It was not difficult to find out who constructed the station windows. An article on the opening of the station published in the Otago Daily Times (October 20, 1906) identified Smith & Smith Ltd.
They are still in business, of course, but back then operated from premises in the Octagon (now the Ra Bar) complete with stables at the rear, accessed from Moray Pl. Smith & Smith did sign their stained-glass windows and I can recall seeing excellent examples of their work in St Peter's (Hillside Rd) and St Luke's (Oamaru).
The first step when a studio received a commission for a major window design was to produce a watercolour representation. When a design is accepted, a full-size working drawing, called a cartoon, is made, incorporating any necessary changes to enable the painting to become a leadlight.
The most notable change to the railway station leadlights was to the volume of smoke. More was added, indicating the engine is working hard, which makes the image more powerful. The glass is cut and the window built up on the cartoon.
While I was removing the windows, Sharna Milner, who works in the ticket office, approached me to say her great-grandfather, Lloyd Henderson, worked on the windows and her grandmother, Grace Henderson, still had some of the original artwork. It is reproduced above.
Mr Henderson worked for Smith & Smith for many years but in 1906 he was only 14, so might have assisted as a new apprentice.
I hesitate to be critical, but there are faults in the design and a major problem with the installation. A window depicting numbers or words is always made to read from the outside. Glass is cut on its smooth face and the window leaded up with that side, which always faces out, uppermost.
The rough side of the glass faces in to keep it clean. The final step before installation is to solder copper tie-wires to joins on the inside so these wires can be twisted around horizontal steel support bars. Without exception, these bars must be fitted to the inside.
Unfortunately, the designer did not click that the station windows were to be read from the inside, as they would not be visible from outside, necessitating reversal of the NZR initials on the cartoon.
The glaziers who arrived to fit the windows realised they would have to be installed back to front but instead of clip-clopping 500m back to Smith & Smith to change the tie wires, simply fitted the windows with the bars on the outside.
Now, instead of wind pressing the windows against the support bars, it was forcing them away. Soldered joins have little tensile strength so before long the windows broke free and became badly damaged.
At some stage a long time ago the right window and most of the centre window have been rebuilt, rather poorly, with additional flat steel supports belatedly added to the inside.
Standard practice with tall windows is to make them in manageable sections and stack one on top of the next, tying them to a support bar at the join; this doubling of the lead also adds strength. However, the train windows, at 2.2m, are a single length and far too long and weak for easy handling.
I suppose the artist did not want his design sullied by a join but bars will intrude regardless. Now, 107 years later, their one-piece construction pays a dividend, his windows standing in their double-glazed tombs without visible support.
He would be pleased. One more design anomaly led to some soul-searching.
The horizontal lines above the engine that should line up through the three windows did not, the centre panel being 30mm higher. This was not down to its prior rebuild, as the west set is similarly affected.
A restorer would not normally alter design so I agonised over this but I would be damned if I did and damned if I didn't, so I did, extending the ''lemons'' and dropping the lines. So shoot me!
In his case restoration began with the recreation of a cartoon. The leadlights are carefully dismantled and the pieces cleaned of cement residue.
This is the point at which it will become clear just how bad things are. It was grim: large gaps due to poor cutting, numerous breaks that had been hidden with extra leads, obviously incorrect glass, missing jewels and so on.
In the end more than 280 pieces of glass had to be replaced, 200 in the centre panel alone.
I was fortunate to have much of the correct glass in my precious ''old glass hoard'' and retired leadlighter Chris Watts came to the rescue with some vital pieces.
All glass was correctly matched bar a few pieces of the sparkling background Baxendales Snowflake in one window, as not enough could be found. A slightly different version had to suffice.
Once it is established what can be retained, cartoon lines are inked and replacement glass cut.
The window is then built up on the cartoon before soldering. A cementing mixture is then forced between glass and lead on both sides, the excess later removed, and, when cured, cleaned and the lead blackened for cosmetic reasons.
The cartoons, glass samples and notes will be archived in case of disaster.
Incidentally, the only part of these windows that should be stained glass is not.
The yellow colouring of the acid-etched lions would normally be achieved with silver nitrate but these have been plated (backed) with yellow glass, a very strange thing from an experienced studio. And ''wrong way Leo?''
No great mystery there. I did imply the previous ''restoration'' wasn't great - they simply put him in back to front!
