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Work was recently completed on several stainedglass windows at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka to ensure the colorful creations endure into the future.
Over a five-day period, ending Feb. 27, a skilled craftsman from Associated Crafts and Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, out of Winona, Minnesota, was on site doing conservation work, including removing the existing protective coverings, re-cementing the stained-glass exterior surface, polishing the stained glass to a new luster, removing loose paint on the outer surface of the original millwork and applying new primer and paint and installing a new protective covering. Joseph Martinez was the craftsman and project manager.
According to the church website, https://christchurcheureka.org/, almost all of the stained-glass windows at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka were originally created for the first building occupied by Christ Church at the corner of Fourth and E streets in Eureka. This church was built in 1869. The windows were removed from the original church and installed in the current building — at 625 15th St. — in 1938.
The designer and manufacturer of the windows in the original church was John Mallon (1828—1897), a stained-glass maker in San Francisco who also designed the stained-glass windows in the Carson Mansion, the church website said.
“The three windows which were renovated were the Chancel Windows (of Christ the Good Shepherd and the Alpha and the Omega) made during the rectorship of the Rev. Dr. John Woart (18821888), the Rose Window (of the Dove), which was made when the new building was constructed in 1938, and the window in the Chapel of Our Merciful Saviour,” said the Rev. Dr. Daniel London in an email interview with the Times-Standard.
According to the Associated Crafts and Willet Hauser Architectural Glass website, https://stainedglass-window.us, in its 120plus years of business, the company has worked on some 35,000 institutions and churches, keeping these colorful glass designs vibrant and alive.
“I remember a seminary professor (the Rev. Dr. John Goldingay) using the imagery of stained-glass windows as a metaphor for the way that God’s Light of Truth shines uniquely through Scripture. Our sacred texts are not always fully transparent windows through which we clearly see the light of God’s truth,” London said. “As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘We see through a glass dimly.’ The words of Scripture were crafted by gifted human authors much like the colorful designs of our stained-glass windows, and just as the light of the sun makes our windows shine most beautifully, so too does God’s Light cause the human words of Scripture to dazzle with divine truth.
“Stained-glass windows,” he said, “also demonstrate the ways that our own true colors can shine most clearly and potently when we let God’s Light shine through each of us. When Christ referred to his followers as the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), he was not saying that we are all cookie-cutter versions of the same thing. Rather, much like stainedglass windows, we are all wonderfully unique expressions of divine love, radiating God’s Light in our own colorful ways.
“Because the imagery of light is so central to the Christian faith (Genesis 1:3; Matthew 5:14; John 8:12), it makes sense that Christian artists throughout the centuries have enjoyed experimenting with an art form that plays with light and that must rely upon light in order for their work to truly shine,” London added.